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A Cure for Wellness is one of the most clever films I've seen with one of the most intriguing plots I've seen in a film. The way it was presented to the audience was also a masterful style and managed to inform the audience of everything they needed to know without explicitly spelling it out. I left that film awed at the style of it and the brilliant execution of it's mystery and how everything worked to put us inside Lockhart's mindset.
Then I went to look for what other people thought and found everyone seemed confused about stuff explicitly stated in the film. I literally don't think the film could be clearer to the audience beyond spoon feeding them with the information and this removing the entire mystery aspect of the film.
Volmer and Hannah's origins and plans are the core of the film and revealed at the end of the film in a way that is very clear. Yet this seems to throw most people off about the film while it reiterates to us multiple times the motivation of Volmer. The story of the Baron is consistently stated and repeated for us (with slight variations in fairness but never enough to confuse the core of the story) throughout the film. It is easily the most repeated part of the entire film. We are told his motivation at the very start, he was a dude obessed with bloodlines and so concluded the only "pure" person he could marry is his sister. Then his sister died and all that was left was his daughter who survived. As the film goes on we learn more and more specifics of the tale which slowly makes it more and more clear that Volmer knew the secret to age slowly and that Volmer and Hannah are the two characters in the tale. This is only confirmed at the end of the film yet is easily able to be concluded at about the half way point. It is the most obvious explaination given to us to explain Volmer.
At the end we learn that the entire movie also has been a repeat of what happened 200 years ago. All the events of the story are just a repitition of this oft repeated tale.
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The Baron wants a cure for the human condition and kidnaps peasants for his experiments. (Volmer runs the facility with willing subjects now after learning from the last time.)
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The Baron wants to keep his bloodline pure and so marries his sister the Baroness. (Volmer now marries his daughter wanting to still keep his bloodline pure.)
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A group of peasants arrive and rebels. (Lockhart arrives and is stuck at the facility. He rebels against Volmer and his system.)
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The church is burned down, the Baroness dies, The Baron is attacked, his daughter survives and the peasants leave victorius. (The facility burns to the ground, the painting of the Baroness and all old keepsakes are burned and gone, The Baron is attacked at literally the exact same place on his head and killed, the daughter survives and escapes and Lockhart leaves as well victorius.)
Bar spoon feeding the audience and having the tale be repeated literally during these events I'm at a loss as to how to make this clearer to the audience.
People seem confused with all the hallucinations and such but it's literally told to us by Lockhart. Volmer is making everyone sick. Hence why all the hallucinations all involve water somehow. (The steam room, the sensory tanks, the toilet, the bath etc.) It is the stuff in the water causing these visions and hallucinations to take place for Lockhart. He even tells us that Volmer is trying to convince him and the others they are crazy. We are literally told this in the film.
Basically everything that happens in the film is told to us. All the movie does is not reveal everything at once and reveals bits and pieces throughout. Yet people seem lost and I am at a loss as to how.