Enjoyable

Posted by Jim Mayor on Oct 29th 2022

HealtH (1980) is an odd and quirky movie, but this one has a stellar cast. With co-writer and director Robert Altman, we know we were in for, among other things, politics and satire. The entire movie takes place at a fancy hotel that caters to conventions, this time it is the health industry. The scene is the preparation for the election of a new president of the influential(?) organization. There are three candidates. Eighty-three year old (they aren’t really sure as her records were destroyed in the San Francisco fire seventy-six years before) Esther Brill (Lauren Bacall, 56 in 1980, and looked a great deal younger) plays it straight..., until she falls “asleep, “ and is full of fuzzy words and nice thoughts. The radical, middle-of-the-road candidate, Dr. Gil Gainey (Paul Dooley), is more interested in promoting his own line of products, and it wasn’t clear he got any votes anyway. The third candidate is a weird, emotionless Isabella Garnell (Glenda Jackson) who is constantly parroting Adlai Stevenson-like speeches. Incidentally, for the doubters, there is one scene where Garnell has her feet up on a desk with a hole in her shoe. To throw some variety into the mix, Gloria Burbank (Carol Burnett) is the advisor on health to the President’s, US that is; Harry Wolff (James Garner) is Brill’s campaign manager and Gloria’s ex; and Dick Cavett, as himself, attempting to record a show in the midst of the hubbub. Then there is the com-man Bobby Hammer (Henry Gibson). Although this movie was made during the Carter administration, it appears that much of the political satire aspect is aimed more at the Eisenhower and Stevenson era. The satire directed at the health food industry is less noticeable, except that an important part of the industry seems to be making money.