At a time when so many see American democracy imperiled by division and discord, members of Congress came together last night to champion a man fresh off the front lines of a more raw fight for democracy.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, dressed in his signature olive fatigues, strode into the chamber to a standing ovation, took the podium, and then shuffled uncomfortably as the crowd whooped and cheered for a full four minutes. 

“Thank you, it’s too much for me,” Mr. Zelenskyy said, when the applause finally waned. “All this for our great people, thanks so much.”

“I hope my words of respect and gratitude resonate in each American heart,” he began. “It’s a great honor for me to be at the U.S. Congress and speak to you and all Americans. Against all odds, and doom and gloom scenarios, Ukraine didn’t fall. Ukraine is alive and kicking.”

Another standing ovation.

“And,” he continued, his right pointer finger tracing the words on the page of his prepared speech, as he emphasized each one in heavily accented English, “it gives me good reason to share with you our first joint victory: We defeated Russia in the battle for minds in the world,” he said. “We have no fear, nor should anyone in the world have it.”

His case was simple, yet profound: As much as military equipment is crucial to winning a war on the ground, the most important battlefield is in hearts and minds. You, America, know this. Your commitment to ideals drove your seminal victories, such as in the Battle of Saratoga during the Revolutionary War, or the Battle of the Bulge against Nazi troops in 1944. Your history is an inspiration as we fight our own war of independence. But this is your fight, too. This is a battle to preserve the values you hold dear – not only for us, or for you, but for the whole world. 

“The Russian tyranny has lost control over us, and it will never influence our minds again. Yet, we have to do whatever it takes to ensure that countries of the global South also gain such victory,” Mr. Zelenskyy said, going on to include those living under the thumb of his adversary, Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well. “Russians will stand a chance to be free only when they defeat the Kremlin in their minds.”

Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy received a four-minute standing ovation before his speech to the joint session of Congress. He was the first wartime leader to address a joint session since British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1941.

Congress weighing another $47 billion in aid

“Just like the brave American soldiers, which held their lines and fought back Hitler’s forces during the Christmas of 1944, brave Ukrainian soldiers are doing this same to Putin’s forces this Christmas,” he said. “Ukraine holds its lines and will never surrender.”

The crowd whooped again. There’s just something about this guy in a sweatshirt leading a country with less than 1% of American gross domestic product – a former comedian turned overnight global hero – that fires up people like Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a petite Connecticut Democrat who was shouting and shaking her head of purple hair. 

Then came the pitch.

“Your support is crucial not just to stand in such fight, but to get to the turning point, to win on the battlefield,” Mr. Zelenskyy said. “We have artillery, yes – thank you,” with a big nod. “We have it – is it enough? Honestly, not really.”

The timing of the trip, arranged by President Joe Biden and facilitated by a U.S. Air Force ride out of neighboring Poland, is not coincidental. Mr. Biden announced the United States would be sending Patriot missiles to Ukraine. And Congress is weighing a $47 billion aid package this week that has met with some resistance from Republicans. Prominent GOP critics either didn’t attend the speech, or conspicuously remained seated during the numerous standing ovations. GOP Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the front-runner to become speaker of the House next month, applauded halfheartedly, yawned, and was always among the first to sit down. 

“Financial assistance is critically important, and I would like to thank you, thank you very much, thank you for both financial packages you have already provided us with and the ones you may be willing to decide on,” the Ukrainian president said. “Your money is not charity. It’s an investment in the global security and democracy that we handle in the most responsible way.”

Retiring GOP Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, who has visited Mr. Zelenskyy more than any other member of Congress, said afterward that he struck a good balance between gratitude and the case for continued support.

“He expressed the appreciation, but also made it clear that now’s not the time to pull back,” said Senator Portman. “The territorial integrity of Ukraine is important to Ukraine, but also to the global world order that would otherwise be destroyed.”

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy holds an American flag, which flew above the Capitol on the day of his visit, gifted to him by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after he addressed a joint session of Congress, Dec. 21, 2022.

Flying the flag for freedom

Fresh off a visit to the front lines in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday, Mr. Zelenskyy presented a flag to Speaker Nancy Pelosi from the “heroes” defending Ukraine’s borders.  

