Tales from the Gimli Hospital

A deadly pestilence rages through the idyllic Manitoba town of Gimli, some time in the late 19th century. Maddin’s amusingly nonsensical first feature is a deadpan tone poem focusing on the jealous relationship between the delirious Einar and his rotund, jocular hospital mate, Gunnar. As they undergo non conventional medical treatments involving seagulls, the two discover something they had in common: sexual relations with Gunnar’s late wife. A disjointed series of self hating Icelandic heritage moments filtered through a fishy surrealist sensibility and the entire vocabulary of silent cinema ranging from Busby Berkeley to Erich von Stroheim Tales from the Gimli Hospital is possessed by a pre Code morality encompassing homo eroticism, necrophilia, and a black faced minstrel. Underlit from only one source, it’s the early work of a primeval fetishist: the camera focuses in on unusual body parts, like kneecaps, the space between eyebrows and, in an odd Icelandic wrestling scene a nod to Ulmer’s The Black Cat the buttocks. Made over eighteen months with a script jotted on Post It notes, Tales from the Gimli Hospital was notoriously rejected by Toronto festival programmers, who mistook the crackling ambient soundtrack for amateurish. They were wrong. Maddin: `A picture inspired by the need to wake all my dead Icelandic loved ones with slaps to their cadaverous faces.’ (M.P.)