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DVD Description
Set in pre- World War II era. A young man is on a strange train to see his dying father in a sanatorium. But the place is going to ruin and recalls a lot of memories from the past. He is beset by soldiers from the past, colonial black mercenaries, girls from his early life, and his parents. It is an interior adventure, with unusual atmospheric flair and extraordinary sets.
Product Description
United Kingdom released, PAL/Region 0 DVD: LANGUAGES: English ( Dolby Digital Stereo ), English ( Subtitles ), WIDESCREEN (1.78:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Interactive Menu, Scene Access, SYNOPSIS: Set in pre- World War II era. A young man is on a strange train to see his dying father in a sanatorium. But the place is going to ruin and recalls a lot of memories from the past. He is beset by soldiers from the past, colonial black mercenaries, girls from his early life, and his parents. It is an interior adventure, with unusual atmospheric flair and extraordinary sets. SCREENED/AWARDED AT: Cannes Film Festival, ...The Hour-Glass Sanatorium ( Sanatorium pod klepsydra )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
35 of 36 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
The Hour-Glass Sanatorium (Sanatorum Pod Klepsydra) is an unusual film directed by Wojciech Has, which is based on a novel by Bruno Schultz. The story begins with Józef (Jan Nowicki) arriving by train to a sanatorium to visit his father. The sanatorium is immense and in disrepair, with vegetation growing out of the floor in nearly every room and hallway. There is a strangeness to this place as time seems to stand still here. Józef finds only a nurse and a doctor tending to all the sleeping patients there.
Józef is told he can go to sleep and rest, bringing us into the strange world of his dreams, which are like a hodgepodge of his past and fantasies. The Hour-Glass Sanatorium captures the essence of dreaming in which at any given moment the scene changes and completely bizarre happenings are taken to be normal. Wandering the dizzy maze of Józef's past leaves us grasping for meaning. The edges of reality are blurred and the nature of most of the events is truly comparable to hallucinations.
Although there is sure to be a lot of symbolism that one can find mixed into the story, one icon that is hard to overlook is the birds. There are birds throughout the movie, perhaps because Józef's father has an affinity to them. Furthermore, another inescapable element is that many of the characters in the film are Jewish and has a lot of imagery related to Judaism. The dress (or undress) of the women in the movie also deserves comment. Many of the women wear loose gowns that periodically expose their bosom or are not dressed at all, but not much notice is given to this fact.
The visual beauty and complexity of The Hour-Glass Sanatorium is staggering. However, I don't think everyone will appreciate it, as a seemingly nonsensical film about strange dreams is not for everyone. Viewers who have an appreciation for unusual and intense cinema, such as Andrej Zulawski's work, are likely to find this surrealistic horror to be fulfilling.
Józef is told he can go to sleep and rest, bringing us into the strange world of his dreams, which are like a hodgepodge of his past and fantasies. The Hour-Glass Sanatorium captures the essence of dreaming in which at any given moment the scene changes and completely bizarre happenings are taken to be normal. Wandering the dizzy maze of Józef's past leaves us grasping for meaning. The edges of reality are blurred and the nature of most of the events is truly comparable to hallucinations.
Although there is sure to be a lot of symbolism that one can find mixed into the story, one icon that is hard to overlook is the birds. There are birds throughout the movie, perhaps because Józef's father has an affinity to them. Furthermore, another inescapable element is that many of the characters in the film are Jewish and has a lot of imagery related to Judaism. The dress (or undress) of the women in the movie also deserves comment. Many of the women wear loose gowns that periodically expose their bosom or are not dressed at all, but not much notice is given to this fact.
The visual beauty and complexity of The Hour-Glass Sanatorium is staggering. However, I don't think everyone will appreciate it, as a seemingly nonsensical film about strange dreams is not for everyone. Viewers who have an appreciation for unusual and intense cinema, such as Andrej Zulawski's work, are likely to find this surrealistic horror to be fulfilling.
