Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. 2024. UK/Poland/Germany. Written and directed by the Quay Brothers. DCP courtesy KimStim. In Polish; English subtitles. 76 min.
Twenty years after their last feature, the Quay Brothers return to the work of Polish author and visual artist Bruno Schulz (The Street of Crocodiles) for inspiration. A son’s visit to his dying father begins with a phantom train ride to a decaying, otherworldly sanatorium, where he experiences seven fragmented “manifestations” of a parental entity. Applying their meticulously handcrafted, stop-motion puppet animation and musical sensibilities, along with moments of live action, they translate Schulz’s metaphorical language to the screen. The “degraded” sense of reality that the filmmakers admire in the writer’s work minimizes characters, narrative, and the spoken word, aspiring instead to a visualization of the metaphysical.
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