“This flag is a symbol of our victory in this war,” he said. “We stand, we fight, and we will win because we are united: Ukraine, America, and the entire free world.”

Speaker Pelosi then presented him with an American flag flown atop the Capitol that day in his honor. 

He leaned across the dais to kiss her cheek – then dashed out of the chamber like a man who had a war to lead. 

“It was just as remarkable a speech as I’ve ever heard in the Congress of the United States,” said Speaker Pelosi afterward, walking past historic figures in Statuary Hall on her way back to her office. 

“I take great pride in saying that my father was in Congress when Churchill came here and ... asked for help to fight tyranny in Europe” in 1941, after the Pearl Harbor attack, she added. “And now, 81 years later, I had the privilege of being in the house to hear another courageous leader ask for help.”

Mr. Zelenskyy would welcome America’s support, he made clear. But he also underscored that Ukrainian determination was not contingent on foreign assistance, nor would it be thwarted by foreign aggression. 

“We’ll celebrate Christmas,” he vowed, in the bomb shelters or the dark, if necessary. “And even if there is no electricity, the light of our faith in ourselves will not be put out.”

They call in at all hours of the day and night. The man who said he wouldn’t be able to play with his children if it hadn’t been for an operation. The woman who’s thankful for a front-line worker who offered aid and support amid a family crisis. A 10-year-old who underwent surgery after the pandemic.

This is Hopeline19, a free phone line, which began as a way for the grateful British public to leave messages of support for Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) workers. Within days of its launch in September 2021, some 17,000 people had called in to the service. Today, 18 months later, 6,000 people still call in each week.

“I don’t know if you’re hearing this on your 10-minute break, or the only break you’ve had from a 12-hour shift, but I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart,” said one caller.

The NHS is the country’s pride and joy, more beloved by the public than any other British institution, including the royal family, the armed forces, and the BBC, because of the safety and security it provides to all without precondition. But it is facing a crisis like never before – with trust waning in its ability to support both its workers and the public effectively. The health care system is being pushed beyond its capacity, creating record delays in emergency services and raising the number of excess deaths nationally to higher than it was during the pandemic.

At the same time, NHS doctors, nurses, and front-line workers feel so overworked, underpaid, and undervalued by the government that pays them that they are taking to the picket lines in ways never before seen in Britain. As they do, they are receiving the support of a public that wants to protect those who provide such a critical social safety net.

This has drawn new attention to a fact that Chancellor Jeremy Hunt acknowledged last month: “The NHS is on the brink of collapse ... with doctors, nurses on the front line frankly under unbearable pressure,” he said.

“The NHS,” says Alastair McLellan, editor of Health Service Journal, “has reached the point where it can no longer save your life.”

Britain’s favorite public institution

The NHS came into existence on July 5, 1948. It was the first universal health care system to be financed by taxes, and is “free at the point of delivery,” meaning that treatment is provided according to need, not by a person’s ability to pay. The service has outlasted two monarchs, 15 prime ministers, and 29 health secretaries.

Kin Cheung/AP

Britain's Chancellor Jeremy Hunt leaves 11 Downing St., Nov. 17, 2022. Mr. Hunt acknowledged last month that “the NHS is on the brink of collapse ... with doctors, nurses on the front line frankly under unbearable pressure.”

But spending on health care has faltered in Britain over the last decade. The United Kingdom invests around 0.3% of gross domestic product on health care capital spending, less than any other country in the G-7. This is now reflected in the worsening health of British people, which is holding back economic growth for the first time since the Industrial Revolution, former Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane said in a recent speech.

Today, the NHS situation is stark. A record 7.21 million people were waiting for treatment in England at the end of October. Around 4,000 patients a day are spending more than 12 hours in emergency departments, a record high that far exceeds the target of four hours. Most alarmingly, figures from the Office of National Statistics show that, on average, the number of excess deaths is currently higher than it was during the pandemic, with a quarter of those attributed to the disruption of emergency care.

There are two key problems, says Mr. McLellan, and one of them has nothing to do with treatment. Rather, it’s logistical.

Patients are getting stuck in emergency departments (called “accident and emergency,” or A&E, in the U.K.) rather than being transferred to hospital beds because wards are occupied by people medically fit enough to leave, but who cannot be discharged because they lack the necessary care at home. As much as a third of beds in some institutions are occupied by people in this situation.

