Customer Reviews

Tales from the Gimli Hospital

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is a surreal film from Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin, his first feature. The story focuses on the town of Gimli, Manitoba, a long time ago, during an outbreak of smallpox. Two patients in a strange hospital become friends, then deadly rivals. The film is in its own surreal world, with the town of Gimli featuring unconventional behaviour, like the people washing their faces with straw, squeezing the insides of fish onto their heads, rubbing dead birds onto patient's wounds, a weird black-faced minstrel, a cow that lives under a bed, and many fishes that are present in most scenes. It really is a special piece of low budget surreal filmmaking, and is deservedly compared to David Lynch's Eraserhead.

The DVD is quite good too. The picture is in full frame, and the image is good, giving the film its dark & peculiar look well. The sound is in mono and ok. The extras include an insightful commentary by director Guy Maddin, who describes everything about the film, and the trials of making it. The disc also includes two short Guy Maddin films, Hospital Fragment and The Dead Father. Both films are good, and not disimilar to the feature. It's refreshing to see a company like Kino releasing abstract films like this on to the DVD format. If you like surreal films, you have to own this disc.

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"TALES FROM THE GIMLI HOSPITAL" is the black and white first film from Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin and it reflects the best of the great silent and surrealist directors like F.W. Murnau, Luis Bunuel and Jean Cocteau. Originally released in 1988, this 68 minute nightmare is set during a smallpox epidemic in the village of Gimli, Manitoba, at the beginning of the 20th century. Friends Emar and Gunnar are two male patients who share a hospital room as well as their darkest secrets. Disturbing tales of creeping pestilence, unconsummated passions, envy, necrophilia are told climaxing in a deadly battle between the former friends now rivals. Moody, weird and atmospheric, the Gimli universe has been embraced by the midnight movie circuit and set the director's career in motion. The disc includes a crisp full frame transfer, an impish director's commentary and two of his short films.

Guy Maddin is the weirdest of the weirdest of the weird, so it's not surprising that some customer reviewers who generally like "wierd stuff" were disappointed by this, his first and most uncompromising full-length outing. He's way more idiosynchratic and insular even than early Lynch or Cronenberg. There is actually a coherent and macabrely funny story here about a male rivalry between two patients in the weirdest of all hospitals during the legendary (for Icelandic Manitobans, of which I am one) smallpox epidemic in the Icelandic settlement of Gimli. But after the movie's (really gross and distastefully misogynous) climactic revelation about the secret history that binds the two men, it loses itself in incomprehensible and very boring artsy nonsense.

The film didn't say much to me on a first viewing, but parts of it have stayed with me. It really only deserves 3 stars as a whole, but I'll give it 4 because the early montage sequence featuring a series of bizarre (but historically faithful!) Icelandic grooming rituals is a surrealist treat, and both the VHS and DVD include Maddin's first film, the short film "The Dead Father," which is maybe the most emotionally lucid thing he's ever done and very funny for those who like black, surealistic humour. Further caveats: the production values and the acting are on a par with Ed Wood (the director, not the Burton movie), so don't expect polish, but the male leads have genuine charisma and Maddin has a superb visual sense, although it's more on display in his second feature, the ravishing "Archangel."

From the very first frame, Guy Maddin's offbeat "Tales from the Gimli Hospital" takes us into a brilliantly conceived world where the surreal and the ancient merge to form one of the most unique and thrilling cinematic realms ever seen. Combining gothic sensibility with early twentieth century silent film techniques, Maddin creates an atmosphere drenched with visual delights, horrors and deep rooted symbolism. What Maddin has done with this film is create a visionary work that is nearly flawless. Although the film takes many viewings to fully sink in due to its strange structure and deliberately labyrinthine story telling, it is a fully realized piece of avant-garde cinema in the tradition of the great works of the silent German Expressionists. By taking ancient Icelandic folktales and blending them with incongrous and fantastical images onto a black and white celluloid canvas, Maddin has done with one film what few directors ever accomplish in their entire carreers ....the creation of a truly unique and worthy piece of cinemtaic art!

Visually stunning with great atmosphere and offbeat performances this is one of the most overseen films of the past 10 years. Guy Maddin is definitely a director to watch while the transfer of this disc was done very careful(got it?)ly. There's also a cool audio commentary with the director and two short films: "The Dead Father" (great !) and "Hospital Fragment".
For the record: buy this thing and be happy - period.

