Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass

After a 20 year wait, the Quay Brothers release their third feature film – an adaptation capturing the haunting essence central to Bruno Schulz’ original narrative. An invitation aboard a ghostly train destined for an abandoned sanatorium alongside the protagonist Jozef who seeks his father.

In the Quay Brothers’ surreal third feature film Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, a young man, Jozef, travels to a sanatorium in the Carpathian Mountains to visit his dying father. Upon arrival, he finds a dilapidated building inhabited by ghosts who lure him into an otherworldly realm. Time becomes ambiguous and the demarcation between reality and fantasy is tenuous as Jozef peeps into keyholes and lurks between rooms against a soundtrack of hypnotic violins, flickering book pages and creaky floorboards. It becomes apparent that the sanatorium is a portal to a netherworld standing as a nightmarish allegory for past trauma, the horrors of WWII as originally evoked in Bruno Schulz’ book of the same name (1937).

Extending beyond the tension between past and present is a hypnotic milieu of Steampunk ephemera and manifestations of Weimar burlesque. The veteran duo have assembled Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass with traits well worth the wait for its Dutch premiere; stop-motion animation, voyeuristic tendencies, dreamy aesthetics and silent film nods as in their previous films (The Piano Turner of Earthquakes, 2006) and (Dormitorium, 2007), all while throwing in a shadow play treat in the opening.

– Olivia Hărşan

Trailer

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