Tales from the Gimli Hospital
Tags: absurd, cult, comedy, psychedelic

Plot synopsis:
The film opens on two young children whose mother is dying in the present-day Gimli, Manitoba hospital. During a visit to see her, the children's Icelandic grandmother launches into the grim and convoluted tale of Einar the Lonely, a patient in a far-distant-past version of the same hospital—in "a Gimli we no longer know," as the grandmother puts it. The rest of the film consists of Einar's story.
Einar (Kyle McCulloch) succumbs to a smallpox epidemic and is admitted to the Gimli hospital for treatment, where he meets his neighbor Gunnar (Michael Gottli). While both are at first pleased to have a friend nearby in their time of illness, the two men soon begin competing for the attentions and affections of the hospital's beautiful young nurses. Gunnar outperforms Einar in this regard, given his storytelling abilities and his skill at carving birch bark into the shape of fish. The hospital is built above a stable (for heat from the animals) and director Maddin appears in a cameo as a surgeon who operates while patients are told to observe a badly-acted puppet show as a sort of anesthesia.
Gunnar borrows Einar's fish-carving shears and recognizes the decorated pair of shears as uncannily similar to those he buried with his wife Snjófridur (Angela Heck). Gunnar recalls the story of their courtship and her death from smallpox she contracted from Gunnar. His aboriginal friend, despite Gunnar's protests, then laid her body to rest in the traditional aboriginal manner, on a raised platform with tokens and gifts including the shears. Einar relates to Gunnar the story of how he came to possess the shears: while wandering in the dark one night he discovered the corpse of a beautiful woman on a raised burial platform (who he now realizes must have been Snjófridur). Einar stole the tokens buried with her and had sex with her corpse.
Gunnar is furious but too weak to take immediate revenge on Einar, and coincidentally a fire breaks out on the hospital roof. The Icelanders put out the fire by pouring milk over it, which then drips down into Gunnar's face and blinds him. A blackfaced minstrel is buried and Einar contemplates further destroying Gunnar through carving him up with the selfsame shears stolen from his wife's corpse. Einar and Gunnar exit the hospital and wander around feverishly. Einar observes Lord Dufferin giving a public speech. Einar hallucinates that Lord Dufferin is the mythical Fish Princess. The men end up in a field together along with a Shriners Highland Pipe Band and begin to Glima Wrestle—a traditional competition where fighters graps each other's buttocks and take turns lifting one another up until one collapses. They tear each other's clothes and claw at each other's buttocks until they bleed, then both collapse.
Einar is later back in his small shack/fish smokehouse and is visited by a recovered and no-longer-blind Gunnar and his new fiance. They happily saunter along the beach of Lake Winnipeg while Einar regards them jealously, still Einar the Lonely. The scene returns to the present-day Gimli where the children are informed that their mother has died. They ask the storytelling Amma to be their mother and she says "no" but that she will still visit "if your father lets me." They ask about heaven and she prepares to tell another story as the film ends.

Review: The narrative is a bit of a problem but like most Maddin films, there is plenty to carry the load.
In the modern town of Gimli, two young children watch their mother dying in hospital.
To distract them they are told a story of old Gimli by their grandmother.
In the story it is Gimli years ago when live was disrupted by an outbreak of smallpox.
With poor medical facilities available to him, Einar finds himself in a nightmarish half-waking state of "care" with other sufferers, including his friend Gunnar, who are somewhere between life and death.
The two friends grow close but shared secrets threaten to tear them apart as the world around them changes quickly.As someone who actually likes Guy Maddin I still have to be honest and say that, while my favourite films of his have narratives I like, usually his work is not where you want to come for stories that grip you and make a lot of sense.
And so it is with his first feature film, a story that is being told to two children who, for some reason, are in the room where their mother is dying; it sounds strange and indeed it is.
The narrative is interesting enough but if that's all there was here of value then you'd have given up quite quickly; happily there is enough of interest going on to engage the audience despite the narrative being rather incoherent at times.
This is not to say that it will appeal to all viewers because of course it will not, but for those that "get" his other films, the story will not be a problem.The reason for this is that his unique style is fully on display here (albeit with a lower budget) and this makes it interesting if not totally engrossing.
At times the style overwhelmed the lesser substance to such an extent that it did feel rather hollow but this was a rare feeling for me.
Normally I have that problem with his shorts but, with a low running time, it usually doesn't matter so much.
With his features it can be a problem but he mastered it with the wonderful Cowards Bend At The Knee and he does enough to cover it here.
It did feel a bit sparse at times although that is probably more to do with me being used to his bigger budget films (bigger being a comparative term) rather than the film being weak visually.
The cast don't really give much in the way of performances so much as be carried along with the direction but this isn't that much of a problem since the film was never about them.Overall this film is an acquired taste that will not appeal to those who dislike other Maddin films.
