Mesmer: Rating: 2.5 stars

Alan Rickman wants to touch you. Let him.

Mesmer (1994)
1994 · UR · Drama
Reviewed December 10, 2008

In 18th-century Vienna, Franz Anton Mesmer (Alan Rickman), a doctor with strange ideas about “animal magnetism” and the forces that flow from the earth, is considered a freak and is cast out from the medical community. But then a beautiful blind musician (Amanda Ooms) asks him to cure her blindness, which may be psychosomatically caused by some very creepy goings-on at home. Can Mesmer save her? Can he cure her? Will he get to make out with her at some point, or will his shrewish wife/her icky father/an unsympathetic society come between them?

Holy Mesmer on a stick, I am so disappointed in this film. Not that I expected much from it to begin with, because most films based on real historical figures suck my nitpicky ass. But when I watched it, it was not half bad. Aside from the cliched script, it was good — Alan Rickman and Amanda Ooms are excellent actors (and both very pretty), the story was set up in a plausible way, the ending (despite a very stupid trick to clear the room for the final scene) was just the right mix of bitter and sweet. The characters are well fleshed out, especially Mesmer, who is interestingly depicted as a legitimately curious scientist who is not above using some charlatan’s tricks and stage drama to popularize his theories.

So what gives? Just that damn script. It was like the creators were afraid of being inaccurate, so they threw every known fact about Mesmer into every possible scene. It’s the kind of movie that starts out with the main character explaining his entire philosophy in the first scene, while the supporting players scowl darkly and sigh loudly to show that he will never be appreciated in his time. And everyone is careful to use his full name whenever possible, in case we forget who the movie is about.

It is a pretty film, even a beautiful one at times. It might even have been a good movie — if only everyone had kept their mouths shut.