Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass’ Mesmeric Mythology » PopMatters

Stephen and Timothy Quay have been the most prominent successors to the great history of Polish animation, following in the hallowed footsteps of Walerian Borowczyk, Zbigniew Rybczyński, Jan Lenica, and a few other filmmakers. With Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, the Quay Brothers present their first feature-length film in two decades.

Admittedly, their experimental work tends to function better within the boundaries of short films, as in their masterpiece Street of Crocodiles. That 1986 short was an adaptation of Polish writer and painter Bruno Schulz’s story, and Sanatorium brings the Quays back to Schulz.

Schulz’s original short story, like much of his work, is highly conducive to cinematic adaptation; the wonderful Wojciech Jerzy Has directed his version, The Hourglass Sanatorium, in 1973. The Quay Brothers dress up Schulz’s story with their own highly distinct style, mixing the antiquated aesthetics of silent cinema with creepy stop-motion puppetry and mind-bending visual effects.

The perhaps overly nebulous story follows Józef as he travels by train through a surreal landscape to visit his dying father at the titular sanatorium. There, he discovers that time operates in different registers, and reality breeds realities.

The Quay Brothers weave other stories and themes from Schulz’s writing, especially its aviary imagery, into the temporal chaos of Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. Wrapped around this mystery is a puzzling live-action framing device that seems to be an original idea from the directors. It concerns an old auctioneer selling off oblique items (the warm blood of bees, for instance), including a wooden contraption of great significance.

Containing the retina of a dead man, the device houses various lenses through which the man’s final visions can be seen, but only when sunlight hits the box on a certain day. The auctioneer peers into the apparatus, which seems to contain the stop-motion story itself.

Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass is equivocal to say the least, and bursting with plump metaphors ripe for interpretation. It’s very much a Schulz adaptation in that sense; as he wrote in “Loneliness”, a micro-story in the Sanatorium collection, “It is part of my existence to be the parasite of metaphors, so easily am I carried away by the first simile that comes along”. Consequently, the film is subject to the same criticism as Schulz’s work, and the Quays’ work in general – it can be frustratingly elliptical and sometimes tedious in its abstractions.

That aforementioned Schulz quote continues, “Having been carried away, I have to find my difficult way back, and slowly return to my senses”. Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass sometimes suffers that same sensation, getting too carried away with itself. This is possibly acknowledged by the film itself when a character says of the wooden device, “Does this object have anything to tell us? […] Or is it merely a sick mirage projected through an expanse of radiation? A center that can never be reached?”

Nonetheless, certain subsets of cinephiles will enjoy analyzing Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass and hunting for meaning. This is much easier (and more enjoyable) if you’re familiar with Schulz’s work.

One could liken the wooden contraption in the film to a camera or a projector (what with its lenses and use of light), and perhaps the detached retina belongs to Schulz himself. At the age of 50, in 1942, Schulz was shot dead by a Gestapo officer in the Drohobych Ghetto. This may have been a cynical blessing; shortly after his death, Drohobych was largely liquidated and its remaining Jewish inhabitants were sent to the Belzec extermination camp.

As such, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass can be moving, illuminating as it does the final book published during Schulz’s lifetime. The film uses his own words as narration and dialogue throughout.

It’s also an immaculately designed film. One would expect no less from the Quays, two of the most artisanal and tactile filmmakers, and they do not let fans down. The meticulous detail of their bespoke worlds is imagined with palpable passion, producing astounding miniature sets and puppets. The corridors of the train alone could be studied for hours. Some images are so fantastical, so elaborately constructed, that it feels almost impossible to understand how they were even created.

There has been a mild but encouraging renewal of interest in Soviet-era animation in recent years. Boutique home media distributors such as Radiance and Deaf Crocodile (with their excellent JiříBarta release) have restored and released some countless gems which might have been lost to history. The Quay Brothers’ work has undoubtedly inspired this specific cinephilic curiosity across generations, and Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass is sure to continue that trend. In that sense, it’s another important film in a deeply meaningful filmography, even if it’s not the best entry point.

In his 1936 essay “The Mythologization of Reality”, Schulz writes, “Poetry is the short-circuiting of meaning between words, the impetuous regeneration of primordial myth.” With their abstruse but nonetheless mesmeric and remarkably unique film, the Quay Brothers have regenerated Schulz’s myths yet again and with great poetry.