Compared to his later films, this feels a lot less flashy and sparse but it still works and will please fans of Maddin.
Narrative-wise it has some problems that viewers may find difficult to get past but the many strange and imaginative touches to the overall delivery of the film more than cover for these issues and, while not an equal to some of his recent work, this is still worth a watch..
Truly surreal and grotesque film..
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..
Unpredictable and evocative.
Here's a movie that took its miniscule budget and really made the most of it.How?
Well, take a look at the looping synchronization.
It can't be done well without being expensive, so they do very little of it, and get around the problem by shooting characters from obtuse angles that hide the problem.
Color's expensive too, so it's in black and white.
And music?
You can hear the needle drop on the record.But the money they spent went in the right areas.
The visuals are so strong and the camera placement sometimes so unexpected that you find yourself wondering what it is you're looking at--and then something moves, and the tableau breaks apart into a conventional scene.
The opening sequence, a long sfx pan down to the Gimli hospital, going through clouds and angels, evokes the 1940s so well that you halfway expect to see William Bendix in one of the beds.
The costuming is strange and the plot seems totally unworkable, and yet it pulls you in and keeps you there, never seems to make a horrible misstep, and at times hits exactly what it's aiming for.Sure it's an amateur film.
But look at the nice smooth camera work, the well-paced editing, the good choices in music for mood.
While it's all too easy to cite Cocteau, Blood of a Poet comes to mind often while watching Tales from the Gimli Hospital, thanks to the surprising interruption of the narrative by little bits of surreal magic.
You don't walk away from this one saying that it could have been done better--instead, you wonder how it was done so well for so little..
Not necessarily as strange as it seems....
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..
Welcome to the world of Guy Maddin.
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.
The darkly surreal world of the Gimli Hospital.
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..
Unexpected pleasure.
The comments made above by "Spearin" express my own reaction to this film.
I rented it on DVD because it sounded intriguing, but fully expected to yank the disc before it fairly got underway.
To my pleased surprise, I was caught up in the story and captivated by the photography from the first seconds, and thoroughly enjoyed the experience--so much so, in fact, that I immediately replayed the movie with the director's often droll narration superimposed.
Also on the DVD I rented was a short film by the same author, "The Dead Father," which is well worth watching.
It, perhaps even more than "Tales from the Gimli Hospital," evokes early French surrealist film, but not in a slavish way.
Both films gave me food for thought--about film and about human relationships.
I guess this "nourishment" aspect of film-viewing is my basic criterion for judgment.
On that basis, I voted an "eight" for "Tales from the Gimli Hospital."By the way, I was very interested to learn (from the director's commentary) some of the actual history of Gimli and its settlers.
These were tough, courageous people..
a "6," just for the images.
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..
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..
A great, strange, unique little film..
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.8/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/.
Hmm. 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..
Guy Maddin's breakout genre bending horror classic!.
On a second viewing, my appreciation for this 80's oddity has grown significantly.
I have not really "understood" it more per se (I'm not sure if I will ever truly be able to entirely "understand" this film and I do not think that I'm supposed to), but I certainly have found more moments to cherish, tiny details that add to the overall absurdity that this work of art so gloriously embodies.Bending and twisting genres and genre conventions, "Tales from the Gimli Hospital" is the greatest (and probably the only) black tragicomedy-horror-melodrama-avant garde- slapstick-thriller-love story I have ever seen, one that bathes in its gloriously Gothic and often sad atmosphere.
Melancholy soaks the movie's rather scary surface, but this melancholy is also accompanied with a sharp sense of humor largely encompassed by witty and surreal visual gags, moments so absurd you cannot help but laugh.
Despite its massive and bizarre combo of varying genres, "Tales from the Gimli Hospital" never feels jumbled because its style always has the same bite.
The music and performances do not change, and the overall mood doesn't either, the only thing that changes is the audience's reaction, which I feel is the best way to mix and combine genres.
Guy Maddin uses his signature, silent-film-mimicing style to great effect, capturing the charm of oldie horror films and classic slapstick with a totally weird and somewhat manic twist!.
8 stars..
This is the first Maddin film I've seen, and it seems like a great introduction.
The other reviewers have already touched on the plot and the mix of surrealism and silent film that Maddin brings together so I won't reiterate.
I'll add though that Gimli actually *is* comparable to Eraserhead besides just being low budget and in B&W.
(SPOILER AHEAD....) The "fish princess" that Einar sees can be compared to the "lady in the radiator" from Eraserhead, but different in appearance.So, to make this short, pick it up if you're a fan of Luis Bunuel and B&W era Lynch.
This should also appeal to the silent film enthusiasts as Maddin is a big one himself.