La Clepsydre

Very fun to watch, some really thoughtful and cinematically awesome moments. I'm just a white little American kid so all the references to Polish Judaism which dominate this film aren't much I can understand or relate to. The cinematic transition where he's lost in thought and it zooms out through the flowers at around 19 minutes is one my favorite ever. I remember the first time I saw that how it had me sucked into that feeling of being lost in thought then snapping back to reality so well.

Worth watching even if you can't relate to the greater themes like me. Looking forward to seeing more from this director regardless of whether or not I can relate to it.

The Hourglass Sanatorium is the first bizarre adventure movie I've actually enjoyed. It's an adaptation of Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, but not solely, it also includes sequences from other works by Bruno Schulz. its unique, isolated world, its atmospherics, colours and shapes. The time period of the film is a mixture of elements from the turn-of-the-century Galicia where Schulz grew up, and Has' own pre-World War II memories of the same region.

The production design is outstanding. The cinematography - the costumes, buildings, props and other requisites is absolutely amazing. And so is the camera work. It floats elegantly through the awe-inspiring world created by the design team, frequently incorporating very long tracking shots through the grand sets and locations. The envoirmental attributes is as eye-catchingly surreal too, from the sudden appearance of elephants to some disturbing mechanical mannequins.

And the story is, a subsequent dream-like journey through absurd surrealism, with infinitely random externalized stream of collective consciousness. It's a timeless voyage through the subconsciousness, a puzzle with small bits and pieces scattered throughout its tale, and takes on every thing imaginable. Its a movie experience like you've never seen before, just sit back and enjoy the absurd masterpiece playing front of your very eyes.

But of course, given that the claws of the repulsively fundamentalist and contradictory Communist regime, the authorities forbid Has to submit The Hourglass Sanatorium for the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, but the director managed to smuggle a print abroad so the film could be screened at the festival. The Cannes jury, led by actress Ingrid Bergman, honoured the film with the Jury Prize.

The movie has no typical narrative or storyline, it is just a series of surrealistic vignettes (surrounded by the framing of a sanatorium with a dying father and time moving differently). So it's all about "finding meaning" and interpretation and symbolism. There is also a heavy dosage of holocaust & judaica themes. For those that like this sort of movie, especially the "film school" and arthouse types, this may be an amazing film. For other movie goers this may be a huge bore and seem meaningless and pretentious. I am somewhere in the middle (and I have studied film and seen numerous "art house" films by choice). I generally found this boring, but appreciate the attempt and historical context.

"Sanatorium pod klepsydra" is a surreal assault on the senses and perhaps one of the most beautifully shot Polish movies ever made.It's based on the remarkable collection of stories 'Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass' written by Bruno Schultz.Our protagonist Josef(Jan Nowicki)travels on a dilapidated and mysterious train to visit his father at a decayed sanatorium in the middle of the Polish countryside.His journey into a tangled world of real and imagined experiences begins.Extremely stylish and surreal mind trip is the best way to describe "Hourglass Sanatorium".Filled with elaborate set-pieces and philosophical dialogue the world imagined by Bruno Schultz is truly one of its kind.The sleazy shots of half-naked women are a nice touch and the glimpse into Jewish culture is fascinating.A must-see for fans of bizarre and unusual cinema.The wax mannequins sequence is stunningly beautiful.9 out of 10.

This is a film that will either absorb or exasperate, depending on one's temper. It mostly exasperated me, but many of its images have stayed with me, and I think viewers who have the patience for, say, Strindberg's "Dream Play" will enjoy its corkscrew narrative. Many may be amused, as I was, by the highly shadowed, highly colored Gothic decor but may have difficulty, as I did, staying the course. The synopsis above is slightly misleading on one count: The old man in the sanatorium is or would be dead in the real world, but his death would be financially inconvenient to the family and so his son is paying to have him kept in the enclosed world of the sanatorium, where time moves more slowly and he can stay alive indefinitely. The film begins like a horror movie, with the protagonist taking an eerily populated train to the ruined sanatorium. But once he's taken care of his business there both he and the story wander into a series of absurdist-picaresque adventures, set in scenes from his memory and imagination (apparently: some are quasi-historical, and his father appears in one of them as a young man). They grow and flower and intertwine with one another as they would in a dream or a reverie, until at last the protagonist arrives back where he started and finds out his fate after all. That seemed arbitrary to me; and why the place should have led him where it did, literally or symbolically, I don't really know; and to my taste the film is so boldly stated as to be a little cheap. But it still has a way of floating around inside the head for a long time after. And if enough people were interested enough by it, the process of identifying and interpreting its cornucopia of allusions and symbols could fuel a semester's worth of late-night discussions.