This is the Guy Maddin film that's his best-known because of its relative easiness to get ahold of, although it's also his earliest feature. GIMLI shows all of Maddin's obsessions with early expressionistic film and early twentieth-century Nordic culture in full flower. There's also some of his trademark black humor (though not as much as in his later films--this film never gets funnier than the framing sequence with Amma and the children at the very beginning). Maddin takes more time here to show scenes of great visual beauty, something he sadly rushes through somewhat in his later films. His favorite male actor, Kyle McCullogh, is at his handsomest here--it's a good film to watch to be introduced to Maddin.

I didnt like this one.
The effort is good though, it is clear that Madin did his best... Maybe it should have worked... but for me it didnt.
The picture is good, but the story is rather dull (even with the necrophilia thrown in) and... Well I really did not like the director sense of aesthetics.
Dont get me wrong I LOVE and I mean LOVE german expresionism, but the way Maddin did this one... Yuck!
I am giving it 3 stars because although I recognize this review is quite subjective, I acknowledge the production value and the dedication they put in this film... Nevertheless I did not liked it.
(did I mention that I did not like this one?)
If you like little wierd tales that kept themselves far, far away from your nerves you should buy this one, however. You will see it with a smile on your face.

Guy Maddin's first feature film is a spectacle to behold. A classic sort of frame story devolves (positively) into a dreamlike wandering in an alternative Iceland, with strange preachers, bark fish, a woman discovered on the shore wrapped in nets, young girls floating down rivers in coffins... Maddin manipulates silent black-and-white film (in a reverential way). We occasionally hear the characters speak, sometimes we hear nothing (but the mouths move, the characters scream), and, strange tintures of color appear. Maddin's later films move more into the controversial realm so Tales from the Gimli Hospital is a good place to begin (along with my favorite, My Winnipeg). So if you like experimental film, manipulation of past cinematic forms, and in this case, a minimalist dreamlike story (replete with uncanny/bizarre images) seek it out!

Brief Plot Summary (limited spoilers)

Two children are comforted by their grandmother at the hospital bedside of their dying mother. Soon the grandmother's storytelling transports the viewer to "a Gimli we no longer know" -- a version of the same hospital but with three beds and two disease-ridden patients -- Einar the Lonely (as his epithet suggests) and Gunnar (a corpulent loquacious man with squinty eyes).

This "other" distant Gimli occupies a dreamlike plain, separated from the rest of the world (wherever Gimli might be, a vague "remembered" Iceland?) by quarantine - three angelic nurses become the the objects of desire. Initially the two are friends and companions -- each undergoing bizarre surgical treatments without anesthetic, only the slapstick humor of a portable puppet show (and a gun toting jester sort of character in black face) to distract them. Gunnar shows Einar the "art" of cutting fish from bark with scissors. And bark fish appreciation...

Einar becomes intensely jealous of Gunnar who receives much better attention from the nurses because of his loquacious nature. And, when Einar lends Gunnar his own special bark cutting scissors each reveal their stories and dark secrets, and of course, how they intertwine.

Final Thoughts

Guy Maddin is by far one of my favorite directors - I only have two of his films left to watch (Careful and Archangel). Tales from the Gimli Hospital contains many of themes which Maddin will later explore -- primarily, nostalgia, storytelling, memory.... However, unlike his later films, Tales is not characterized by his frenetic shots but contains his trademark grainy images, etc. The film comes off as positively meditative, deliberate, and world immersing. This is a great film which should be seen by fans of Maddin and experimental film in general!

"Tales of Gimli Hospital" (1988) was Guy Madden's first feature film. The story takes place in Gimli, Manitoba during the smallpox epidemic at the beginning of the 20th century. The story focuses on two friends Emar, and Gunnar, who are patients in a hospital room. This film has a dream like quality that has stories within stories, and a film style that is a homage to the silent pictures and surrealistic directors of the past such as F.W. Murnau and Jean Cocteau. David Lynch's film "Eraserhead" also comes to mind watching this movie. There is a creepy, but playful quality to Maddin's film about unconsummated passions, envy, and disease.

Also included are two shorter films as well as a director's commentary for the feature film. "The Father" is a story about reminiscence and dread which is told with a self effacing sense of humor.

One of the best works by Guy Maddin. Extremely bizarre and surreal but more accessible than some of his other works. In the same league as "Une Chien Andalou".