Guy Maddin’s 1988 feature directorial debut, Tales from the Gimli Hospital, finds the Canadian auteur’s delightfully perverse sensibilities already fully formed. Given the film’s mix of surreal black-and-white imagery, subversive sexuality, and offbeat comedy, as well as its success on the midnight movie circuit, the comparisons to David Lynch’s Eraserhead were inevitable. And yet, anyone who’s seen even a single one of Maddin’s later work can instantly tell that this film couldn’t have sprung from the subconscious of any other filmmaker.
Maddin’s obsession with obscure Canadian folklore is evident right from the get-go, with a title card informing the audience about the 1865 eruption of Askja, a quiescent volcano, that caused many Icelanders to immigrate to Gimli, a small town in Manitoba, Canada. What follows is, like many of the directors other films, a deliriously playful fusion of fact and fiction, with each “historical...
Maddin’s obsession with obscure Canadian folklore is evident right from the get-go, with a title card informing the audience about the 1865 eruption of Askja, a quiescent volcano, that caused many Icelanders to immigrate to Gimli, a small town in Manitoba, Canada. What follows is, like many of the directors other films, a deliriously playful fusion of fact and fiction, with each “historical...
- 6/27/2023
- by Derek Smith
- Slant Magazine
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