Wild Card Wednesday: A Cure for Wellness

Director: Gore Verbinski

Year: 2016

Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Horror

Summary: An ambitious young executive is sent to retrieve his company's CEO from an idyllic but mysterious "wellness center" at a remote location in the Swiss Alps, but soon suspects that the spa's treatments are not what they seem.

4/5 Pineapples

Review:

A Cure for Wellness definitely flew under the radar. It doesn't help that it received a 6.4/10 on IMDb and a 41% on Rotten Tomatoes (with some pretty nasty critic reviews) making it appear nothing more than undesirable. But, like many of the films I've discussed this far with similar ratings, this movie is pretty incredible in terms of it's cinematography, writing, and story, and should be seen by anyone caring enough about films to read this blog.

This film is a lot like Darren Aronofsky's mother! in the way that nothing in the film comes right out and reveals itself to you. The entire film is a metaphor, and you're either going to get it or you're not. The average movie-goer didn't understand mother!, nor could they understand this - which I believe to be why the ratings suffered for both films. In other reviews that I came across, this film was also compared to (one of my personal favorites) Guillermo del Toro's Crimson Peak in the way that both films tanked in the box office, but are actually beautiful and artistic gems that deserve better recognition.

Just like when I reviewed mother!, in an effort to not lose or confuse you, I'm going to bold the important parts and then explain them at the end of the synopsis. I'll do my best to make this synopsis brief, but if you've already seen the film, you're welcome to skip to the bottom.

The film begins with a letter from the CEO of a financing company that reads, "To my fellow-members of the Board. A man cannot unsee the truth. He cannot willingly return to darkness, or go blind once he has the gift of sight, any more than he can be unborn. We are the only species capable of self-reflection. The only species with the toxin of self-doubt written into our genetic code. Unequal to our gifts, we build, we buy, we consume. We wrap us in the illusion of material success. We cheat and deceive as we claw our way to the pinnacle of what we define as achievement. Superiority to other men. There is a sickness inside us. Rising like the bile that leaves that bitter taste at the back of our throats. It's there in every one of you seated around the table. We deny its existence until one day the body rebels against the mind and screams out, 'I am not a well man.' No doubt you will think only of the merger. That unclean melding of two equally diseased institutions. But the truth cannot be ignored. For only when we know what ails us can we hope to find the cure. I will not return. Do not attempt to contact me again. Sincerely, Roland E. Pembroke."

In response to the letter, the company sends our main character, Mr. Lockhart (played by Dane DeHaan) to retrieve Mr. Pembroke from a rehabilitation hospital in Switzerland. Given no choice, Mr. Lockhart begins his journey to Switzerland.

In a flashback we see Lockhart with his mother. She paints ballerinas as a hobby. As she paints her newest piece she tells him that the ballerina dances because she doesn't know she's dreaming. During this small discussion, we also establish that Lockhart has some daddy issues. It would appear his father abandoned him and his mother at some point in their lives.

Maybe that's why Lockhart is a stone cold business man now.

On Lockhart's journey, he takes a train. There's a great shot of the long, almost cylindrical train entering the mouth of a tunnel before Lockhart catches a cab to what appears to be a centuries-old castle. Upon seeing the gargantuan structure, the cab driver gives Lockhart some background story.

Basically, there was a family that owned the castle. The brother impregnated his sister. When everyone found out, the church burned her alive.

When Lockhart enters, he asks to speak with a manager so that he can withdrawal Pembroke from the hospital and take him back to New York. The receptionist tells him to sign in.

He, of course, soon notices that he has no cell reception. And, while out in the court yard, he spots an odd sewer drain.

We discover as Lockhart does, that the hospital specializes in and is known for their many forms of hydro-therapy.

Finally able to meet with the manager - or in this case, the head doctor, Volmer, Lockhart discusses his need to take Mr. Pembroke back to the US with him. Volmer offers Lockhart a water but he denies it, insisting his needs. It doesn't go smoothly, but Dr. Volmer does agree to let Mr. Pembroke go with Lockhart after his 7 o'clock therapy session. Out of spite, it seems, Lockhart chugs the glass of water that Volmer offered to him before, then turns to walk out of Dr. Volmer's office.

As the cab is driving away from the hospital with Lockhart in the backseat, Lockhart sees a girl standing on top of the hospital building.

Farther down the road from the hospital, the cab hits a deer. Lockhart is knocked out after impact.

In what must be a flashback, Lockhart sees his mother die and cremates her.

