Tales from the Gimli Hospital

As strange and surreal as this movie is, I just love it. Shockingly enough I seem to be quite fond of this strange, art-house type of movies.

It's a very surreal movie, that is shot in 1920's/1930's style. It means that the entire movie is black & white and even old fashioned looking, with all of its sets, costumes and make-up effects but also its style of acting and the way some scene's are being set up and executed. It's also a throwback to old European surreal and more stylish type of movies, from the '50's and '60's. Movies that were not just style over substance but also ones that had a good effective story in it, no matter how well it got hidden all underneath its surreal images and strange moments.

And yes, this movie as well has a very strange but fascinating story, set at a strange hospital, about patients with a strange disease, in a strange time, in a strange far off place. It's apparently set in Gimli, Canada, which is also know as the capital of New Iceland, despite it being a very small town. It also explains some of the strange Scandinavian names and accents the characters have.

If you just happen to stumble upon this movie somewhere and decide to watch it, without knowing anything about it, you would not believe that this movie got actually released in 1988. It's that good looking in its very old fashioned way. It's amazing the amount of detail they spend on this movie and director and writer Guy Maddin truly managed to capture an unique, old fashioned, grainy type of atmosphere. But it's also thanks to the casting of some old fashioned type of looking persons, that makes the movie and its story work out convincing as an old one.

Clearly, it's a movie that will not appeal to every person and some mind find it just a bit too strange and not fascinating enough. This movie is really a matter of taste, more than anything else but if you're fond of some surreal type of films (like David Lynch movies), European type of old films (lets say Ingmar Bergman type of movies), or some of the movies from the 1920's and 1930's, this movie is really worth a watch and changes are you might end up really liking it.

8/10

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I can't think of a better introduction to eccentric Canadian auteur Guy Maddin than "Tales from the Gimli Hospital". Maddin's feature debut is as ingeniously bizarre and surreal as many of his later followings and despite being a bit rough around the edges it is more than deserving of its devoted cult following which regard it as one of the best films of the 80's. I can't agree with that particular statement but it is unquestionably one of the most unique and interesting films of the decade, and certainly among the more memorable Canadian films to emerge during the time period.

While two children are witnessing their mother's slow death in a modern-day hospital in Gimli, Manitoba, they are told a story by their grandmother set in Gimli many years before. The story is a fascinating and complex one, echoing a parable at times and at others simply bizarre. Often compared to David Lynch's "Eraserhead", "Tales from the Gimli Hospital" is a far more straightforward film, actually, and one with a narrative that requires interpretation but can be followed quite easily. It is an interesting parallel to Lynch's debut, however.

As noted previously the film is rough around the edges in terms of budget and other constraints and Maddin isn't as comfortable and confident a director as he would later become, but the film works wonderfully as a whole and comes highly recommended.

8/10

Fans of David Lynch and early Luis Buñuel will find plenty to admire (or scratch their head at) in this esoteric, shoestring budget mock Icelandic folk tale, set in a bleak sub-arctic village where victims of a mysterious plague are treated by having their sores caressed with dead seagulls. Winnipeg director Guy Maddin borrows extensively from the primitive vocabulary of the early sound era (with grainy photography, a scratchy music score, and crude post-dubbed dialogue) to create a nonsensical 70-minute punchline with no joke attached. The antique style of the production would have to be considered its own reward, especially since the story itself (involving incest, hints of necrophilia, and a mysterious butt-grabbing duel to the death) leads nowhere in particular. The awkward emoting by Nordic characters named Gunnar, Snjofridur, and Einar the lonely; the Louise Brooks look-alike nurses; and the cameo appearance of a black-faced vaudeville minstrel are all reminiscent of some nightmarish, early 1930s melodrama, but Maddin's aesthetic is aimed squarely at today's midnight cult audiences.

Guy Maddin's "Tales from Gimli Hospital" is a surreal locomotive of a film that never for a second pretends to make a lick of sense. Characters and events lack logic and motivation, leaving the proceedings within an oddball world of duck feathers, Indian burials, and mute men (some in blackface). The result is intriguing yet pretentious and too deliberately ambiguous (while "Eraserhead" made less narrative sense, its 'clues' were more meticulously assembled), but shows promise from writer-director Guy Maddin, who successfully invokes the classic styles of German Expressionism and even "Hour of the Wolf"-era Ingmar Bergman.

Guy Maddin is a truly unusual filmmaker.His movies are black comedic and supremely bizarre excursions into silent black-and-white cinema."Tales from the Gimli Hospital" is possibly his most famous and creepiest work to date.This is a wonderfully strange and puzzling movie filled with haunting and disturbing imagery.The action takes place in the small fishing town of Gimli,Manitoba, in some indeterminate time in the early part of the 20th Century.Einar and Gunnar,two men afflicted with the deadly smallpox virus,are housed in the small Gimli Hospital,their bodies covered with the scars of disease,their minds slowly slipping into paranoia and fear.Much of the film is silent,only archaic soundtrack is used regularly.The film is shot in equisite black-and-white and looks terrific.Give it a look,if you enjoy watching surrealist cinema.8 out of 10.