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A Cure For Wellness Analysis (A Movie Analysis)
A Cure For Wellness Analysis (A Movie Analysis)
A Cure For Wellness Analysis (A Movie Analysis)
a. C H A R A C T E R S
b. S E T T I N G
c. P L O T S U M M A R Y
a. S C I E N T I F I C T E R M S
b. P R I N C I P L E S O F B I O T E C H N OL O G Y
c. B I O T E C H N O L O G Y I M P L I C A T I O N
III. BIOETHICS
IV. REFERENCES
When you're watching a psychological thriller, the word artistic may not come
to mind often. However, A Cure for Wellness, in theaters February 17, is just as
cinematic as it is terrifying. Leave it to Gore Verbinski, director of The Ring, The Lone
Ranger, and the first three installments of Pirates of the Caribbean, and set designer
Eve Stewart to find a place for hauntingly beautiful architecture in a movie that adds
dimension to mind-bending horror. Set in the breathtaking Swiss Alps, A Cure for
Wellness follows a hardworking Wall Street stockbroker who attempts to find refuge
in a remote mountain spa but instead gets trapped in something far more sinister.
Visually stunning, the movie required lots of patience and an eye for science to achieve
the clinical look of a health spa. Stewart, who had previously worked on The Danish
Girl, among other movies, picked up a few new skills in the process: "My grasp of
physics in terms of water pressure and the way thick glass can refract light is now
fantastic," she says.
Lockhart attempts to escape the wellness center but finds that no one is allowed
to leave. After gifting Hannah a ballerina figurine, Lockhart bikes into town with her
help. Lockhart leaves Hannah in a bar and seeks out a translator for Pembroke's
German-language medical dossier. He finds out that the people of the spa suffer from
dehydration despite the quantities of water they imbibe from the aquifer. Meanwhile,
Hannah, who has been kept at the spa her entire life, explores the bar and attracts the
attention of the locals. Lockhart returns and gets into a fight with a man who was
dancing with Hannah. He is rescued by Dr. Volmer, who has discovered that Lockhart
had left the spa with Hannah. Everyone in the place is curiously cowed by Dr. Volmer.
This "cure" is ingested by Hannah, Volmer, and his staff in order to gain vastly
lengthened lifespans. Lockhart also realizes that his leg isn't broken and that he is
being forcefully kept prisoner there. Volmer then subjects Lockhart to nightmarish
treatments that warp his mind until he believes he is insane. Hannah perceives this
change and gives Lockhart back the ballerina figurine. This act helps to break him out
of his delirium.
Around this time, Hannah has her first menstruation, and Volmer marries her.
During the reception, he leads Hannah to a secret room built in the ruins of the castle
and begins to sexually assault her. When Lockhart confronts Volmer he realizes that
Volmer is the baron and Hannah is his daughter, the baby who was thrown into the
well. They both had been aging very slowly due to the "cure". In the ensuing fight,
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Volmer's face is revealed to be a mask that hides his hideous burns. Lockhart sets
Volmer and the castle on fire but is overpowered by Volmer all the same.
Hannah saves Lockhart by killing her father, who falls backwards into the
aquifer and is eaten by the furiously voracious eels. Lockhart and Hannah escape from
the premises on her bicycle as fire engulfs the structure. Not far down the road,
Lockhart crashes into a car carrying his employers. They have arrived from New York
to retrieve him and Pembroke. Lockhart tells his employers that Pembroke died.
Lockhart is ordered into the car by the employers. Lockhart looks at Hannah and
cannot abandon her. He chooses to ride away with Hannah, smiling as he finally
escapes the asylum.
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2. Hydrotherapy
Scientific: The treatment of physical disability,
injury, or illness by immersion of all or part of the
body in water to facilitate movement, promote
wound healing, relieve pain, etc., usually under the
supervision of a trained therapist.
Film-based: The film used the term
hydrotherapy to call the whole process of treating
their patients using water wherein hydrotherapy in the film involves many different
processes like flotation, cleansing, bathing, and many others, this hydrotherapy in the
movie is used to maintain the life of eels inside their patient’s body and for the cure to
continuously be made and slow the aging process of the whole staff of the wellness
center.
