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.
