Sandwiched somewhere between David Lynch and Luis Bunuel is Wojciech Has, a little known Polish director responsible for "The Saragossa Manuscript" and "The Hourglass Sanatorium", two rather grand exercises in surrealism.
"The Hourglass Sanatorium", which might as well be called "Alice in Shoahland", concerns the journey of Jozef, a man who arrives at a derelict sanatorium after an exhausting train journey. Two minutes into the film, and already we're assaulted by a barrage of symbolism. The train represents a shuttle for dead or dying souls. It's a gateway to "the sanatorium", a sort of limbo where life and death commingle before one is shunted permanently off into the afterlife. On another level, the train represents the carriages used to transport Polish Jews to concentration camps during the Holocaust.
So this is a film which not only deals with a dead Jozef stumbling through the memories, events and fantasies of his life, but a film about the culture of a pre-World War 2 Europe. Or rather, the film mirrors Jozef's mental and bodily disintegration to the way Poland crumbled during and after the Holocaust. As the film progresses Jozef will lose his eyesight whilst the world around him likewise falls apart, objects in the sanatorium becoming increasingly claustrophobic, closed and nailed shut, as if ready to be taken away.
But the film offers not only a historical, cultural and personal perspective on death and the passage of time, but a kind of subconscious look at the way Jozef's relationship with his father throughout his life forced him to confront, not only his own mortality, but the perishability of all things.
As the film progresses, we're thus treated to an Alice in Wonderland styled journey in which Jozef bumbles from one strange set piece to the next. Only after multiple viewings do these sequences coalesce into meaning, the film serving up episodes in which Jozef re-experiences events from his life in an increasingly psychedelic fashion. Encounters with naked women, dead Jews, Nazi camps, erotic fantasies, Yiddish chants, memories of his mother, his home, his father, his father's textile shop (a meeting place for Jewish men), his marriage, being disciplined as a child, the encroachment of war and an extended sequence filled with mannequins, clockwork dolls and motionless historical figures, are all thoroughly confusing until your brain starts sorting through all the symbolic information.
On top of this is a subplot which seems to suggest that Jozef's father was killed by the Nazis for assisting or hiding Jews in some way, but the film's intricately linked web of symbols are so esoteric that it's hard to get a read of things. With audiences so unfamiliar to this kind of filmic language, such a film is likely to only appeal to a very narrow range of people.
Adapted from a book by Bruno Shulz, a victim of the Nazis, the film is, at its best, an unconscious (or repressed?) look at the traumas of the Holocaust as well as a journey through the memories of a man who tumbles through time on his deathbed. At its worst, however, this is a film almost opaque in its symbolism. So if you aren't phased by Jodorowsky's "The Holy Mountain", Tarkovsky's "Nostalghia", Bergman's "Hour of the Wolf", Greenaway's "Prospero's Book" and Lynch's "Inland Empire", then give Wojciech Has a taste. If not, stick to drugs.
8/10 – Requires multiple viewings. One has to start with Tarkovsky, Greenaway and Lynch before tackling this beast. See "Night and Fog", "Hotel Terminus" and Melville's "Army of Shadows".
"The Hourglass Sanatorium", which might as well be called "Alice in Shoahland", concerns the journey of Jozef, a man who arrives at a derelict sanatorium after an exhausting train journey. Two minutes into the film, and already we're assaulted by a barrage of symbolism. The train represents a shuttle for dead or dying souls. It's a gateway to "the sanatorium", a sort of limbo where life and death commingle before one is shunted permanently off into the afterlife. On another level, the train represents the carriages used to transport Polish Jews to concentration camps during the Holocaust.
So this is a film which not only deals with a dead Jozef stumbling through the memories, events and fantasies of his life, but a film about the culture of a pre-World War 2 Europe. Or rather, the film mirrors Jozef's mental and bodily disintegration to the way Poland crumbled during and after the Holocaust. As the film progresses Jozef will lose his eyesight whilst the world around him likewise falls apart, objects in the sanatorium becoming increasingly claustrophobic, closed and nailed shut, as if ready to be taken away.
But the film offers not only a historical, cultural and personal perspective on death and the passage of time, but a kind of subconscious look at the way Jozef's relationship with his father throughout his life forced him to confront, not only his own mortality, but the perishability of all things.
As the film progresses, we're thus treated to an Alice in Wonderland styled journey in which Jozef bumbles from one strange set piece to the next. Only after multiple viewings do these sequences coalesce into meaning, the film serving up episodes in which Jozef re-experiences events from his life in an increasingly psychedelic fashion. Encounters with naked women, dead Jews, Nazi camps, erotic fantasies, Yiddish chants, memories of his mother, his home, his father, his father's textile shop (a meeting place for Jewish men), his marriage, being disciplined as a child, the encroachment of war and an extended sequence filled with mannequins, clockwork dolls and motionless historical figures, are all thoroughly confusing until your brain starts sorting through all the symbolic information.
On top of this is a subplot which seems to suggest that Jozef's father was killed by the Nazis for assisting or hiding Jews in some way, but the film's intricately linked web of symbols are so esoteric that it's hard to get a read of things. With audiences so unfamiliar to this kind of filmic language, such a film is likely to only appeal to a very narrow range of people.
Adapted from a book by Bruno Shulz, a victim of the Nazis, the film is, at its best, an unconscious (or repressed?) look at the traumas of the Holocaust as well as a journey through the memories of a man who tumbles through time on his deathbed. At its worst, however, this is a film almost opaque in its symbolism. So if you aren't phased by Jodorowsky's "The Holy Mountain", Tarkovsky's "Nostalghia", Bergman's "Hour of the Wolf", Greenaway's "Prospero's Book" and Lynch's "Inland Empire", then give Wojciech Has a taste. If not, stick to drugs.
8/10 – Requires multiple viewings. One has to start with Tarkovsky, Greenaway and Lynch before tackling this beast. See "Night and Fog", "Hotel Terminus" and Melville's "Army of Shadows".