3. Patients
Scientific: A person who is receiving medical
care, or who is cared for by a particular doctor or
dentist.
Film-based: Patient is the term used to call
each individual who are the subject for treatment
and tests, they are the persons in the center who
are monitored from the very beginning of their
stay in; urine, excretes, blood, and other parts of
their body, patients in the film are used as
machines or tanks to make the Cure until they
become mummified, dehydrated and dead bodies who are fed to the veracious eels in
the center’s aquifer.
4. Disease
Scientific: An abnormal condition of an organism which interrupts the normal bodily
functions that often leads to feeling of pain and weakness, and usually associated with
symptoms and signs.
Film-based: The film particularly the staffs in the wellness center use the term
disease to describe the state of the patients, they term disease whenever an unusual
condition is seen in a person or a pain was felt by a person, the film showed how the
disease is planned to be given to persons to make them long for the cure and stay at
the wellness center.
5. Diagnosis
Scientific: The making of a judgment about the exact character of a disease or other
problem, especially after an examination.
Film-based: They use the term diagnosis as soon as Volmer examined a person who
claims himself unwell, it was a result of his examination on a patient and it results to
a particular disease that causes a patient to feel pain.
6. Eels
Scientific: Any of the numerous elongated, snakelike marine or freshwater
fishes of the order Apodes, having no ventral fins.
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Film-based: The film termed the numerous creatures
living in their aquifer as eels, these are snakelike creatures
that is minute during their early development who serves
as mechanisms in making the Cure, these creatures are
injected or ingested in the human body of patients.
7. Wellness
Scientific: The quality or state of being healthy in body and mind, especially as the
result of deliberate effort.
Film-based: The film used the word wellness to describe what could be the after
effect or outcome of their treatment to patient, this was used to fool innocent people
to stay in the center and continues to receive the treatment.
8. Flotation/Wellness tank
Scientific: A tank where the process of separating the different minerals in a mass of
powdered ore based on their tendency to sink in, or float on, a given liquid.
Film-based: Flotation or Wellness tank is the term used to call the machine where
one of the treatment of the wellness center happens, it involves submerging the body
of a patient in a large tank and allowing the toxins and stress to go away, the twist is,
the tank is full of eels in the middle of the treatment harming the body.
9. Epsom salt
Scientific: A bitter colorless or white crystalline salt that is hydrated magnesium
sulfate with cathartic properties.
Film-based: The term is used to describe or name the content of the water inside the
flotation tank, it was mixed together with the water to restrict the bodies from floating.
10. Hallucination
Scientific: A sensory experience of something that does not exist outside the mind,
caused by various physical and mental disorders, or by reaction to certain toxic
substances, and manifested as visual or auditory images.
Film-based: The word hallucination is used to describe the after effect of the
treatments in the wellness center, Dr. Volmer said that patients usually see imaginary
things after or during treatment, like eels inside the tank with them, but the truth is,
what patients see is real and they are only fooled by Dr, Volmer who said they are only
products of hallucination.
11. Womb
Scientific: The uterus of the human female and certain higher mammals.
Film-based: The womb is the metaphor of how the flotation tank works, it served as
a womb who cares and contribute to the healthy development of a developing fetus, in
the case of the treatment, is was said to create relaxation and contentment per se to
the patients.
12. Aquifer
Scientific: Any geological formation containing or conducting groundwater,
especially one that supplies the water for wells, springs, etc.
Film-based: The term aquifer in the film is used to call the place, or the body
of water where numerous veracious eels live and thrive, it was located
beneath the wellness center.
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b. P R I N C I P L E S O F B I O T E C H N OL O G Y
White tiles, plush bathrobes, a manicured lawn, and minute water creatures greet
the star (played by Dane DeHaan) of Gore Verbinski’s thriller A CURE FOR
WELLNESS when he enters a sanitarium in the Swiss Alps. There, hydrotherapy is
used on patients who seem well enough but cannot seem to leave. They are encouraged
to drink the water, to steam for hours, and to perform water exercises.
