The Physician

The Physician (2013)

Timing: 2:35 (155 min)

7.338/10
1037

8.109/10
496652

7.2/10
45000

All about film

Video 1

Photo 22

Actors and characters

Release date

2013-12-25

Country

Germany

Production

ARD, ARD Degeto, Pixomondo, UFA Cinema, CinePostproduction, Beta Cinema, Cine Mobil

Genre

Adventure, Drama, History

Budget

$36 000 000

Revenue

$54 000 000

Website

Director

Philipp Stölzl

Actors

Tom Payne, Ben Kingsley, Stellan Skarsgård, Olivier Martinez, Emma Catherine Rigby, Elyas M'Barek, Fahri Yardım, Makram J. Khoury, Michael Marcus, Stanley Townsend
All actors and roles (10)

Scenario

Producer

Nico Hofmann, Wolf Bauer, Sebastian Werninger

Operator

Hagen Bogdanski

Composer

Ingo Ludwig Frenzel

Artist

Audition

Nina Haun, Leo Davis, Emrah Ertem

Editing

Sven Budelmann
All team (209)

• The film is based on the plot of the novel of the same name by American writer Noah Gordon.
• For location shooting of the film, the crew traveled to Morocco and East Germany. In the eastern part of Germany, one of the last 11th-century castles in Europe has been preserved, which was perfectly suited to depict England of that era. Morocco transforms into Persia on the cinema screens.
• The pursuit of authenticity in location shooting led to a year-long delay in production: due to unrest in Arab countries, filming scheduled for spring 2011 in Morocco had to be postponed.
• The real historical Abu Ali Ibn-Sina (Avicenna) died of a stomach ailment, which he was ultimately unable to cure.
• In the film, the barber Barber is cured of cataracts by Jewish doctors, after which he sees well again. In reality, in the Middle Ages, although cataract operations were performed, removing the clouded part of the lens with a spatula, thus opening access to light into the eyeball, it only allowed one to distinguish between light and shadow. After all, the lens itself, being destroyed, no longer performed any visual function.
• Appendectomy was first performed only in the 18th century.
• The real historical Ala al-Dawla was not a “shah,” but the emir of Isfahan, who in reality fought not the Seljuks, but the Afghans of Mahmud of Ghazni and his successor Masud I.
• In the final episodes of the film, which are set shortly after 1037 (the death of Avicenna), the walls and towers of the Tower of London are clearly visible, although they were actually built only during the reign of King Richard the Lionheart (1189–1199).
• On the streets of London, guards are visible wearing iron helmets resembling hats, which did not become widespread until much later.
• The tale of Aladdin and the magic lamp was not originally included in the collection of “One Thousand and One Nights.” It is a later Western “addition” that first appeared in a French adaptation in the early 18th century.