A passenger finds herself lost while being ferried by a limousine driver with amnesia. One of three “recycleD” short films by Sparrow.
Tag Archives: Surrealism
CAPSULE: DALÌLAND (2022)
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DIRECTED BY: Mary Harron
FEATURING: Ben Kingsley, Barbara Sukowa, Christopher Briney, Rupert Graves, Ezra Miller
PLOT: A young art gallery intern has a brush with the strange world of Salvador Dalì during the master’s twilight years.
COMMENTS: Tucked into this quiet biopic is as apt a description of what attracts us, here at 366 Weird Movies, to the films we hunt for, enjoy, and cling to. On a cash errand for the maestro, James interrupts a gallery owner pitching a signed art print. The woman is intrigued, but hesitant, not sure what to make of the image which stands before her. “You… like it?” she asks. “I find it upsetting… I don’t think I want to live with someone else’s weird dream on my wall.” James replies, “But that weirdness, that’s what makes it original. It got to you, that’s why you’ll never get tired of it; you’ll never forget it.” He nails it, inadvertently securing the sale. Simultaneously, his description of that piece explains, as best one can, what Salvador Dalì, and all weird visionaries, are about.
Mary Harron’s film is more of an ensemble piece than the name (and grandiose subject matter) might suggest. In fact, much of the film involves Salvador Dalì (Ben Kingsley), now old, at times bordering on caricature, observing those around him: the trendy hangers-on, his friend Alice Cooper, his inspiring—but harsh—wife Gala (Barbara Sukowa), his new assistant James, and, most of all, Dalì. He speaks in third person. He performs without surcease in the presence of others. And he ages, as it is “very tiring being Dalì.” Put aside his trove of drawings, paintings, and sculptures; his life was a work of art, a performance piece for the ages.
Dalìland is polished and straightforward, but that does not make it resonate any less. While there are many searing, satirical jabs at posers and poseurs, show-offs and charlatans, Harron neither glorifies nor denigrates these oddballs and outcasts dancing along society’s periphery; those who, through their mien and flair mitigate the day-to-day blandness of those around them; the eye-catchers who make others wonder, “Just what the heck are they doing?” and who devote their life force to lending us a touch of the unreal—the sur-real, if you will. Dalì was many different people over the course of his long life, and the performer behind these acts is impossible to know. Indeed, it is clear even to a layman such as myself, that the “real” Dalì probably never existed, and Dalì could not have been happier for having achieved that.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
SATURDAY SHORT: JACK STAUBER’S OPAL (2020)
Young Opal sneaks into her neighbors’ house at night, where she is mistaken for Claire and listens to a suite of strange songs.
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)