Honorable Mention
I’m not quite sure of what I think of this one.
Although perhaps that is because it becomes so many different things along the way. It starts out as a breezy adventure film with the young and clever alchemist Sendivius tricking a prince and escaping with the help of an unexpected invention.
But then it turns far more serious as the man he rescued — his former Master, who knew how to transmute base metals into gold — dies without revealing the secret. Sendivius himself then ends up facing torture, execution and the threat of having his family torn apart by wolves.
However, his desire for the power of transmutation drives him more than anything else, and he descends into evil, engaging in murder, theft, adultery and far worse things as he continues on his quest.
Only a sudden disaster overwhelms him, leading him ultimately in yet another direction, to terrible discoveries, and a change of heart.
Which is when his search finally comes to and end, and he discovers something he never expected…
It has become a pretty standard trope to portray the Middle Ages as primitive, cruel and barbaric, and I more or less assumed when I watched Alchemik that it was yet another film making use of this same heavily trodden path.
Ironically, it is actually set in a far later time, during the later half of the Renaissance, in the Sixteenth Century.
This is, curiously enough, closer to reality than we think. After all, most of the monsters (or supposed monsters) of the “Middle Ages” — like Gilles de Rais, Elizabeth Bathory, and Vlad the Impaler — actually lived during the Renaissance. And, despite what we may think about torture being a barbaric remnant of the Medieval age, it was actually a standard part of the Roman Law, but had been outlawed as society gradually became Christianized. It was the revival of Roman Law during the High Middle Ages — the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries — which brought it back again, along with some of the other less reputable parts of Roman culture like pornography and occultism.
Alchemik even works in a few references to the Roman Alchemist and occultist Hermes Trismegistus who is often credited as the founder of Alchemy, and his books are among its most important texts.
Don’t get the idea that this is a fun little historical adventure. Instead, Sendivius gets caught up in darkness, as his desires drive him towards evil and his quest ultimately takes everything he loves away from him.
For some reason, Alchemik gets called a horror film: certainly some of the elements are there, like a devil worshipping cult, a tomb full of desiccated bodies, and a very bloody “birth.” Certainly, the mysterious thing locked in the cellar is straight out of a horror movie, but even if these elements are there, the story moves away from them, and the most horrific event in the film actually takes place offscreen.
Although there are reasons for that (possibly budgetary), which will only become obvious once you get to the end and note what we never actually see.
This film earns its place on this site because it takes a final turn straight into science fiction. While this is a mildly surprising twist, it isn’t exactly entirely unexpected: there were quite a few hints scattered throughout the film, although most of them come wrapped up in misleading interpretations.
The real surprise, however is the mind-bogglingly weird sound effect used at that moment when the truth is finally revealed. I mean, there’s no question where it came from, and surely, by now, someone has told the BBC about it.
And yet it is still there. Very strange.
I can’t say that I entirely liked this one. It has a lot going for it, thanks to a script packed with unexpected turns, good production values; and some great — and I’m sure, very real — locations. It may also pack a lot harder punch for those who lived through the Soviet Era in Hungary and other countries behind the Iron Curtain, particularly as it might contain a sly few references to current day politics.
Although, to be fair, I haven’t seen any evidence of this.
Not that I would necessarily recognize them.
I suspect that it may help if you go in expecting a dark and very dramatic film about greed and how it changes us: that way the sudden shift at the end won’t seem quite so jarring. But then, this is a very dark film, filled with a lot of seemingly random deaths and pointless cruelty.
And while the end may seem a bit lighter, I can’t say whether it is a happy ending or not. It is so sudden and we learn so little in the process. I have no idea what it means.
But then, I could probably say that about the rest of the film…
rivets on the poster 