22/10/2024 - Twins Stephen and Timothy Quay return to cinema with a hallucinated feature that makes fun of time, inspired by the stories of writer Bruno Schulz

Presented at the Giornate degli Autori in Venice and in the Dare section at the latest edition of the BFI London Film Festival, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass [+see also:
interview: Quay Brothers
film profile] is the latest effort by brothers Stephen and Timothy Quay, who return to measure themselves up against the oeuvre of Bruno Schulz, an author much beloved by the two American directors, who had already adapted another story from the Jewish Polish writer, Street of Crocodiles, in 1985.

The plot of Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass is lean: citizen Josez goes to a sanatorium to take care of his dying father and discovers that there, the perception of time and space has a different dimension compared to the normal course of things. On this slim narrative structure, the Quay brothers build a work with crazy and macabre tones that expands until it covers every fragment of existence. Figurative inventions, imagined by a dark and vibrant mise en scène, are made up of images shot in studio alternating with spectral stop-motion, to recreate environments and situations that plunge the spectator into an endless nightmare.

This surreal atmosphere, which mixes the horrifying with the comic, is typical of a certain Central European literature from the beginning of the 20th century (Bruno Schulz cites Kafka amongst his influences) and the Quay brothers handle this material in a very free fashion, having fun playing with time and expanding their scenes in an almost psychedelic way. This sick world full of strange characters, according to the Quay brothers, can only be recreated thanks to animation, reducing dialogue to a minimum and giving flesh to Schulz’s fantasy with images and sounds. The adventures that Josez goes through have in fact something picaresque about them: he will find his father again, only to then lose him forever. He will split in three, and one will go back home, another will wander forever in the sanatorium, and the latter will die.

Much like its absurd characters, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass is a work out of time, far from contemporary fashion and vices, turned towards the past and looking towards posterity. The world that the Quay brothers have built is one so ethereal and elusive that, paradoxically, it is destined to last, in this confused mass of memories we call cinema.

Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass was produced by Koninck Studios SpK Galicia (UK) and IKH Pictures Production (Poland) and co-produced by The Match Factory (Germany) and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute (Poland), in association with Telewizja Polska (Poland). The Match Factory handles international sales.

(Translated from Italian)

Photogallery 29/08/2024: Venice 2024 - Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass

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© 2024 Isabeau de Gennaro for Cineuropa @iisadege