A Cure for Wellness

Factual error: The license plate of the car that takes the protagonist to the sanitarium is GR 36E46. That's not a valid Swiss plate: GR indicates the canton of Graubünden, but other than that it is supposed to have only digits and no letters.

Sammo

Factual error: Speaking with Miss Watkins, the protagonist learns of the backstory of the complex, and how in 1814, the local baron was running all sorts of experiments on "his own peasants." The movie though is set in Switzerland, where the power of nobilty was considerably lower and less traditionally 'feudal' than in most neighbouring countries (and stayed as such even after the Congress of Vienna). In particular this castle supposedly is in the canton of Graubünden (aka Grisons), where within the context of the Three Leagues you'd have been hard pressed finding a 'baron' ruling lands, a radical prohibition of nobility, titles and particles having been enacted, surely with no life and death powers over his serfs.

Sammo

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Suggested correction: Even though Swiss nobilities were prohibited doesn't mean anyone with a nobility wasn't allowed to own land in Switzerland. They were simply not priviledged as a noble anymore. He could have been made Baron in Italy, Austria or France. The Count de Salis-Seewis is still a count to this day, with land and mansions and everything, in Grisons. Of course a Baron could still live in a castle in Switzerland in 1814, even in Grisons. The acts he performed on his serfs were illegal and criminal, but he held it secret.

lionhead

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Volmer: Most of my patients have done extraordinary things. Built vast fortunes, commanded great empires... but at a terrible cost. They have no-one who cares from them.

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Trivia: When Lockhart is in the sensory deprivation tank, the nurse that does a poor job of keeping an eye on him is reading "Der Zauberberg" by Thomas Mann, which obviously has at that point a common premise with the movie (the main character goes to a sanatorium in the Alps just as a visitor but ends up as an inmate). The novel was inspired by Mann's visit to his wife at a Swiss sanatorium which happened in 1912, same year as the picture fully unveiled in the finale.

Sammo

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Question: Is there a particular reason for the main character smiling at the end?

tipar

Answer: As a result of the tortures he endured at the hospital, Lockhart lost his mind. At the end, as he pedals away from the hospital and down the road, he grins maniacally because he is now quite mad.

Charles Austin Miller

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