When Lockhart wakes up, he says he slept better than he has in a long time. It's been 3 days since the accident and his leg is broken and in a cast. Volmer tells him he contacted Lockhart's office to let them know what happened.

During their discussion, Volmer mentions no one in the hospital has anyone who cares for them. This makes Lockhart a perfect candidate because he has no family that's living or cares for him.

Before leaving Lockhart's room, Volmer encourages him to drink water. Lockhart looks out the window to see a man cementing in the sewer. As Lockhart goes to take a drink, he notices a strange parasite in and on the water glass.

Lockhart leaves his hospital room to search for Pembroke. He gives the name Pembroke to a nurse in an effort to find him, and is pointed in the direction of the sauna. While searching, he gets lost. All the rooms begin to look the same, and he begins to feel trapped.

Could the water be causing hallucinations?

He sees a deer walk by and follows the direction it went in. He stumbles upon Pembroke sitting on a bench.

He tells Pembroke they need to get back to New York, but Pembroke says he can't leave yet because he's unwell. He eventually agree to get his things. While Lockhart waits for Pembroke to comply, Lockhart tells a nurse to call for a cab and waits outside.

Outside, the girl he saw earlier standing on the roof of the hospital is sprinkling crumbs into the water of a fountain.

This should lead one to believe there must be something in the water.

The girl's name is Hannah.

After some time passes with no signs of Pembroke, Lockhart goes searching for him. Pembroke and his things are no longer in his room.

The receptionist never called a cab.

In an angry panic, Lockhart storms into the food hall where he finds Volmer. The doctor offers him food. He suggests the "venison" and mentions how he "couldn't let it go to waste."

Lockhart asks Volmer where Mr. Pembroke is. Volmer tells him that Pembroke has been moved to the next stage of treatment because he's become more ill since he and Lockhart last met.

Lockhart gets a nose bleed and passes out, just as he catches a glimpse of Hannah sitting at the dinner table.

When he wakes up, the doctor suggests he needs purification of the modern pressures and stressors of life. Lockhart verbally agrees to the treatment.

While in the doctor's office, he steals a confidential file on Pembroke.

The treatment begins with Lockhart being submerged in a large tank of water. The doctor talks him through the process, explaining that he needs to give in to the things he sees and feels. The more he fights it, the more difficult the treatment will be for him.

While in the tank he begins having terrible visions of his father killing himself and visions of being swarmed by eels.

The doctor states, "Visions are toxins leaving the body."

Lockhart fights to get out of the tank, but a nurse is seducing the man who is supposed to be monitoring him. When he gets their attention and is let out of the tank, the doctor insists there's no eels or anything inside of the tank and that his visions are just part of the detoxification process.

He's free to go to his room to rest after his treatment. While there, he looks through the confidential file he stole from the doctors office. Inside the file, he finds x-rays of teeth.

In the middle of the night he's woken up by his bathroom sink making a strange noise. Being unable to find a source, he goes back toward his bed, only to catch the sight of someone outside of his window wheeling what looks like a body into one of the castle towers.

The next morning, Lockhart sits with woman named Victoria Watkins who is another patient of the facility. She tells him how the castle was burned once in the past because the villagers were angry about the experiments that the baron held on his peasants. The brother was searching for a cure for his sister, the baroness, who was sick.

A nurse interrupts their conversation to tell her that she's due for her next treatment. Before departing, she warns him, "there's a terrible darkness here."

Lockhart finds Hannah again, and he gives her the ballerina his mother gave him before she died. He tells her what his mother told him, "She's dancing because she doesn't know she's asleep."

Hannah asks, "what happens when she wakes up?"

He tells her that he doesn't know.

They escape for the day and ride into the city. As they exit the front gates, we see that there are decorative wrought iron eels at the top of the gate's doors.

Once they reach the city they hide out in a local pub. Lockhart buys Hannah a beer.

With what money, one may ask? I haven't the slightest clue. I guess they didn't confiscate his wallet...

Hannah tells Lockhart while they're there that she doesn't know her father, but he'll come for her once she's better.

She drops a drop water on her tongue from the vile she wears around her neck.

Lockhart tells Hannah to wait at the pub while he seeks out a pharmacist. He finds one in a butcher shop and he shows the man the dental x-rays. The man says that the tooth decay and loss could only be caused by dehydration.

"But all they do is drink water!?" Lockhart states.

The pharmacist tells Lockhart about the bodies found buried on the hospital property that were discovered dried up and dehydrated. He also tells Lockhart that the Baroness that once lived in the castle wasn't sick, but, rather, infertile.

