Tales From the Gimli Hospital (Guy Maddin, 1988)

Tales From the Gimli Hospital (Guy Maddin, 1988)
Rating: 8.1

I suppose Guy Maddin's style of filmmaking can be considered an acquired taste or even a novelty, but they are so unique and have so much to offer aesthetically, that the strange and sometimes incoherent narratives are often secondary. Maddin captures the look of the early talking pictures era perfectly, including makeup, costuming, lighting, the look of the film stock, the jumping editing styles, and I think the most impressive part that really lends the feeling of an old forgotten film is the sound design. The Tales From the Gimli Hospital is an odd surrealistic story about a woman telling two children a story as they wait by their mother's death bed at The Gimli Hospital in an Icelandic village in Manitoba. The story she tells revolves around two men who previously stayed at the same hospital. As they suffer from the smallpox epidemic and befriend each, a secret is revealed that positions them as rivals. The film also plays with the world of the inner psyche which I am always interested in. An interesting note: many of the women characters are actually played by thirteen year old girls. Maddin comments that he experiments with this as it is his belief that it's impossible to tell a women's age; rather we interpret age by how it is presented to us which I find to be an interesting concept much in the same manner Mary Pickford played a 10 year old girl in her 30s.