Charlatan

Love the decor very well-made details are done nicely Very well played doctor Side players did a good job Lines are done very standard and too easy Totally understand the greyed out vintage film look, but the quality is low making it too obviously is not, what is almost unthink of because the method is there. Like how the character is being created Pity the special effect they used is just low quality and not really needed The flow of the movie is so standard nothing interesting but the story does making it not really needed. Such a nice Nice underlying story about what is the true, facts and relationships of people, with power struggles.

Agnieszka Holland gets attention for her films every decade or so. And appears on many film festivals with her films. Most of these films never attract a substantial audience outside these filmfestivals, however. While I am writing this review her latest film Green Border is being reviewed in all the newspapers and film magazines. The film she had most success with is Europa, Europa. As it happened Lars von Trier premiered his film Europa in the same year. The thing with Mrs. Holland's films is that they are are mostly one issue topic films. This film comes as a surprise: it has 2! At the beginning of a film one always gets to read such and so present this film. That 2nd topic was given away there! A spoiler before the film started. As I don't like spoilers, please open your eyes once that bit is over. The charlatan here is a man who specializes in herbal treatments for ailments and illnesses. Now, some people believe in that and others don't, myself included. After all, we have medical science. I decided to watch the film because of the name and reputation of the director. It is a long film and we move forward and backward to make more things clear. The herbs and flowers are colourful, but the rest of the decor has a depressing dark grey tone. And then at two third of the film the second topic come to prominence. That makes for a surprising twist for many, unless you saw that bit before the beginning of the film: the beginning of a film one always gets to read such and so present this film. The main character. Jan Mikolasek, played by Ivan Trojan looks like Sting from the Police. His son or grandson plays the young Jan. This film might be interesting for you. It won't cheer you up, though.

The script is based on Jan Mikolasek, a Czech healer & herbalist. Hundreds would line up each day at his house seeking treatment for ailments. He ended up serving perhaps a million. His diagnosis came in large part from observing the urine of each person & treating w/herbs. He & his staff were imprisoned for several years through Czech communist authoritarian control of peoples lives in the '50s & '60s (sounds like Russia, Belarus, China, Myanmar today) through loss of freedoms, imprisonment, killings. He died of natural causes in 1973. Unmarried he gave much of his money to charitable causes. Would have liked more history in the script.

I had never heard of Jan Mikolasek, a herbalist/healer and hero to many Czech people. I strongly feel that would be for the best, or checking your Czech history at the door during the opening credits. In fact I'd add maybe skip the post-movie googling on him, and accept this as a very-loosely-based-on-reality film. Call it speculative biography. That said, I found the folk therapy treatments based on urine analysis fascinating, I could almost see that as something to have a revival for a variety of reasons (health-cost widening gaps on top of a general distrust of what the authorities, medical or otherwise, say). Indeed the day I watched this movie I also read a news story about a California state senator's wife dying with a "partially intact" white mulberry leaf found inside her stomach. Sad, but charlatans are far from a plague of the past. Despite the title, the film seems to not be so ready to condemn Mikolasek for his quasi-medical endeavors. He is introduced with an almost superhuman power, and there is a notion of a burning need to share that power with the people. The scenes with his mentor underscore a commitment to altruism, beneath a fervent religious belief. There is some joy to those scenes, and fun with lighting as well. Mikolasek inherits a lot of his mentor's skills, however the altruism and spirituality come with conflictions. He lives a life of apparently both affluence and asceticism. Sitting at night for a tasty feast, kneeling the next day upon the rocks before a statue of Christ. The conflictions in the film are expanded to his sexuality, in Holland's account there is no question to the homeopath's homosexuality. Like I said, speculative biography. That sexuality puts him at risk not just in the church, but in the eyes of state. Even as the state of the state changes. Speaking of the state, the healer's efforts don't only lead to long lines of desperate people outside Mikolasek's stately gated home, but interest from their leaders/occupiers. He survives thanks to his concoctions and connections. But after a stretch of time, will his friends in powerful places turn a more cowardly shade of yellow? Will the good non-doctor suffer the same shady fate? Again I think the film is well worth a watch especially the efforts of father and son actors covering the ages of Jan. The camera shots work harder than the communists to frame Mikolasek (so many shots through gates/doorways/prison cells and other rectangles within the rectangular screen). A mild caution on some of the brutality in the film, there are three scenes where a harsh choice of life/death is thrust upon us. A gun, a sack and and an abortifacient - while the middle may trouble other viewers the most, the third shook me. Over the course of the movie, I felt that Holland may have tried to stack too much upon the shoulders of Mikolasek in this his reel life, but then again he apparently was a larger-than-life to many in his real life.