The pharmacist is also a butcher - hence being found in a butcher shop. While carrying conversation, he's tending to a dead cow. He tells Lockhart that his cow wandered off, and broke it's leg. He says it was found it drinking sewage. He guts the cow and it's stomach releases the eels that were inside.

Lockhart finds a way to call his boss. He asks his boss about Pembroke's health and his boss tells him Pembroke had no pre-existing conditions that would cause him to lose his teeth.

His boss demands Lockhart tell him where the hell he is. Confused, Lockhart tells him the hospital said that they contacted his boss about the car accident. His boss was never contacted by the sanitarium about the crash.

Volmer shows up, and it appears that he's sweating blood. He quickly wipes away the blood away before taking Lockhart and Hannah back to the hospital.

That night Lockhart has a dream of Hannah in a bathtub of eels. He wakes up and chugs a glass of water.

I'm confused why Lockhart continues to drink their water so willingly after how sketchy this entire experience has been and especially after the apparent correlation between sewage water and the hospital's drinking water... But I digress.

While drinking the water, Lockhart spots someone wheeling another body into the sewer. His toilet handle begins rattling again. He goes to the mirror and inspects his mouth. He pulls out a tooth.

I was really hoping that he was just dreaming. But nah.

He seeks out a nurse and gives her the tooth. While her back is turned, he locates Pembroke's whereabouts that are logged in her notebook and goes looking for him.

While searching, he finds Mrs. Watkins on a gurney. She tells Lockhart that the baroness was pregnant before their people killed her. She tells him that the peasants cut out her fetus and threw it in the water. The child survived. Before the two of them are potentially discovered, she says to Lockhart, "she doesn't know."

Lockhart runs to avoid getting found and hides in a room that he quickly discovers is a room full of human bodies in fish tank-like structures. He finds Pembroke floating inside one.

Volmer finds Lockhart and takes him to the hospital dentist, he claims it's to take a look at his lost tooth. Instead, keeping Lockhart completely aware, under no anesthetic, the dentist drills into his existing front tooth.

The doctor shows Lockhart that he found the stolen file, and tells him that there's no trust between them.

As soon as Lockhart's able, he escapes into a car that's outside. He calls the police, but they're also working with the sanitarium. While the officer has Lockhart in his office, convinced he's safe, Volmer enters, telling Lockhart he signed a waiver that admitted him to the hospital the first day he visited. Volmer tries to convince Lockhart of his insanity by using his own words against him.

Lockhart wakes up in his hospital room after having a hallucination about eels in his toilet.

In another hallucination, he sees his father jumping off a bridge.

Now determined to find a way out of the hospital, he breaks the cast around his leg. It's not broken.

He breaks into the sewer and finds a laboratory that appears to be focused on the studying of eels. There are also peoples faces in bowls. He finds a memorial. A painting of the baroness hangs in the center. The baroness looks just like Hannah.

Hannah is somewhere inside the sewer as well, bleeding in a natural pool full of eels. She's just gotten her period.

Lockhart stumbles upon Mrs. Watkins body. A man feeds the body to the eels.

Hannah, not understanding puberty, runs to the doctor who is in the food hall for help.

Lockhart finds them both there, surrounded by all of the hospital patients. Lockhart tries to tell the patients "there's nothing wrong with you", but the phrase works as a trigger of some sort. The patients swarm around Lockhart like eels.

Lockhart wakes up in what looks like an iron lung (a device that used to be used by those who suffer from polio). Volmer force-feeds Lockhart eels while he's trapped in the device and encourages him to hope for a cure. Lockhart excretes a substance that's dripped into a vile that's similar to the one Hannah wears around her neck.

Hannah seeks out Lockhart. He's sitting on a bench, and he has all of his teeth back. He tells her he doesn't want to leave. Deciphering that he's no longer himself because of this statement, she gives him back the ballerina he gave to her. He doesn't recognize it at first.

Hannah, doing what she's told, marries the doctor that night. Volmer shows her the painting above the memorial in the sewer and then leads her to a bed. He says, "this is where you began", before he attempts to rape her.

Lockhart stops him, telling Hannah that Volmer is her father, and tears off Volmer's face. Hannah and Lockhart rush to escape. Lockhart sets the asylum on fire. In an effort to get away, Hannah swings a shovel across her father's face.

History repeats itself as the asylum burns to the ground.

Lockhart and Hannah bike away from the hospital. Down the hill, they hit a car. His bosses get out and tell him to get inside. When Lockhart refuses, they ask him, "Are you insane?!"