“If you can’t get people out of hospital, then you can’t get people out of A&E,” says Mr. McLellan. “If you can’t get people out of A&E, you can’t get them out of the ambulance queuing outside A&E. And if an ambulance is queuing outside A&E, it’s not responding to life-threatening calls.”

The second, extremely urgent, problem is staff shortages, exacerbated by the departure, post-Brexit, of thousands of foreign-born health professionals, including 4,000 European doctors.

Many of the remaining hospital staffers have taken to skipping breaks and working overtime for free, so as to maintain care standards, and selling annual leave to make ends meet, or resorting to food banks.

Such stress has taken its toll: In the year leading up to last June, 1 in 9 nurses quit the NHS, and a Royal College of Nursing (RCN) survey found that 6 in 10 were contemplating or planning their resignations. Already, more than 30,000 nursing positions remain unfilled.

At a time when the country is still feeling the impacts of COVID-19, and suffering a cost-of-living crisis, a recession, and an energy crisis, the NHS is under more pressure than at any other time in its history, says Siva Anandaciva, chief analyst at The King’s Fund, a charitable organization that works to improve health and care in England.

Steve Parsons/PA/AP/File

Military co-responder Lt. Corydon Morrell steps out of an ambulance at Bracknell Ambulance Station in Bracknell, England, Jan. 12, 2022. Military personnel have been called in to make up shortfalls in NHS staffing during the current crisis.

“We’ve run our system on what I’d say is the red zone on the dial for a long, long time,” he says. “Over the last 10 years in this country, we’ve not tried to grow our workforce at the rate we needed to and we’ve not invested in the basic facilities you need for modern health care.”

“As a result, you’ve basically got a system that hasn’t got enough resilience to cope with shocks. When you get multiple shocks, it’s no wonder that waiting times and patient care are at the poor level they’re at now.”

Pushing back against the government

For the first time in its 106-year history, the RCN called a strike this month, demanding a pay rise. Nurses walked out for two days, and strikes will continue into the spring if they fail to reach an agreement. The action was supported by 59% of Britons, a recent poll found.

“Anger has become action, our members are saying enough is enough,” RCN General Secretary Pat Cullen said in a statement. “Our members will no longer tolerate a financial knife-edge at home and a raw deal at work.”

Ambulance workers also struck for 24 hours on Wednesday.

While the strikes primarily have to do with pay, front-line workers also cite underfunding and staff shortages that they say create working conditions that leave them with no choice but to strike. A recent survey by the GMB trade union found that 1 in 3 ambulance staffers had been involved in a delay that had resulted in a patient’s death.

“We’ve got higher levels of PTSD in our nursing staff than recent returns from combat zones,” says Claire Goodwin-Fee, founder and CEO of Frontline19, a service that set up Hopeline19 and provides psychological support to front-line workers.

Regardless of how things stand at the moment, Britons are near-unanimous in their desire to see the NHS survive and – eventually – thrive.

“Generally speaking, the public on the street are huge fans of the NHS and supporters of health workers, which we saw during the pandemic,” says Ms. Goodwin-Fee. “I’ve never come across anybody who wants to get rid of it.”

There were lots of movies to like in 2022, but the goodies were mostly to be found not in the Hollywood mainstream but on the outskirts. Maybe low-budget films, documentaries, and foreign language fare didn’t always take up the slack, but the best of them at least tried to be more venturesome than the usual ossified studio product.

One of the most promising developments has been the emergence or blossoming of a number of gifted female directors, some making their feature film debuts. Sarah Polley, in “Women Talking,” directed what is easily her most assured work. Nikyatu Jusu’s “Nanny,” about a Senegalese nanny in New York’s Upper East Side, is the year’s most evocative horror film. First-time Scottish director Charlotte Wells arrives on the scene with the uneven but affecting father-daughter study “Aftersun,” which also heralds the arrival of a major young actor, Frankie Corio.

I also admired two European filmmakers, Belgian Laura Wandel, who debuted with “Playground,” and Audrey Diwan, from France, who made the timely abortion drama “Happening,” based on a story by French Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux. Their films are both signal achievements and hopefully harbingers of what is to come.

