El Sanatorio de la Clepsidra

The Hourglass Sanatorium is the first bizarre adventure movie I've actually enjoyed. It's an adaptation of Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, but not solely, it also includes sequences from other works by Bruno Schulz. its unique, isolated world, its atmospherics, colours and shapes. The time period of the film is a mixture of elements from the turn-of-the-century Galicia where Schulz grew up, and Has' own pre-World War II memories of the same region.

The production design is outstanding. The cinematography - the costumes, buildings, props and other requisites is absolutely amazing. And so is the camera work. It floats elegantly through the awe-inspiring world created by the design team, frequently incorporating very long tracking shots through the grand sets and locations. The envoirmental attributes is as eye-catchingly surreal too, from the sudden appearance of elephants to some disturbing mechanical mannequins.

And the story is, a subsequent dream-like journey through absurd surrealism, with infinitely random externalized stream of collective consciousness. It's a timeless voyage through the subconsciousness, a puzzle with small bits and pieces scattered throughout its tale, and takes on every thing imaginable. Its a movie experience like you've never seen before, just sit back and enjoy the absurd masterpiece playing front of your very eyes.

But of course, given that the claws of the repulsively fundamentalist and contradictory Communist regime, the authorities forbid Has to submit The Hourglass Sanatorium for the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, but the director managed to smuggle a print abroad so the film could be screened at the festival. The Cannes jury, led by actress Ingrid Bergman, honoured the film with the Jury Prize.

Based on a story collection of the same name by Bruno Schulz, who was shot by the Gestapo in 1942, this movie is one of the rare cases of a congenial adaptation of modern fantastic literature. It's a demanding movie and it is impossible to extract something like a plot line. There are various changes in between time and space, but once you get involved with the narrative, they seem perfectly logical. Also, there are many highly impressive sequences and settings - i have read somewhere (i can't give no reference right now, sorry) that it was the most expensive movie ever made in Poland, and maybe it still is. It certainly is one of the best. And, by the way, there is one scene with a room stuffed full of mannequins that looks like an inspiration to a similar sequence in Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner", which is a great movie of its kind, but was made some years later and did much better at the box office.

The late Polish director Wojceich Has is better known for his amazing "The Saragosa Manuscript" which has a Chinese box structure of nested stories. However, this film (known to english audiences as "The Sandglass"), tops its predecessor in fantastic imagery. Based on several stories of Bruno Schultz, this film might be the most successful recreation of the inner psyche ever commited to celluloid.

A man journeys by dilapidated train (where most of the passengers look like corpses) to visit his ailing father who is kept in a crumbling ornate sanatorium. He is told by a doctor that time exists differently there and his dying father may recover. The man experiences a flood of dreamlike visions of his past and the small Jewish town he was raised in. The father is seen both ill and as a giddy philosopher in an attic full of birds. At some point we get the creeping sensation that it is the man himself who is dying, not the father as a blind train conductor reappears like a death figure. The increasingly baroque episodes become the rich compost of a graveyard.

The film can also been seen as a requiem for the Eastern European Jewish culture that was wiped out by WW2. It isn't an accident that the protagonist is named Joseph and his father Jacob. Many of the films episodes evoke Jewish symbolism.

The movie has no typical narrative or storyline, it is just a series of surrealistic vignettes (surrounded by the framing of a sanatorium with a dying father and time moving differently). So it's all about "finding meaning" and interpretation and symbolism. There is also a heavy dosage of holocaust & judaica themes. For those that like this sort of movie, especially the "film school" and arthouse types, this may be an amazing film. For other movie goers this may be a huge bore and seem meaningless and pretentious. I am somewhere in the middle (and I have studied film and seen numerous "art house" films by choice). I generally found this boring, but appreciate the attempt and historical context.

"Sanatorium pod klepsydra" is a surreal assault on the senses and perhaps one of the most beautifully shot Polish movies ever made.It's based on the remarkable collection of stories 'Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass' written by Bruno Schultz.Our protagonist Josef(Jan Nowicki)travels on a dilapidated and mysterious train to visit his father at a decayed sanatorium in the middle of the Polish countryside.His journey into a tangled world of real and imagined experiences begins.Extremely stylish and surreal mind trip is the best way to describe "Hourglass Sanatorium".Filled with elaborate set-pieces and philosophical dialogue the world imagined by Bruno Schultz is truly one of its kind.The sleazy shots of half-naked women are a nice touch and the glimpse into Jewish culture is fascinating.A must-see for fans of bizarre and unusual cinema.The wax mannequins sequence is stunningly beautiful.9 out of 10.