Sanitariums were commonly used for patients with tuberculosis before antibiotics
were invented in 1946 to treat the disease. In Gore Verbinski’s film, the sanitarium is
more of a metaphor. Taking the concept of this old place in the Alps as a setting for the
modern human condition, we live in an increasingly irrational world and there is a
sense of denial. In the film, the sanitarium is tranquil, calm, and seems benign. As a
setting it was ripe for the genre and turned it on in the head.
Diagnosis of illness
Those vulnerable to the diagnosis are the ones who are oligarchs, or from the
hedge fund industry, or, in the case of DeHaan’s character, a stockbroker who wants
to get ahead. This place offers a form of absolution, a sense of being not responsible
because you are not well. The place is wonderful and so they want to stay; they want
to leave the modern world. Cell phones don’t work, and the protagonist’s watch stops.
Even though the places are quite nice and have scrubbed down tiles and clear water,
behind those walls there was a lot of mold, mildew, and strange things in drains.
No writers were harmed and no eels were present in the making of the article.
There are a couple of images from A Cure for Wellness that have persisted despite how
impenetrable its posters and trailers proved to be. The first is a girl, Mia Goth,
suspended in mid-air as if floating in water, posed in front of (or rather, inside) a blue
bottle. The second is of Dane Dehaan submerged in a tank and, in the trailers, just
moments away from being swarmed by eels.
The tank is filled with water and 1,200 pounds of Epsom salt, which opted to
experience with the lights off and the music on — in this case, the entirety of the A Cure
for Wellness score, composed by Benjamin Wallfisch. The salts make floating
effortless, and they have health benefits as well, ranging from easing stress to removing
toxins from the body (which is wording ripped almost directly from the movie’s
dialogue, or I guess the other way around).
Cure For Wellness Tank
Dehaan’s talk: The tank is behind two soundproof doors in a room that’s
equipped with a shower for a pre- and post-float wash (you float in the nude) and the
water is lit in an eerie green-blue until you actually begin floating, at which point all of
the lights turn off. The darkness is total to the point that it’s impossible to tell whether
your eyes are closed or open, at least if you aren’t focusing on your muscles. But that’s
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difficult, too — there’s nothing like trying to relax completely that will make you aware
of exactly how your body fits together, for instance, how your arms will fold in if you
just let them go, or how your head lolls back when there’s nothing to support it. It helps
(or doesn’t, depending on how you look at it) that the water’s at a
temperature where you can’t distinguish where the water line is on your body.
It lends to the idea of utter relaxation; the darkness eliminates any awareness of space
(more than once, I felt like I was moving, but never felt the limits of the tank, and at
one point even felt like I was upright), and the water eliminates any sensation besides
awareness of oneself.
Doctor Volmer (Jason Isaacs) describes the tank as a womb, a return to a
natural state. For a while, it seems appropriate, as even under the watchful eye of the
rather forbidding staff, Lockhart (Dehaan) begins to drift off after he’s submerged in
the water. But all is not well — why would it be? — and the dark colors and smooth
shapes of the tank and of Lockhart’s breathing tube give way to the eels that infest the
entire film. It’s unclear in the moment whether or not Lockhart’s hallucinating the eels,
as there’s nothing there when they re-inspect the tank.
c. B I O T E C H N O L O G Y I M P L I C A T I O N
Biotechnology is technology based on biology- biotechnology harnesses cellular
and biomolecular processes to develop technologies and products that help improve
our lives and the health of our planet. We have used the biological processes to make
useful products, such as bread and cheese, and to preserve dairy products.
The film itself displayed a very important and unbelievable development and
breakthrough in the field of biotechnology. That was the creation of the CURE FOR
WELLNESS which was sealed in a blue bottle in the film ingested by the staffs of the
Wellness center that was said to slow the aging process of the human body. It allows
the creation of a cure wherein diseases, illnesses and even aging was cured and
avoided. However, it uses human body to create the cure, the film displayed how the
body is used to purify, cleanse and filter the fluids with the eels to be extracted after
the process through a cylindrical machine.