Another burgeoning development this year was the preponderance of semi-autobiographical coming-of-age movies, most prominently James Gray’s “Armageddon Time” and Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans.” Whatever their faults, both sensibly resisted the impulse to wallow in self-serving nostalgia.

There was also a plethora of movies that dumped on the venal rich, including “The Menu,” “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” and, easily the best of the bunch, “Triangle of Sadness.” In the documentary realm, the raw, imperfect “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” exposed profiteers of the opioid crisis, though that was not the film’s only focus. In a convoluted way, maybe this is how the issue of income equality gets a seat at the multiplex these days.

Courtesy of the Cohen Estate Movie

The documentary “Hallelujah” is a deep dive into how ferociously personal musicmaking could be for Leonard Cohen.

Good films, as well as bad, can come from anywhere. And terrific performances can often appear even in middling movies. You wouldn’t want to miss Jennifer Ehle and Samantha Morton in “She Said.” Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, and Kerry Condon invigorated “The Banshees of Inisherin.” So, too, did Emily Watson in “God’s Creatures,” Olivia Colman in “Empire of Light,” and Cate Blanchett in the otherwise overrated “Tár.”

If you craved popcorn movie action, you could be satisfyingly sated by “Top Gun: Maverick” or, much better, “Avatar: The Way of Water.” You didn’t have to settle for “Jurassic World Dominion” or “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.” And if the Hollywood stuff didn’t grab you, you could glom onto “RRR,” S.S. Rajamouli’s phenomenally successful Raj-era Indian action epic that, for sheer boffo exuberance, outdid anything the studios churned out this year.

Why did this movie, which I enjoyed without joining the gaga conga line, have such global crossover appeal? I think it’s because audiences drawn back into the theaters still crave the same communal oomph the big Hollywood franchise movies are tasked to supply but so rarely do. And if that oomph comes from a Tarantino-esque mashup of Bollywood and spaghetti Westerns and the Mahabharata, so much the better.

Film Movement

In “Playground,” Nora (Maya Vanderbeque, right) tries to protect her brother Abel (Günter Duret) from bullies.

Another surprise cult hit was “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” a multiverse maelstrom starring Michelle Yeoh. I found it exhausting, but I can see why it’s such a smash, and for much the same reason as “RRR.” It makes the familiar phantasmagoric. Why accept just a couple of multiverses in “Doctor Strange” when you can have dozens here? You say you don’t like this universe? Don’t worry, there’s plenty others you can escape to. It’s the perfect pandemic-era bliss-out. 

I prefer to bliss out over the best, and so, in alphabetical order, here are my Top 10 films of the year:

A Couple – Frederick Wiseman, our finest documentarian, makes a rare foray into staged drama with this filmed monologue starring the French actor Nathalie Boutefeu. It’s drawn mostly from the diaries and letters of Sophia Tolstoy, the long-suffering wife of the great novelist Leo Tolstoy. As she wanders alone the grounds of a spacious estate, she asks of her husband, “Do you see me as a person?” It’s an anguished plea and a major performance. (Not rated; French with English subtitles) 

A Hero – Asghar Farhadi’s best movie since his Oscar-winning “A Separation” is about a hapless debtor whose attempts at restitution become ever more comic and tragic. In the process, we get a bustling, comprehensive view of contemporary Iranian society. Do not be deterred from seeing this film because of the recent controversy over the unacknowledged contribution from one of Farhadi’s film students. (PG-13)

Amazon Studios

Sahar Goldoust (left) and Amir Jadidi in the Iranian film “A Hero,” from Academy Award winning director Asghar Farhadi.

Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood – Richard Linklater’s rotoscope animated ode to his NASA-obsessed Houston boyhood in the dawn of the 1969 Apollo 11 moon launch has the homegrown charm and lyricism that characterizes his best work. (PG-13)

Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song – Dayna Goldfine and Daniel Geller’s documentary is not only about the genesis of Cohen’s famous song, but also a deep dive into how ferociously personal and even sacramental music making could be for him. (PG-13)

Nitram – Justin Kurzel’s slow burn dramatization of the wracked life of Australia’s most deadly mass shooter is a model of how to film incendiary material in a principled, nonexploitative way. Caleb Landry Jones, who won best actor at the Cannes Film Festival, heads a great supporting cast, including Judy Davis, Anthony LaPaglia, and Essie Davis. (Not rated)

