Young Opal sneaks into her neighbors’ house at night, where she is mistaken for Claire and listens to a suite of strange songs.
Tag Archives: Surrealism
SATURDAY SHORT: KOBALT THE KLOWN(TM) DOES AMBIGUOUS ALIENS (2013)
A stiff and silent clown provides ambiguous evidence of visitations by the Underpant People from the sky.
38*. TALES FROM THE GIMLI HOSPITAL (1988)
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“It all happened in a Gimli we no longer know.”–Tales from the Gimli Hospital
DIRECTED BY: Guy Maddin
FEATURING: Kyle McCulloch, Michael Gottli, Angela Heck, Margaret Anne MacLeod
PLOT: In a modern (?) hospital room, a Canadian-Icelandic grandmother tells her grandchildren the story of Einar the Lonely to distract them as their mother lies dying. Simple fisherman Einar falls in love with a beautiful girl, but she rejects him when it is revealed that he has contracted smallpox. He goes to recuperate in Gimli’s barn-cum-hospital, where he befriends a fellow patient, Gunnar, who shares stories which are mixed up with fever dream hallucinations.
BACKGROUND:
- Gimli is a small village in Manitoba, settled by Icelandic fishermen who arrived in Canada fleeing the eruption of Mount Askja in 1875.
- Maddin lifted some names and incidents from a book of local history (and poetry) entitled “The Gimli Saga” (also his original choice of title).
- Tales from the Gimli Hospital was rejected by the Toronto International Film Festival, but championed by legendary cult film aficionado Ben Barenholtz, who secured a midnight run for the film at Greenwich Village’s Quad Theater.
- The film garnered a Best Screenplay nomination for Maddin from Canada’s Genie Awards.
- The 2022 “Redux” cut (reviewed here) substitutes a dream sequence shot eleven years later for an original scene that featured Kyle McCullough in blackface.
INDELIBLE IMAGE: Although there are many strange sights to see in Gimli, almost all of them have something to do with fish: fish-chopping, fish-carving, a magenta-toned dream women turning into a fish princess. The most iconic moment is when Einar grabs a fish (which has been nailed to the wall of his shack), holds it over his head, and twists it to release its oily guts, using the goo to slick back his hair.
TWO WEIRD THINGS: Fish guts pomade; bloody butt grappling
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Guy Maddin’s debut feature sets the tone for his career—recreating the aesthetics of silent and early talkie movies, spiked with Freudian surrealism and absurdist humor—though his subsequent movies benefited from melodramatic plotting that is absent from the episodic Gimli. Although highly accomplished, it’s one of Maddin’s most surreal movies, and therefore not the easiest entry point to his world. It may be better to visit Gimli after becoming familiar with Maddin’s more mature work.
Redux re-release trailer for Tales from the Gimli Hospital
COMMENTS: Guy Maddin may be the archetypal cinematic postmodernist. “Postmodernism” is a term that’s simultaneously highly Continue reading 38*. TALES FROM THE GIMLI HOSPITAL (1988)
READER RECOMMENDATION: THE CREMASTER CYCLE
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Reader review by Enar Clarke
“The Cremaster cycle defers any definitive conclusion.”–from the synopsis of “Cremaster 5”
DIRECTED BY: Matthew Barney
FEATURING: Ursula Andress, Norman Mailer, Aimee Mullins, Richard Serra, Matthew Barney
PLOT: Over the course of five films, through a series of loosely interconnected stories in various film genres, characters metaphorically portray the drama of sexual differentiation in the human reproductive system during the early stages of fetal development.
COMMENTS: As has been remarked on this site before, the Cremaster Cycle, directed by and starring visual artist Matthew Barney, is a nigh-legendary series of films. The Cycle tends to be screened once approximately every ten years, hence its mystique. Aside from a highly-priced limited edition run of DVDs, only a 30-minute cut of Cremaster 3 (The Order) is readily available on disc. The films were originally elements of an art installation that also included drawings, photographs, and sculptures; for this reason, they are usually screened by contemporary art museums.
With that in mind, the question readers of this site are probably asking is, are these films weird enough to be worth the effort of trying to see them?
This isn’t an easy question to answer. The five films in the Cremaster Cycle are undoubtedly weird, an endless progression of strange and inscrutable imagery that can honestly be as boring as it is compelling. Each film has at least two settings and sets of characters, but only the most threadbare of plots. Barney’s minimalist website provides the basic details, which can be useful for interpreting the subject matter. To avoid spoilers, I would recommend reading the cast lists prior to viewing, and saving the synopses for afterwards. All of the films, except Cremaster 2, are dialogue-free, and until the credits roll, it can be impossible to identify who, or what, the characters are supposed to be.
Like the best weird movies, the Cycle has divided both critics and viewers. New York Times critic Michael Kimmelman famously declared Barney “the most important artist of his generation.” Film scholar J. Hoberman, in his book “Film After Film,” dismissed the Cremaster Cycle as “an overwrought 57th street yard sale.” Viewers on IMDB have variously described the films as “flamboyant,” “bizarre,” “campy,” “grotesque,” and most commonly, “pretentious.” Directors Barney has been compared to include Kenneth Anger, David Cronenberg, Peter Greenaway, Alejandro Jodorowsky, David Lynch, Sergei Parajanov, and Ken Russell—all of whose work is represented on the List of the 366 Best Weird Movies. Fans of these directors are just as likely to detest the Cycle, however, as they are to Continue reading READER RECOMMENDATION: THE CREMASTER CYCLE
SATURDAY SHORT: LITTLE TASTE OF JOY (2023)
Welcome to a circus where golden hoops merge into human bodies and elders throw rods into the air to make babies.