Tales from the Gimli Hospital

1988
1h 12m

IMDb RATING

6.6/10

1.5K

YOUR RATING

Watch Tales from the Gimli Hospital Redux - official trailer

Play trailer1:11

1 Video

59 Photos

Dark Comedy Comedy Drama Fantasy Horror Thriller

While their mother is dying in the modern Gimli, Manitoba hospital, two young children are told a tale by their Icelandic grandmother about Einar the Lonely, his friend Gunnar, and the angel... Read allWhile their mother is dying in the modern Gimli, Manitoba hospital, two young children are told a tale by their Icelandic grandmother about Einar the Lonely, his friend Gunnar, and the angelic Snjofridur in a Gimli of old.While their mother is dying in the modern Gimli, Manitoba hospital, two young children are told a tale by their Icelandic grandmother about Einar the Lonely, his friend Gunnar, and the angelic Snjofridur in a Gimli of old.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

6.6/10

1.5K

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Awards
- 1 nomination total

Trivia
According to Guy Maddin the plot of Tales from the Gimli Hospital (1988) was inspired by "The Eternal Husband," by Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Maddin's own experience of cuckolding a friend.

Quotes
Amma: It all happened in a Gimli we no longer know.

Connections
Featured in Guy Maddin: En attendant le crépuscule (1997)

Soundtracks
The Vikings
(uncredited)
from Les Vikings (1958)
Music by Mario Nascimbene

User reviews15

Featured review

7/10

a custom-built cult item

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.