The Cure for Health, the 2017 film is the result of a joint production of film companies in the USA and Germany. The creators prophesied him great success, but the picture was a "commercial failure", since it raised a little more than half the money than was spent on its creation.
Noir Horror
The genre of the movie “Cure for Health” can be defined in several terms. This is undoubtedly a thriller. A persistent investigation of the protagonist makes the tape detective. The traits of surrealism give it a touch of psychological horror, and the elements of reflection on the meaninglessness of human life bring the film closer to the noir style.
The authors of the film used all the trump cards of the classic "horror". Here there is a mysterious castle with a nightmarish legend, and infernal medical experiments, from which the blood runs cold, and wild rituals, similar to the rites of the black mass. Obviously in the “Cure for Health” the actors had to work hard to be convincing in this cocktail of Gothic and psychiatry.
Critics Evaluation Film
The tape received mixed reviews from critics. The undoubted advantage, according to reviewers, was impeccable, meaningful visualization and expressive oppressive atmosphere. The battered storylines and unjustifiably brutal scenes of violence were disappointing. The protractedness of the story is also one of the shortcomings of the film “The Cure for Health”. Actors who performed the main roles were also critically evaluated. For example, in the game of Dane William Dehaan (he got the role of the financier Lockhart), Leonardo di Carprio's imitation traits were seen.
Who needed a cure for health?
The central character of the film is an employee of Lockhard American Corporation. The authorities send the young man on a business trip with the task of bringing one of the members of the board of directors, Pembroke, from the sanatorium in Switzerland. His presence is necessary to conclude an important transaction, but the old man stayed in the Alps and wrote a strange letter in which he informed his colleagues about his decision not to return.
The battlements of the castle, the dazzling white clothes of patients, calm conversations and outdoor games on the green lawns fascinate with an apparent idyll. The staff is emphasized politely, but soon Lockhard begins to suspect that something terribly terrible is going on in the boarding house.
People and roles
In the “Cure for Health” there are only three actors involved in the main conflict: the English actress and model Mia Goth, who played the strange girl Hannah; British actor Jason Isaacs, charming and inhumane doctor Falmer; and Dane Dehaan, who created the image of Lockhard, who does not surrender to the circumstances. Other roles were played by Celia Imri (patient and history buff Victoria Watkins), Harry Gronner (Pembroke), Magnus Krapper (veterinarian), Peter Benedict (policeman) and others.
Some interesting facts about working on the thriller "Cure for Health", actors and film sets
The director of the film, Gore Verbinski, drew inspiration from the masterpieces of cinema and literature. The plot echoes the plot of Thomas Mann’s novel “The Magic Mountain”, the frightening zigzags of the film remind of the alarming atmosphere of suspense of past years. Verbinski advised Dehana before working on the picture to reconsider such thrillers as “Rosemary's Baby”, “Radiance”, “Window on the Courtyard”.
The leading actor Dane Dehan had to undergo all sorts of inconveniences. Not only did he spend most of his time on crutches, he was also put on a monstrous dental “corset” and kept in a deprivation chamber.
The authors did not immediately find the ideal location for filming. Gor Verbinski visited almost all the ancient mountain castles of Europe. The choice fell on the Hohenzoller estate in Germany.
Episodes of the film were made in different locations. The interior of the boarding house was shot in the old hospital "Belitz Heilstetten", and the scenes in the pool - in the town of Zwickau in eastern Germany.
Mie Goth, who plays a 14-year-old girl, was 22 years old at the time of filming.
The performer of the role of Dr. Heinrich Volmer, the British, Jason Isaacs, for his 28-year cinematic career, played mostly negative characters, but the actor has such kind eyes and a touching smile!
The insight of the blind
Art house lovers found hidden meaning in the “Medicine for Health” (2017 film). The story that lies on the surface hid in its bowels something more than a heartbreaking plot with a shocking incestuous line.
“Only by recognizing themselves as sick can people hope for healing,” one of the characters in the picture says. Society needs therapy, because the modern way of life squeezes juices out of a person and throws them away using them as unnecessary rags. This is the philosophical subtext of history. He would have sounded much more distinct and convincing if there had been at least one really positive character in the film. The only conclusion that, of course, can be made by looking at the tape, broadcasts the truth as old as the world: evil builds its empire on human weaknesses.