19 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
Just to point out that the original book here was by Bruno Schulz - rather than Jan Potocki (who wrote "The Manuscript Found in Saragossa", which has likewise been made into a film by Has).
The book, often titled "Sanatorium Under The Sign of The Hourglass" in English translation, is truly exceptional, and well worth tracking down.
The book, often titled "Sanatorium Under The Sign of The Hourglass" in English translation, is truly exceptional, and well worth tracking down.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD|Amazon Verified Purchase
Second viewing in two days, as gradually the film seeps in, as this is a sensory overload; built on refined dream imagery, bristling with hidden meaning, an echoing beauty and a black gothic horror depiction, driven with the constant desire to make connections across the partition of death. Our protagonist rides along a train of death to be dropped by the blind conductor at the asylum.
A Jewish film transcending ethnicity, illustrating over arching themes of both finding a meaning to life and death. As a result we are led through a series of composed framed vignettes where flowing commonalities emerge; Jewish life depicted in the ghetto, finding a meaning to continue to survive, women with bared breasts who offer their sensuality along with the everpresent birds compressed together by the perpetual pressures of history.
All set in the coloured decaying grandeur of Miss Faversham's gothic, delapidated chic of a crumbling lifestyle; welcome to the sanatorium. Climbing through an Alice in Wonderland world where the smell of an impending blood soaked holocaust pervades the air; as the old people emerge with their last stint lifestyles. The train at the beginning brings the conductor into the scene- leading the people to their eventual resting place. Appearing both at the begining and the end he makes himself understood.
The narrative concerns father-son love and an estranged relation with a mother as time warps, bends and melds into other stranger dimensions as the beautiful camera work and meticulous sets bring the heart hammering flow of dreams stopped...then to start ticking away within the film. As near to dreamworld surrealist drifts into the subconsious as ever likely to be rendered in film.
Turn the soundtrack up when watching, as this brings out another hidden dimension within its murk ridden depths, an avant garde collation of moaning, birds and proto industrial sounds.
Whereas Lynch lost a plot in Inland Empire this shows how it should really have been depicted- built behine the Iron Curtain in 1973, highlighting another sensibility, breathing within the seething humdrum of outwardly communistic lives hiding a deep well of emotional literacy.
This is one of the greatest counter cultural films of modernity sitting next to El Topo and anything Jodorowsky assembled.
A Jewish film transcending ethnicity, illustrating over arching themes of both finding a meaning to life and death. As a result we are led through a series of composed framed vignettes where flowing commonalities emerge; Jewish life depicted in the ghetto, finding a meaning to continue to survive, women with bared breasts who offer their sensuality along with the everpresent birds compressed together by the perpetual pressures of history.
All set in the coloured decaying grandeur of Miss Faversham's gothic, delapidated chic of a crumbling lifestyle; welcome to the sanatorium. Climbing through an Alice in Wonderland world where the smell of an impending blood soaked holocaust pervades the air; as the old people emerge with their last stint lifestyles. The train at the beginning brings the conductor into the scene- leading the people to their eventual resting place. Appearing both at the begining and the end he makes himself understood.
The narrative concerns father-son love and an estranged relation with a mother as time warps, bends and melds into other stranger dimensions as the beautiful camera work and meticulous sets bring the heart hammering flow of dreams stopped...then to start ticking away within the film. As near to dreamworld surrealist drifts into the subconsious as ever likely to be rendered in film.
Turn the soundtrack up when watching, as this brings out another hidden dimension within its murk ridden depths, an avant garde collation of moaning, birds and proto industrial sounds.
Whereas Lynch lost a plot in Inland Empire this shows how it should really have been depicted- built behine the Iron Curtain in 1973, highlighting another sensibility, breathing within the seething humdrum of outwardly communistic lives hiding a deep well of emotional literacy.
This is one of the greatest counter cultural films of modernity sitting next to El Topo and anything Jodorowsky assembled.
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