I found out about this film when I was looking for strange and surreal films that I could potentially cover on this blog. The poster and screenshots piqued my interest, so I checked it out, and I think it’s definitely up Obscurnema’s alley. It’s the sort of film where there’s enough that’s understandable in it, so you can draw your own conclusions out of it, but it doesn’t quite give everything to you straight. Instead, it takes you on a trip through a mix of both actual and symbolic events. While I can’t claim to know every detail here, especially since there’s a clear historical and cultural element that I wasn’t a part of, I think I can talk about what I got out of the film, as well as what I’ve gleaned from outside sources. Since this isn’t exactly a linear narrative, and the events are intentionally surreal, I’ll try to note a lot of the major elements going on in the story, though this won’t exactly be a straightforward synopsis.
The film follows the experiences of Jozef within the titular sanatorium. He initially goes there to visit his elderly father but finds that the facility is rather rundown and there aren’t many workers. He learns that the sanatorium has found a way to manipulate time for its patients, and Jozef quickly learns that they mean this very literally. Most of the film ends up becoming a dream-like journey into Jozef’s memories, starting from when he was a young boy (though Jozef never changes actors throughout this experience). We get to see what his life in his home village was like, with a mother who never seems to believe that he’ll grow up, a father who’s rather quirky and odd but also pretty dismissive of Jozef and his interests/ambitions, and a town “naughty girl” who’s rather playful towards him but obviously won’t sleep with him because he’s a kid. It’s also shown that it’s a Hebrew village, and we see some traditional rituals/gatherings, though I’m not versed enough in Judaism to know what they are. We also see two figures that were important to his younger years: Rudolf, another young boy who Jozef shared a fascination of travel and adventure with, and Bianka, a princess that he had once loved and who had liked him, but he never fully pursued because he seemed afraid to go against the superiors, as well as being on this personal quest to “expose the mystique of the world.” Several other incidents occur, such as encounters with old colonial era soldiers and a trip to what at first appears to be a wax museum of historical leaders (though they might not be entirely wax after all), but I think it would be better to discuss them in the next section, since this is the sort of film where you need to discuss what the events might be saying in addition to what is actually happening. Therefore, let’s continue on into my perspective on this film.
From what I understand, this film was inspired by the writings of author Bruno Schulz, and more specifically, his book Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. I’ve never read his work, admittedly, but those that have seem to describe it as either personal, surreal, metaphysical, or all three. The film’s director, Wojciech Jerzy Has, said that he was trying to capture the world that Shulz created through his poetic writings, in addition to the stories of the writings themselves. In that way, this film is similar to The Color of Pomegranates, which also tried to capture the world of its respective poet’s work, and also involved telling the personal history of the writer as well. Of course, they’re still different, since Pomegranates was more like a series of living art pieces on film, while Hourglass is closer to a “traditional” film but very dream-like. While I can’t compare the film to the author’s writings, I do think Has managed to capture a very unique feel in this film. Throughout my time watching it, I felt this ever-present sense of both unease and guilt. I felt uneasy because of the film’s ethereal quality that always made you think like you were on the brink of figuring out the truth, but it never quite came. However, the guilt I felt was a little more layered, or at least harder to fully pin down. Throughout the film, Jozef has a very child-like demeanor, even though he’s played by the same adult actor all throughout. He has desires and ambitions to adventure out and expose the mystique of the world, but it’s also evident that he wants approval from authority figures on some level too. For example, he’s repeatedly shown trying to get his father’s attention when his father is out doing stuff throughout the film, only to be repeatedly brushed off. A notable moment involves Jozef discovering some sort of lost or ancient book that has all this unknown or sought after information in it, so he ecstatically shows it to his father. However, his father dismisses it entirely, claiming that books are fleeting pleasures that only mean something to people in the very brief window of time in which they first read them. He’s basically saying that Jozef’s whole interest in this is childish and frivolous, leaving Jozef resentful and more determined to expose the truths of the world. This immaturity/insecurity seemed to be a recurring issue for Jozef throughout his life. The princess that he loved, Bianka, was clearly interested in him and, during his time working for the current regime, wanted him to defy his higher ups a bit, be truly adventurous. However, he was clearly unwilling to do that and seemed to convince himself that his “quest to expose mysticism” and such was what he needed to stick with, leaving her to scream that he’s a coward. His