Tales from the Gimli Hospital

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.

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

If you are looking for something unorthodox and bizarre and very arty, you should look into this. Guy Maddin turned his obsession with silent movies, surrealism, Luis Bunuel, David Lynch and god known what else into...something. I probably don't possess enough movie knowledge to competently judge this one or grasp everything that's going on, but I suppose that Maddin has something going here. Not that I had a lot of fun watching it. This is for an exquisite taste only. Nonetheless, it still left me curious about Maddin's other works.

I picked up this movie since I live in Gimli, and have heard interesting things about Guy Maddin. Though certainly a strange and surrealist film, it is also a monument and critique of Icelandic culture, and Gimli, where he had a summer cottage. If you know the history of Gimli, and are familiar with Icelandic culture, certain parts of the film do not seem strange at all. I would be interested in knowing how people not knowing these things interpreted things like the marriage across the river, or the food served at the hospital. I am in love with the aesthetics of it. He has been able to capture the exact look of early films, right down to actors and costuming, yet this doesn't seem to take over the film. Though I am personally a bigger fan of Maddin's short films, I enjoyed trying to work my way through this.

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.