El médico

While this movie is well acted and beautifully shot, there are so many departures from the original story that I couldn't help feeling a little let down. It's true that to include everything written by Noah Gordon would require a mini-series (which would have been a good idea) , there are a number of things that gave the story more depth that could easily have been included. An accurate account of where Rob J Cole was born would have been a good start.

Despite these omissions The Physician is still a good watch.

For those who question the truth of this title, it's fiction, total fiction.

a beautiful novel. a great cast. splendid music. more than a good adaptation or remarkable work, it is an useful message about basic values of society. a film about tolerance as fruit of courage, about love and friendship as results of sacrifice. about vocation. all in seductive package. Ben Kingsley as Avicenna, Olivier Martinez as the shah, Tom Payne as lead actor are pillars of a wise, touching, subtle show.and they are not the only - the flavor of Arabian Nights is, in same measure, admirable ingredient. more than a film, it is a sort of delight. and a lesson out of didacticism laws. that fact is fundamental. for viewer. and for understand the delicate axis behind its beauty.

I have never read the book so had no idea what to expect. I really enjoyed it, kept my attention all the way through . Bonus was Tom Payne and Stellan Skaarsgard along with Ben Kingsley.

The two hours and a half movie has a lot of good things going for it. First there is the acting, coming from people that are mostly quite unknown, but which is good even for actors in secondary roles. Stellan Skarsgård and Ben Kingsley do, as expected, a great job. Then there are the landscapes, starting from wet green Britain and ending in the Arabian desert. But of course, the best of it all is the story.

In an age where Europe is a cesspool of ignorance and filth, while the East is where the knowledge resides, the plot follows a young boy witnessing the death of his mother from an incurable disease, which I assume is appendicitis, and grows to want to become a healer. Pretending to be a Jew, he travels to the Middle East to train with a famous and wise healer, played by Kingsley. He proceeds in defeating diseases, healing friends and finding the love of his life, while religious extremism and violence stretch through the region.

Now, I have some qualms with some of the details of the story. I understand they tried to describe a larger piece of history in the span of a single movie and I also understand that drama requires brutal realism while the mechanisms of movie making require happy endings and satisfying the money people. However, there are some things that just don't sit well, like presenting Europeans as filthy barbarians using their faith only to oppress, the Arabs as either tyrants or violent zealots, while Jews are all nice, helpful and never take up weapons to hurt anyone. This kind of unilateral bias sours an otherwise quite nice and beautiful story. The repeated scenes of the Torah burning (oy vey) while tomes of medical knowledge burning in Ibn Sina's university were mere an afterthought is one of those things, too.

Bottom line: the switch from filthy barbarism to enlightened richness, from decadence to overzealous morality, from peaceful people to thieves and murderers and all back again makes for an inconsistent world. However it is a nicely presented world, with interesting well played characters in epic journeys that change their and the viewer's perspective on the world. A well done movie, I would have preferred it less biased and more focused, but one can't look a horse gift in the mouth; after all, how many new movies are there to advocate science and knowledge over special effects and cheap emotions? Good film. You should watch it.

I accept it i really enjoy and same time annoy when i was watching this movie. They just tried to insult Turkish and Muslim people. Especially if u are Christian u can not pass the Muslim's country. This is bullshit. Respect other religion if u want to other people respect yours. And if u publish that kind of movies at least write there it is not real history just imagination. How dare you show Seljuk like a monster. If i am not Turkish i could believe that. And i will pretend Turkish people bad behavior. Please respect other people. I don't want to write more than this. Why they don't allow me to send this review. As a Persian I feel offended by the way Isfahan and it's population are presented. Karim plays lousy and beside the focus on the Jewish families I see no deep dive and intelligence put into the Persian culture (in line with other movies such as 300 or Alexander, kind of a pattern).