buddy, Rudolf, is at first into this whole ambitious drive that Jozef espouses when they’re kids, but the more encounters they have throughout the film (and, I’d assume, as the years went on), Rudolf became more disenchanted with it, as Jozef’s ambitious words seemed to ring hollow. Eventually, and assumingly years later, when Jozef is acting as some sort of military leader for the regime, his group stops a carriage on the road, which turns out to be Bianka and Rudolf, now together (though still with Rudolf as a child actor and Bianka as a twenty-something actress). Even while Bianka starts crying when she finds out her father died during this event, Jozef still seems to be going on in his childish way when trying to order everyone to create a proper funeral. He ends up telling Rudolf that he has to take care of and comfort Bianka now, even though Rudolf is clearly already doing that. I think this is one version of the guilt that I felt from this film: the guilt of living your life for stuff you convince yourself is productive but is really just you spinning your wheels and remaining in an immature state. It came across to me that Jozef’s “lofty ambitions” were more so a product of insecurity and fear rather than self-assuredness and conviction. Thus, he basically wasted a lot of his life while the people closest to him either passed on or grew up without him, leaving him to be a pawn for a harsh regime. During one of the scenes where he goes back to his mother, she tells him that everyone he used to know in his home village is gone, and that moment really hit me. It might be a bit personal of me to talk about this, but I’ve often felt that I haven’t really made much of my life and that I might just be spinning my own wheels. Maybe this is just me projecting onto the film, but I do think there’s enough evidence here to draw that conclusion from, even if it’s only a personal conclusion (but, hey, isn’t that what art’s about?). However, there is another level of guilt I felt from this film. You see, throughout the film, there’s several moments that might clue you in to something very heavy that happened in Europe many decades ago. During one scene, Jozef is in a basement and looking through a grate in the street above at many folks rushing out of his home village, and in the beginning scene of the film, Jozef is on a dreary train to the sanatorium with several passengers that are very pale and seem to be dressed in prisoner garb. If you haven’t picked up on it, they’re alluding to the Holocaust, which gives the scene with the mother saying that so many people are gone now a whole new meaning. This is the sort of guilt I mean: guilt that humanity ever inflicted this upon anyone and guilt for these people that had to go through it. Obviously, I wasn’t there in 30s/40s Germany and Poland, and I’ve never been a fascist, but it’s hard not to feel strong remorse about this event, since it was such a vile and heinous act. Given that there’s this undercurrent to the film, you have to wonder what it means that Jozef remembers being a worker for the current government. The soldiers he works with don’t look like Nazi soldiers, rather they look more colonial, but given that he dreamed of adventure during his childhood and had a run in with colonial soldiers around that time, you have to wonder if he’s conflating these two memories together in his head. Heck, maybe there’s some commentary in there about both how his BS boyish life quest has caused him to delude himself into going along with a horrible dictatorship, and also about how older colonial-esque armies committed many atrocities of their own even if that era was romanticized in adventure stories. This is what I mean, there’s a lot you can look into and pull from this film, and sadly, I don’t have time to go over everything that I saw in it. To be honest, it would probably be best for you to experience some of the events here for yourself, so that you can absorb and develop your own impressions from them. The last thing I want to mention before I wrap up is an interesting aspect of the film’s presentation. A lot of the interior shots in the film, no matter what location we’re in, have overgrowth, cobwebs, or rickety construction. This is interesting, because that’s exactly what the sanatorium looks like on its own, which is probably because Jozef is experiencing all of this within the facility itself. It’s another Silent Hill-type scenario, but again, before that series even came into being. Plus, most scene transitions involve Jozef crawling under a bed/table or moving through rooms, which also helps give the impression that this is all taking place in a finite space in the real world. I just thought that was a cool detail that they kept going throughout the film, definitely added to the experience of it all. Sadly, I think I’ve gone on for a bit too long here, and even though I could keep going, I should probably wrap it up here.
I definitely recommend The Hourglass Sanatorium. I’m sure that it won’t be for everyone, surrealist works usually aren’t, but I think it creates a very weighted journey that you can find a lot of interest and connection in. It won’t exactly be a straightforward watch, but that’s part of what makes it so fascinating. I hope that you all can come away with different perspectives on this film, and also talk with others about it to see how your takes differ and line up. For next time, I’m planning on covering another TV series, though one that’s much shorter than The Kingdom, so get ready for that. Until then, I hope you find the Sanatorium accommodating.