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Tales from the Gimli Hospital
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| Release Date: |
01 January, 1988 |
| Director: |
Guy Maddin |
| Studio: |
Kino Video |
| Rated: |
NR (Not Rated) |
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Amazon.com Customer Reviews
 Rated 1 out of 5
why the hype?
This is ham-fisted moviemaking at its worst--or should I say best? Burdened by an impossibly cheesy plot which fills the movie with more dead-air time than your next laundryroom round, the movie is at once too insultingly imcompetent to be a homage to the great German expressionist films which supposedly inspired it, and too boring and poker-faced to be a send-up of anything but the director’’s own mediocrity. Go see any film by Murnau, Pabst, Ruttmann, or Lang from the 20s--or for that matter any silent films at random, whether Russian, American, French, whatever--and they’’ll be infinitely better than this puerile endeavor at self-indulgence. Rated 4 out of 5
Tales From A Parallel Universe
Poor Einar the Lonely (another of Guy Maddin’’s hapless heroes) has fallen a victim to the disfiguring pestilence that has been dropping from a great height onto the Canadian/Icelandic community of Gimli, Manitoba. He drags himself to the Gimli Hospital, a strange place where puppet shows are used in place of anaesthetic and the 13-year-old nurses ignore Einar in favor of Gunnar. Gunnar is the occupant of the bed next to Einar’’s; Einar’’s initial jealousy turns to friendship... but as the two men begin to exchange confidences, a secret comes out that makes them deadly enemies.Although the story is set in "a Gimli we no longer know", there really is such a place as Gimli, and there is a real Gimli Hospital. The Gimli of the film seems to exist in a time warp in which it is always 2 A.M., 1930; there is a late-night atmosphere over everything, and even the sun seems to give off an artificial light. The production values and the overall look of the film recall the early days of sound films ("White Zombie", "Vampyr", etc.). Maddin has taken great pains to recreate the technical limitations of those old movies, right down to the scratch and hum on the soundtrack. Imagine either SCTV doing a parody of Ingmar Bergman or Ingmar Bergman doing a segment for SCTV-- in fact, in certain shots Kyle McCulloch (Einar) and Michael Gottli (Gunnar) resemble Joe Flaherty and John Candy. There’’s a great deal of deadpan silliness to this film, but you can’’t help but like the characters (Gunnar is hapless too); there’’s no directoral irony that invites us to look down on the cast. This is a film that walks a fine line between honest emotion and kitsch. In that vein, one of the extra features provided with the DVD is the short film "The Dead Father", which has its comedic moments but is ultimately touching and will resonate with those who have lost a family member only to have him or her show up in their dreams. It’’s a serious film with funny overtones; sort of the flip side of "Tales of the Gimli Hospital". The last ten minutes are especially poignant. Maddin provides a rollicking, often digressive commentary; it may not tell you everything you want to know, but it’’s a lot of fun to listen to.
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