Semmelweis

It's not the first time that more money is poured into a film, whose end result is far from good.

I recognized actors in it who generally perform very well, but here it somehow didn't come across. Summing up the acting, I'd give it a 10/2. They couldn't make me feel their situation; at times, the monologues seemed as if they were pondering what their next line should be.

I find the two-hour runtime of this film unnecessary. Often, less is more; here, many parts of the film became boring, lacking sufficient plot.

The costumes, backgrounds, and the overall visual appearance were fine; it's a shame that they adapted this outstanding story so poorly.

The unbreakable element makes a person great, a touching true story based on reality, the image and reality are fascinating. In Hungary today, Semmelweis is a real historical person, I think he portrayed a big problem of the time very well. Check out! In this story, the person is very sympathetic, because if he has a family, he thinks about the big problems and questions of the past, which he could have fixed in a short time with today's knowledge. Great knowledge and thinking can fix these problems, and fortunately it was once again a Hungarian person who was able to fix this, despite the many enemies and skepticism, things were fixed even at that time!

My students and I watched this movie today. They liked it a lot, and we talked about it for a long time afterwards, it seemed that it piqued their interest. The story is exciting, sometimes too much so naturalistic. Struggle and tragedies accompanied the film, presenting the XIX. Health condition of the century. I didn't know many of the actors, but they all gave excellent performances. The young actor who played Semmelweis, Vecsey H. Miklós, created a convincing, real doctor character. Lajos Koltay's excellent direction also contributed to the experience. The creators can be rightfully proud. I hope the film gets international recognition.

The story of Semmelweis is definitely worthy of a movie but this is barely a biography, its more of an "inspired by". They added huge amounts of fiction. If you check what happened in real life, you aren't going to find the stuff that was shown in this movie. The anti Hungarian sentiment, the conspiracy against Semmelweis, the entire (and totally unnecessary) romantic storyline. At the same time we don't see that much of the protagonist's life, the plot revolves around his research and how his colleagues refuse to acknowledge him. The movie does touch on problems like racism, misogyny and politics but it is superficial and as I mentioned, not historically accurate. This would have been way better if they had chose to give a biography similar to Nolan's Oppenheimer, but they went with a mostly fictional plot and what is worse, most of the made up stuff doesn't elevate the interesting nature of the story that much, it just inflates it with clichés.

The story is filled with drama but its very artificial. I understand that they wanted to make it watchable but the sacrifices they made were too big. All the scenes (especially the court one) feels so unbelievably "epic" that you almost laugh at it. It's so overdone you can be certain it did not happened that way. They wanted to portray Semmelweis so much as a hero that the scenes feel like the hyperbolic mythical songs they used to sing about the heroic quests of kings.

Acting doesn't help either. All the characters are one sided.

• Semmelweis can't be bothered with anything else than his patients. He constantly preaches about the importance of saving lives, just to make sure everybody gets how big of a hero he is. I don't meant to disrespect or undermine his super important achievements, but the way he is portrayed here, is just exaggerated. It is hard to believe he acted like this. Historical evidence recorded that he was a hard man, which is shown in the movie, but the overdetermined way he constantly acts is nonsense. Miklós H. Vecsei's performance emphasized this. It wasn't bad, but he just strengthened the one sided, unrealistically heroic character by overplaying this perfect martyr fantasy role.

• Emma Hoffman was mostly there as a love interest but what is worse was Katica Nagy performance. She has literally one emotion: none. Her lifeless speech and character that meant to fuel the unneeded romantic subplot was boring, unenergetic and lacked the slightest passion.

• Sabina Hoffmann's existence was pure plot fuel and Lilla Kizlinger's mumbling was barely understandable. I get it that they meant to portray siblings living in hardship, but the acting didn't delivered their suffering, just their lack of emotion.

• Jakob Kolletschka's character was shallow with his singular duty of reminding Semmelweis to hedonistically enjoy life, but at least Ferenc Elek's performance was enjoyable. He delivered in the most enjoyable way.

What saves this movie is the picture. Except from the ball scene (which is comically yellow) It is well shot and lit. The setting and the costumes are immersive. Visually it is a quality product. Despite all the negatives, even with this amount of inflation, the story is still watchable, thanks to the interesting nature of the case and probably our national connection. Thanks to this, it deserves a singular watch, but it was disappointing knowing it could have been way better.

The only reason I give 3 stars is the cinematography. Which is itself completely all right. But other than that, I would be in real trouble if I had to point out some notable/positive features of the movie. As someone mentioned before, the real downside is the storyline itself. It could have been improved, once they decided to go with fiction instead of sticking with the actual history. I would prefer a more realistic approach any day but this kind of thing can still be legitimate for some people.

The characters were mediocre, it is hard to say anything beyond that. The sophisticated presentation of the characters would have required thoughtful acting, but this was lacking here. There was much more to be made of this topic. This is a one-time watch movie, but only if you really don't have anything better to do.