Since I am highly critical about movies, I didn't expect much from a Modern-, Hungarian-made movie in 2023, knowing the current situation given in the Hungarian Film Industry. But let's not get too political, the movie still exceeded my expectations.

The concept of the movie was 'kinda' new for me, although historical movies were made before, they were pretty forgettable, and you wouldn't watch it out of pure curiosity. The storytelling was decent, although it was highly historically inaccurate. Some made-up characters were created to make the story more interesting, but to make Semmelweis's 'wife' a fictional character is terrible. There is no evidence of her being a nurse at the same clinic where Semmelweis had worked at the time. Also, during his time at the Vienna Clinic, the doctors were not divided by nationality, but instead by methodology. Semmelweis and his, mainly younger doctors who represented the newer, more scientific and natural remedies were opposed with the older, more traditional, highly respected doctors, who were also highly viewed by the public, and most patients at the clinic.

The scenes were intense, and a good representation of 19th century Austro-Hungarian regime. The acting was decent, although it wasn't perfect, I'd say it made the movie a star better for me.

Aside from the awful lot of historical inaccuracies, the technicals weren't great either. The camerawork was not on par with the whole story. The cameraman (in my view, and based on other, similar movies) used the wrong angles, multiple times, even a couple times the focus was not even on the. Sound was completely dull, the dialogues were too subtle, some dialogues, that was meant to be important were too weak.

I'd give it a 6, because I gained a bunch of information on Semmelweis's life and his work on medical researches.

Semmelweis was indeed a admirable historical figure, but the movie has added too much romanticized fantasy to the story up to the point where some people would shout "historical inauthenticity".

I understand the need to dramatise the story for the moviegoer audience, but some casting accuracies and factual authenticity wouldn't have hurt the overall enjoyability of the film, but at the same time the struggle of that particular era was really palpable.

In general it was a movie to be seen once, but it won't become a cinema classic, but compromises between drama, authenticity and production budget led to this outcome. You should watch it at least once, to see why science is held back by authority.