The scream that pierces through the opening of “Semmelweis” sets the tone for the 19th century-set drama from Lajos Koltai, about the groundbreaking Hungarian obstetrician Ignaz Semmelweis, immediately showing its concern for a very pregnant young woman desperately roaming the streets for a proper place to give birth. Loath to check in to local clinics that have acquired a reputation for patients mysteriously dying in postpartum care, her shaken faith in the health care system sets a distinctly modern emphasis for the sturdy, old-fashioned Vienna period piece, selected as Hungary’s official Oscar selection after it became a local box office hit.
Even without taking a look at a picture of the real balding and bespectacled Dr. Semmelweis, it’s immediately clear Koltai wants to deliver something that’s more popcorn than medicinal when he gives a movie star entrance to the dashing Miklós H. Vecsei, playing the film’s title role. An already resplendent full mane of black hair is drenched in sweat to add further glow to the doctor, whose piercing blue eyes cut through all the redness that’s around them from working night shifts. As portrayed here, there’s nothing complex about Semmelweis; he has no time for anything but medicine and is severely lacking in social graces. Nonetheless, he makes for an engaging protagonist as a single-minded, scalpel-wielding swashbuckler who relentlessly pursues answers for an outbreak of puerperal fever — a bacterial infection that can occur in the birth canal after a baby is born.
A decade before Louis Pasteur could identify what bacteria was, Semmelweis had a tall task ahead of him, made more difficult by superiors who resisted any reconsideration of their practices, fearinf they could be proven wrong rather than doing right by their patients. A potent battle against bureaucracy gets underway as the doctor performs an autopsy on the system itself (along with plenty of actual corpses) going against the wishes of the prestige-protecting hospital administrator Professor Klein (László Gálffi). Klein’s questionable judgment extends to hiring Emma Hoffman (Katica Nagy), a midwife dismissed from the hospital’s local competitor amidst rumors that she had an affair with its director. When they agree to work with one another because of their compromised positions, Klein assigns Hoffman to work under Semmelweis with the stipulation of reporting back his activities.
When the doctor begins to suspect that the hospital’s sanitation practices are to blame, “Semmelweis” risks becoming too clean-cut in its blunt plotting. An emergency tracheotomy of a prominent politician’s wife at a glamorous ball affords the Doctor some immediate professional protection, though the implications are so strongly assumed by the filmmakers that the film abruptly and mysteriously leaves behind the incident — only to bring it up again to justify a later development. And when Emma, a historical invention of the film, has to treat a wound on a shirtless Semmelweis, it feels less passionate than obligatory to inject a romantic subplot into a story with enough intrigue already.
Yet Koltai, the longtime cinematographer for th István Szabó who last directed the respectable star-studded adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s “Evening” in 2007, clearly knows how to elevate occasionally soapy theatrics to the level of an engaging film. With screenwriter Balázs Maruszki, he shrewdly borrows from other genres to take the drama set in the medical world to unexpected places. “Semmelweis” starts to edge into espionage thriller territory as Emma faces the dilemma that any spy would, when her budding romance with the doctor turns her into a bit of a double-agent. Later, the availability of an old school operating theater allows for a satisfyingly old school courtroom drama climax, with Semmelweis facing a medical board for his actions in front of a full crowd.
There may be some irony in watching Semmelweis argue against complacency, as what’s tried and true narratively still proves effective in the film itself. Then again, though the story remains too narrowly focused on health care providers prioritizing what’s best for themselves over what’s best for patients, that feeling that someone cares makes all the difference.
