La battaglia del dottor Semmelweis

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.

I'm quite disappointed to be honest. The technical side of the movie is totally ok. A little bit claustrophobic for me as basically there are no open spaces in the movie but still technically the film is ok.

The real downside is the storyline itself. Basically nothing was as it's in the movie. The whole austrian-hungarian rivalry is a lie. Klein did not even exist. As such the whole laundry scandal is made up too. Emma is fictional too just as the espionage line. The autopsy of Kolletschka wasn't preformed by Semmelweis as he wasn't even in the country at the time of Kolletschka's death. Semmelweis only studied the notes of the autopsy. As such it couldn't not be a scandal.

If you watch the movie you just see a brainless propaganda movie. It's an absolute disgrace that wants you to think that mean austrians mistreated a hungarian genius just because his nationality. It's not better than those stupid soviet heroic movies.

Too bad that the filmmakers made a cheap and dumb propaganda movie instead of a historically accurate objective adaptation. Semmelweis should deserve more than that.

The story line is close to what happened in real life. Missing the coroner from the real life story though. Excellent actors and hope Koltai will win an Oscar with this film.

Semmelweis' story shows that simple being curious, observational and logical can result in life-changing discoveries. The film also shows how some peoples believe they are above others, and the not so straightforward Austrian-Hungarian relationship. A worthwhile film to watch.

Let's hope this Hungarian film about the savior of all mothers and hospital patients will be recognized and enjoyed by the international audience. 👍

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.