Eileen Atkins stars as Celia, a cautious seller of old furniture and clocks, in Alan Bennett's spellbinding monologue The Hand of God, a perfectly paced 32-minute gem.
Filmed in half-a-dozen simple scenes set in a modest antiques shop, the story involves Celia's daily battle to keep the stock moving. Celia is an antiques dealer who just about manages to make a living but with stock ever harder to come by. Then one day Celia lucks into a Good Samaritan relationship with Miss Ventriss, a dying woman who owns a home stocked with treasures. It's almost more than Celia's honest, if avaricious, conscience can bear.
As in many of Bennett's pieces, the story develops in a miraculous direction that gives it the taut impact of a fable -- or at least the sober moral of a cautionary tale.
YOU MUST HOWEVER WATCH THIS ALL THE WAY THROUGH TO APPRECIATE THE BRILLIANCE AND IRONY OF THIS LITTLE SAGA.