And thus this movie begins...

In the modern town of Gimli, two young children watch their mother slowly dying in a hospital.

To distract them, their grandmother tells them the story of Gimli long ago. In this story, the villager’s lives are disrupted by an outbreak of smallpox. (Actually, I only think that it was smallpox, because the tell-tale wounds looked more like stitches after an operation.)

The village has poor medical facilities, so the sufferers have to sleep in a barn on hay covered beds. Einar, a young man who just recently was struck down by the disease, finds himself in this local hospital with all the other sufferers, including his future friend and enemy Gunnar. All of them are somewhere between life and death. The two friends grow close, but Einar’s envy of Gunnar’s popularity with the nurses and a shared secret threaten to eventually tear them apart....

This film is entirely set in the surreal town of Gimli. It also features strange behavior, like the people washing their faces with straw, squeezing the insides of fish onto their heads (Einar uses it as “hair gel” to tame his curls), the nurses rub dead birds onto the patient’s bruises, and a cow that literally lives under a bed. I also noticed that for some reason fishes play an important part in many scenes: for example Gunnar enjoys cutting bark into fish shapes and Einar works at a fish smokehouse. I especially found it funny that when the doctor is drawing blood, instead of anesthesia, the nurses stage a puppet show to distract the victims. It was also amusing that instead of using a black actor, they painted a white man black, and this looked very silly. Even the nurses are unusual, with exaggerated dark makeup and 1920’s bobbed hairstyles.

Unfortunately, I didn’t watch the director’s commentary, so I didn’t really understand the true story of Gimli. From what I saw in the movie, I made the conclusion that the people living in Gimli are some sort of Icelandic immigrants in America, maybe Canada.

This film is shot entirely in black and white and the viewing quality makes it seem as if this movie was made at least 50 years ago. At one point, when Einar faints in a delirium, he starts hallucinating and seeing visions in red (a cabaret singer, water ballet swimmers, dancers). Even the music comes from old records – you can almost hear the gramophone needle on the record. The acting is also very exaggerated, paying special attention to using the face to express emotions, thus it reminds me of the silent movies of the early 1900’s. There isn’t very much dialogue, other then the grandmother’s story-telling and the first conversation between Gunnar and Einar. All other talking seems to be in Icelandic, although the style leads me to believe that it probably was only gibberish. Most interestingly, as far as I know, this movie was made with a very low budget, about 10,000 dollars.

In short, my last words are: watch it! You won't regret it, even if you're not a big fan of Avant Garde cinema. I also recommend some of G. Maddin’s other films, such as “The Saddest Music in the World” and the ballet/movie “Dracula - Pages from a Virgin's Diary.”