This breakthrough or invention is somewhat beneficial and harmful for humanity
and the future generation. The advent of the CURE only means, half of the population
could be subjected to make it, meaning, it will be harmed and will only exist to make
the CURE, they will be the one experiencing the dark side of the discovery and the rest
of the population will experience the benefits of the CURE, living a long life, living a
life away from diseases and only thinking of what will they do and how they will live
their very long life. Everybody wants a long life in order to enjoy living with their
families, if this happens in the real life, where elixirs of life exist, I wonder how the
world will look like and will become?
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III. BIOETHICS
Ethical argument: Creation of a Cure for wellness and aging of humanity is not
ethical because of the use of the human body in making it.
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Abuse can also happen because researchers themselves may, consciously or
unconsciously, favour the interests of carrying out research over the interests
of the subjects involved in the research.
Research ethics committees (RECs) are widely used to assess and review trial
designs. These committees are designed to scrutinise with a broad societal view
– including both professional and lay perspectives – as to whether the
research is ethically acceptable. In many cases, this involves ensuring that many
of the standard safeguards, such as proper consent or anonymising data, are in
place to protect research subjects, and ensuring that subjects are not exposed
to unnecessary risks.
D. ‘Ethical conduct’ literally means simply doing the right thing, but in reality it
means more. It involves acting in the right spirit, out of an abiding respect and
concern for one's fellow creatures.
Human research is research conducted with or about people, or their data or
tissues, with the sole intention to do good.
Human research involves significant risks and it is possible for things to go
wrong. Despite the best of intentions and care in planning and practice,
sometimes things go awry. Now and then mishaps may arise because of
technical errors or an ethical insensitivity, neglect or disregard.
E. The Ethical Landscape
In January 1944, a 17-year-old Navy seaman named Nathan Schnurman
volunteered to test protective clothing for the Navy. Following orders, he
donned a gas mask and special clothes and was escorted into a 10-foot by 10-
foot chamber, which was then locked from the outside. Sulfur mustard and
Lewisite, poisonous gasses used in chemical weapons, were released into the
chamber and, for one hour each day for five days, the seaman sat in this noxious
vapor. On the final day, he became nauseous, his eyes and throat began to burn,
and he asked twice to leave the chamber. Both times he was told he needed to
remain until the experiment was complete. Ultimately Schnurman collapsed
into unconsciousness and went into cardiac arrest. When he awoke, he had
painful blisters on most of his body. He was not given any medical treatment
and was ordered to never speak about what he experienced under the threat of
being tried for treason. For 49 years these experiments were unknown to the
public.
This are just few among those unethical issues behind the science of
experimentation on humans in order to achieve a cure for an illness or just to improve
human life. With these I say that inventing the CURE like in the film is unethical.
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IV. REFERENCES
National Academy of Sciences (2018). Science and Creationism: A View from the
National Academy of Sciences, Second Edition. Retrieved from
https://www.nap.edu/read/6024/chapter/6
Mandal, Acharya & Parija (2018). Ethics in human research. Retrieved from
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3593469/
Seitz (2017). “A Cure for Wellness” and calling it “The Color of Despair.”. Retrieved
from https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/a-cure-for-wellness-2017
Bishop (2017). A Cure for Wellness review: a smart thriller. Retrieved from
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2017/2/
8/14544772/a-cure-for-wellness-review-gore-verbinski-dane-dehaan
Loughrey (2017). A Cure for Wellness review: Deliriously bonkers, just don't any ask
questions. Retrieved from
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/arts-
entertainment/films/reviews/a-cure-for-wellness-review-gore-verbinski-
dane-dehaan-mia-goth-eels-horror-a7593106.html%3famp
Minton (2017). How A Cure for Wellness Marries Horror and Beauty in Set Design.
Retrieved from
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.architecturaldigest.com/story/a-cure-
for- wellness-set-design-filming-locations/amp
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