Help review

 Help is too modern to be on the top 1000 films of all time, but I'm reviewing it as it touched me so profoundly.

Sarah (Jodie Comer) is a directionless, young woman just starting work in the Bright Sky care home in Liverpool. There she quickly befriends Tony (Stephen Graham) who has early-onset dementia. But their world comes crashing down when the Covid-19 pandemic hits.

I've spent the last six years working in care homes. I worked in a care home all throughout the Covid era, so this film hit close to home for me. A little uncomfortably close. It was a raw, unflinching and visceral look at how the adult care sector was completely forgotten. No, not forgotten. Abandoned. Nobody cared about us. But Help honed in perfectly on what makes a care home a care home. There are the relationships between the staff and the residents, as well as the residents and their families. We see the residents enjoying poetry, meeting sheep and having a Christmas party. The authenticity was brilliant. But it also focussed on the stress that carers are under. It really is a thankless job.

Jodie Comer and Stephen Graham were terrific as the two leads. When Sarah begins, she is lost and directionless, but she quickly finds herself. She is a hard worker and a good carer. Comer was brilliant. She bought the role to life. I know many hard-working carers just like Sarah. Graham was also fantastic, as can only be expected from an actor of his calibre. Like Sarah he is lost. Some days he knows who he is and others he doesn't. But this touches upon a very important, but little-known aspect of dementia. People have a variable capacity. Some days they can be lucid and others not so much. If you'll permit me to be a little un-pc, they're not crazy loons all the time.

Graham played the role with a great subtlety. Tony is a quiet, but powerful character. Most importantly, he is human and never reduced to a gross caricature. Tony and Sarah's relationship was at the heart of this film. And this all culminates in a breath-taking 26-minute 1-take shot where Sarah is working a hellish night shift. With all her colleagues sick with Covid, she is forced to work a double and take care of all her residents by herself. One resident becomes particularly sick, and when it becomes clear, nobody is coming to help, Sarah enlists Tony to help her. It was heart-in-the-mouth action that was stunningly shot and acted. Comer and Graham's performances had literal tears running down my cheeks. That is saying something.

I may argue that the film peaked here. Perhaps this is where it should have ended, as the second half felt like a strange addendum that had been lazily tacked on. Tony is established as a flight risk, constantly trying to return home to his long-dead mother. When he tries escaping one too many times, the manager drugs him up to his eyeballs. Sarah protests this blatant abuse, but she is promptly fired. She goes rogue and breaks Tony free. They intend to self-quarantine at the seaside, before trying to send Tony to a different facility.

This is all well and good, but it felt incredibly disjointed. It didn't seem to match the first half at all, and it also lacked a lot of the same tension and immediacy. Writer Jack Thorne originally wanted to solely focus on the daily life of a care home, before he was convinced to write about Covid-19. I wonder if this was a latent idea that he tried and failed to shoe-horn into an otherwise faultless film.

Nonetheless, Help is a near perfect film. It was a damning indictment of how the adult social care sector was forsaken during the pandemic. Coming out in 2021, it is too new to make it onto the top 1000 list, but it has earned its place on any future lists.