Tales from the Gimli Hospital

1989 hospital drama

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A story within a story with a few stories within that story, this is mostly the tale of a guy called Einar who is admitted to the titular hospital during a smallpox epidemic. His bedside neighbor is Gunnar, and while they're initially friendly with one another, they eventually become enemies as they flirt with the nurses. Tension increases when Einar shares a story that links the two men's pasts. Then, they do this weird butt-grabbing thing called glima wrestling.

This is shane-movies hero Guy Maddin's first feature and the first I'd ever heard of him. While Maddin still borrows heavily from the imagery of nightmarish silent horror movies, this talkie reminds me more of Eraserhead than any of that stuff. The music's more cheery though. This is understandably not as strong as Maddin's later work, but it's nice to see that he just dove head first into the eerie and surreal. This has the feel of a movie made very cheaply on weekends with whatever friends or neighbors he could round up. I watched parts of this with the commentary, and it turns out that's fairly accurate. I also learned about the coincidentally named glima wrestling, apparently a real Icelandic sport, which was quite possibly the most entertaining thing I'll see all year. I don't want to spoil anything for all my readers who are wanting to rush to the Blockbuster to rent this film, but there is some pants tearing. This is chock-full of the kind of weirdo surreal imagery that is made even weirdo-er by the budget constraints, and like all Maddin's movies, you get some things that seem really odd but are actually remnants of the past of these people whose stories he's recording. Here, it's apparently Icelandic Canadians. An array of animals under the floorboards at the hospital. Well, that actually happened, used as an Icelandic method to heat rooms. Not sure what all that rubbing birds on people's wounds was all about though. I think that's what I like about Guy Maddin's movies actually. They make you nostalgic for things that didn't even happen to you, force you to remember dreams you never knew you had.

Archangel

1990 romantically-comedic fever dream of a war movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: It's World War I, and Lt. John Boles finds himself in the arctic Russian town of Archangel where he meets a woman named Veronkha who he mistakes for his dead former lover Iris. Veronkha's married to cowardly Philbin who can't seem to remember that he has a wife. Meanwhile, Veronkha starts to believe that John is her husband. All this while a war is going on! Maybe. I think the narrator said at one point that the war was over. I'm not sure because I was almost almost as confused as the characters in the movie.

And the likable thing about shane-movies favorite Guy Maddin movies, to me anyway, is that it all doesn't matter a whole lot. His characters follow their own logic, a fuzzy dream logic that I suppose would make perfect sense if you were able to use a different part of your brain to watch it. Idiosyncratic (read: downright weird) to say the least. At the same, Maddin's got a message very similar to Tarantino's in Basterds about how film or, more specifically, propaganda film can shape people's opinions on war. Archangel features some nifty photography and creative expressionistic set design, and like most of Maddin's movies, offers a generous helping of dry, ultra-askew humor. If you're into old-timey melodramatic and surreal oddballery, I can't recommend this guy's (pun intended) movies enough. And if all that isn't enough to sell this to you, I'll add two more words: intestine strangulation! Hooyah!

Twilight of the Ice Nymphs

1997 acid-washed fantasy

Rating: 10/20

Plot: I don't know. I think it's got something to do with people who can only have sex outdoors with an audience of ostriches.

How can I not like this? It's a Guy Maddin joint, in fact the first Guy Maddin joint that I don't love. It's got the enchanting Shelley Duvall and the even-more-enchanting Frank Gorshin in it. It's a visual feast. It's colorful, although it's got this gauzy thing that, I guess, gives it a weird fairy tale vibe. It's got ostriches. It's got a little of Maddin's typically dry humor. Despite all that, it just never clicks. The acting is about as bad as acting gets. I think Maddin generally goes for awkward and overly-emotive, the latter as an homage to silent cinema, but it just doesn't work in this one. Actually, it works to make the whole thing seem pretentious. The actors just look like they've been drugged, probably loaded with painkillers to endure the lines they're forced to deliver. After watching all the virtually silent Guy Maddin movies, this one's talkiness was bothersome. At one point, a character delivers the line "With a tongue that cuts like yours, Doctor, you hardly need a scalpel to operate" and then looks directly into the camera.
Icky. This is a triumph in set design, beautiful when it's not nauseating, but it's not nearly enough to make this worth anybody's time.

Apologies to Anonymous who I believe watched this one after I recommended Guy Maddin to him and then told me, "I don't like Guy Maddin."

My Winnipeg

2007 "docu-fantasia"

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Canadian director Guy Maddin revisits his sleepy hometown while at the same time attempting to escape it. He combines reenactments, archival footage, and oddball imagery to construct a portrait of Winnipeg. Well, it's not Winnipeg exactly. But it's his Winnipeg.

"Docu-fantasia" is not my word, by the way, but it does manage to capture what is going on with My Winnipeg. Maddin is the director of The Saddest Music in the World, Careful, and Brand upon the Brain!, all which showcase his appreciation for all things antiquated--silent melodrama, antique cameras, title cards. It's gimmicky, but it's a gimmick I can appreciate, so I love the movies. This is a heavily-narrated documentary on Winnipeg, sentimental and at times bitter, and also on Maddin's childhood, but the director's style--and this is a melange of influences working here--and a lot of the more fantastical elements of the city's history that he creates--frequent references to a hidden pair of rivers beneath the pair of rivers that are on the surface, the story about the horses trying to run through one of the rivers and freezing with only their heads being above the ice surface, the long-running television show about a guy who threatens to jump off a ledge and is talked back into the apartment by Maddin's mother every week (see poster)--give you more of a general feeling than information. Sure, I came away from the documentary knowing a little more about Winnipeg, but more importantly, Maddin's able to use the images and his narrative text to help me feel some of the more unique aspects of Winnipeg. Maddin's Winnipeg is a Winnipeg that hits you in the gut. It's a movie about loss, ennui, regret, family, hard work, values, escaping the past, and other stuff, shared in a way that I think most people can connect with despite a lot of bizarre subject matter and the off-the-wall film techniques. The movie also has this amazing ability to make things that just shouldn't be important into things that seem really important. I laughed frequently, but there were several moments that were downright touching. I really liked the extended sequence about the hockey players and the old sports arena, and the reenactments, featuring what I assume really is Guy Maddin's actual mother, are endearingly pointless. I'd recommend this, but somebody who's already seen (and enjoyed?) some of Maddin's other films would probably appreciate it a little more.

Edit: It's not Guy Maddin's mother. It's actress Ann Savage who was most famous for playing Mrs. Thornhill on Saved by the Bell. My apologies to everyone involved.