In fact, her writings reveal a deep and unbridled relationship with God and many incidents of "conversation", the most dramatic one being on her 30th birthday after a particularly mystical trip to Egypt and Greece. While the teleplay did mention that God was her inspiration and that he "spoke" to her, the film leads you to believe He did this on this one time. In fact, Florence, or the British Army, did not understand (or believe) that airborne or water-borne diseases existed, hence no alarm was made by the decaying carcasses contaminating the water supply. Florence herself did not make a connection between the sickness of her men and the "sickness" of Barracks Hospital. Florence rather despised her mother and the matronly traditions she stood for. In fact, their arguments were frequent and very loud-a veritable boxing match that was constant and damaging. For instance, watching the movie, one is left with the feeling that while FN's mother may have had some disagreement with her choice in career, she was generally okay with it. Everything just neatly fell into place while real life and real history is far messier. While I completely understand that not every nuance of history can be examined and budgetary constraints determined structure and style, the teleplay failed to capture even the essence of any real tension vs. Once in Turkey, however, the biopic simply falls flat on it face, finding little drama and even less resolution. Overall, the teleplay was fine for what is was up until the point Florence arrives in the Crimea. As someone who spent two years with the subject through research and by writing and completing a full-length spec script on Nightingale (written and registered before NBC's TV movie was available on DVD), I viewed this film more as series of missed opportunities and plodding digressions, distinguished more by what the left out or glossed over or ill- advisedly reinvented than by what they left in. The life of Florence Nightingale-one of the great intellectual titans this world has ever known-is fascinating and dramatic, and one fraught with sacrifice, courage, and great sadness.
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