To which he responds, "Actually, I'm feeling much better."

~

NOW FOR THE ANSWERS:

• Self reflection - Hannah. The train. The ballerina. The castle burning. The way the film is shot. It is all a reflection of itself. When Lockhart is in an elevator, the floor number is 69. Flipping 69 upside down is still 69. Lockhart walks into room 906. Flipping 906 upside down is 906. Lockhart meets Hannah because Hannah spelled backwards is still Hannah. When Hannah walks on the edge of water, a direct reflection of that scene is cast in the water. When going into town together the first time, Hannah is in the front of the bike while Lockhart is on the back. At the end of the film when they're leaving the hospital, Lockhart is in the front of the bike while Hannah is on the back. (provided by Reddit user thelocalgiraffe)

• The train entering a tunnel at the beginning of the film is much like an eel going through a pipe.

• The ballerina is Hannah. She's "dancing with her eyes closed" because she's unaware that the doctor is her father and that the doctor is using her to keep their family line alive and pure.

• A deer is symbolically a messenger. I believe, each time a deer appeared, they were trying to tell or warn Lockhart about something. The deer led Lockhart to Pembroke in the sauna. Volmer suggesting Lockhart try the venison in the food hall and saying he "couldn't let it go to waste" could be a direct reflection of how Lockhart shouldn't take these messages or signs for granted. I also think it was a foreshadow to Volmer's evil intentions and his willingness to destroy something that could be considered sacred, such as a deer or peaceful messenger.

• The castle was burned by Lockhart in the end of the film which is a direct reflection of how the castle was burnt in the past by the angry villagers.

• Eels are mischievous, masters of disguise and camouflage. The doctor was wearing other people's faces as a disguise (though I'm still not positive why or how the science works behind that), and he was camouflaging sanity with the idea of insanity and the concept of finding "a cure." Eels can also be a symbol of masculinity and fertility. Our culture's definition of masculinity can be found in the cold, business attitude of Lockhart and his corporate world before his visit to the hospital. Fertility is obviously a strong aspect of the plot line in terms of the baroness and her inability to have children.

• Water is a symbol of purity and fertility. Water is a substance we need to survive and a substance we trust to cure most ailments. The water in the hospital doing the exact opposite due to the contamination caused by the eels could be seen as an ultimate betrayal. No one would expect water to make you sick or dehydrate you, the same way you wouldn't expect a hospital to keep you sick, or your family member to brainwash, enslave, and rape you.

While I believed this to be an incredibly well-made and interesting film that kept me on the edge of my feet the entire time, I was left with questions. While sometimes being left with questions is the intention of a film, I don't feel that this was intentional. The reason I gave this film a 4 instead of a 5 out of 5 pineapples was because, after the credits began to roll, I found myself probing the internet for answers.

My biggest question was understanding what the patients were excreting in the iron lung machines, what that did to people, as well as what the eels had to do with it.

Reddit explained to me that the baron discovered that the water allows the eels to live a long time, but the water is toxic to human beings. You can access the non-toxic compound that gives the gift of longevity by extracting it from humans who have consumed a lot of the toxic water. Therefore, the baron uses the extracted compound on himself and on his daughter to keep them both alive and give her the ability to reproduce.

So what the baron does, is he hydrates people as much as he possibly can with the toxic water through showers, saunas, excessive drinking of the water...etc., making them sick and convincing them they have to stay in order to get better. After hydrating them with the toxic water, he then puts them into the iron lung structures to extract the non-toxic compound that is distilled into "The Cure."

To re-hydrate the patients - or prisoners/experiments - they're soaked in the large tanks that Lockhart found Pembroke floating in (while Lockhart was attempting to hide).

On the flip side, this extracted compound slows down the aging process, so it took a few hundred years for Hannah to reach puberty and experience her first menstrual cycle.

Hannah is the baby that was tossed into the river. She lived. And she's is the one that Mrs. Watkin's tried to tell Lockhart, "doesn't know", because she's unaware of what's being done to her and around her.

A Cure for Wellness could have easily been a bad rip off of Shutter Island, but it wasn't. It stands on it's own with it's beautiful imagery, creative writing, and overall concept of the story being a reflection of itself. This would have easily been a 5/5 film had they neatly tied off every loose end and clearly explained the details of how some major concepts worked.

Also, Lockhart getting his teeth back really bothered me. It seemed to happen out of nowhere.

But other than that, please seek out this film. It's truly absorbing.

...See what I did there?