Playground – No better movie has been made about the ramifications of schoolyard bullying than Laura Wandel’s extraordinary debut feature, shot almost entirely from the point of view of the little girl played by the precociously gifted Maya Vanderbeque. (Not rated; French with English subtitles)

Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical – For a change, a family movie that the whole family can actually enjoy. Emma Thompson as the evil headmistress is a hoot, and the spirited young cast, under Matthew Warchus’ direction, saves the day and then some. (PG)

The Good Nurse – True-crime dramas are a dime a dozen these days. This one, directed by Tobias Lindholm and featuring Eddie Redmayne as an anti-Florence Nightingale and Jessica Chastain as the fellow nurse and friend whose conscience led her to expose him, is exceptionally powerful. It is also an indictment of a hospital system that chooses to look the other way when one of its own goes rogue. (R) 

Thirteen Lives – Ron Howard’s nail-biter about the real-life rescue of Thai junior soccer players from a mountain cave system is a terrific example of how to meld action and empathy. We care about the rescue because we are made to care about the people. Viggo Mortensen and Colin Farrell give admirably unshowy star performances. (PG-13) 

Three Minutes: A Lengthening – Three minutes of rare color footage of a predominantly Jewish Polish town in 1938 is the forensic focus of this haunting documentary by Bianca Stigter. A metaphysical detective story, it is ultimately a movie about bearing witness. (PG)

Some other 2022 worthies in addition to those favorably cited in the opening section: “EO,” “The Automat,” “The Duke,” and “Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris.” 

Peter Rainer is the Monitor’s film critic. 

Reuters.

Ismail Sha studies with a rechargeable lantern in Cape Town in October. Power outages happen daily in South Africa. New partnerships with wealthy nations will help countries like South Africa, Indonesia, and Vietnam move from coal to green energy.

The world’s top industrial nations put the finishing touches on a $15.5 billion deal last week to help Vietnam shift toward a greener energy future. The agreement follows similar plans already reached with two other coal-dependent nations, South Africa and Indonesia.

These “Just Energy Transition Partnerships” harness public and private funding to achieve a shared benefit, in this case reduced greenhouse gas emissions. What they reflect, however, may be even more important than what they do. In a period of persistent distrust within and among nations, they help show how humanity is forging new bonds of cooperation amid common threats.

“The present period of polycrisis has provided multiple tests for the concept of global trust,” the Edelman Trust Institute observed in a year-end collection of short essays on restoring trust. “History suggests that some of the most important steps forward in global cooperation came even at moments when trust was difficult to come by, and that these joint actions helped rebuild trust.”

The energy partnerships, said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres in comments last week about the Vietnam agreement, mark an “all hands on deck” partnership between rich and developing nations “to realize an energy transition that is global, sustainable, just, inclusive, and equitable.” 

The war in Ukraine offers another measure of unity emerging from crisis. Russian President Vladimir Putin “wanted to split the European Union, it became united,” former Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb told the European news website Euractiv. “He wanted to destroy NATO. It’s back with a new purpose.” 

The Edelman essays on restoring trust illustrate how societies are repairing trust in response to overlapping challenges like polarization, inflation, the pandemic, climate change, and hunger. In developing nations, governments and technology companies have sought to overcome trust deficits by expanding digital access to public services like health care and financial services like banking. That has helped them democratize economic opportunity and reduce economic vulnerability, write Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Infosys, and Tanuj Bhojwani, co-author of “The Art of Bitfulness."

Manu Meel offers a view of a new generation’s response to polarization. A member of Generation Z, he founded BridgeUSA, an organization that promotes dialogue on college campuses across the United States. He hopes to restore faith in democracy among a generation shaped by repeated crises stretching from 9/11 to Jan. 6. That involves “cultivating a certain temperament that exists above ideology: a temperament that values open-mindedness over closed-mindedness; empathy over exclusion; building spaces that bring people in as opposed to building spaces that keep people out.”

“We are living in what should be a golden age of cross-border learning,” writes Parag Khanna, founder of Climate Alpha, a real estate analytics firm. “Both West and East have much to share in ... the essential task of rebuilding trust in government worldwide.” Faced with extremity, humanity is uniting in opportunity.