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.
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