Going Gently (1981)
Play about two elderly cancer patients suffering in hospital.
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Good story, Not enough for a whole film
The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.
The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.
"Going Gently" is a first class TV play which has received a new and well-deserved life on BBC's Judi Dench Collection. Dealing with two men in the terminal stage of cancer it hardly sounds like "must see" entertainment. However, I have never seen a better depiction of individuals coming to terms with illness and their mortality. It has much humour (albeit dark), and it also is comforting to see the principal characters retaining their individual personalities in spite of their environment and the discomfort and detached attitudes of hospital workers, family and others who must also cope with the reality of death. Norman Wisdom and Fulton MacKay turn in excellent performances as does Judi Dench in a somewhat secondary role. Highly recommended.
I saw this play on TV way back in the early 1980s and I doubt it'll ever be shown again, but I still remember it. It's a very moving story about two men in their 60s sharing a hospital room and both dying from cancer. The drama comes from these two men having utterly different backgrounds and, at first, a strong dislike for each other, yet forced to share the most intimate of experiences. Fulton Mackay plays an intellectual retired university lecturer and Norman Wisdom has the role of a brash & uneducated former salesman. What makes the play particularly interesting is that Mackay and Wisdom are both very well known to British audiences as comedy actors so it was a huge departure, but I remember they played their roles with great sensitivity. Sadly Fulton Mackay really did die from this awful disease just six years later but Norman Wisdom is still working at age 89. IF Going Gently is ever shown again it's worth seeing.