Sanatorium pod klepsydra - Wojciech Has

un film tratto da una storia di Bruno Schulz, dentro ci sono la vita e la morte, i sogni, gli ebrei, l'amore, la comunità, la persecuzione, il padre, e la madre, e molto altro.
c'è un mondo dentro il film, che Wojciech Has dirige da fuoriclasse, e lo è senza dubbio.
uno di quei film difficili da raccontare, da vedere più di una volta per iniziare a capire qualcosa, ma lo sforzo sarà pienamente ricompensato.
certo che capire di sogni e psicoanalisi aiuta non poco, e comunque è una festa per gli occhi e per la mente.
da cercare, trovare e non perdere più, siamo ai piani alti del Cinema - Ismaele

QUI il film completo con sottotitoli in spagnolo

…Un joyau qui s’inscrit dans l’unicité. Placé sous le signe du morbide, le film de Wojciech Has nous renvoie à notre mortalité avec une mélancolie douloureuse et absolument bouleversante, soulignée par une musique somptueuse, malheureusement indisponible en CD. Les affiches cinéma polonaise et française, signées par l’un des maîtres de l’illustration polonaise, Starowieyski, donnent un bel aperçu de ce que ce long métrage peut offrir aux spectateurs qui ne redoutent pas l’hermétisme. Les adeptes de Béla Tarr ou d’Andrei Tarkovski apprécieront. On retrouve chez ces trois auteurs des réflexions métaphysiques servies par des réalisations virtuoses où les décors et l’esthétisme participent à la même émotion intellectuelle. Si Tarkovski est toujours à la mode et le talent de Béla Tarr enfin reconnu, il est désolant de constater que Wojcieh Has, qui fut peu actif après La clespydre, jusqu’à sa mort à la fin des années 90, soit aussi méconnu du public contemporain français pourtant généreux et curieux…

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…In the sanitarium, Joseph finds that Dr. Gotard is maintaining his father's life signs by slowing down time. In fact, here time has come to a full stop and has started to travel backward. Thus, Joseph is able to revisit his youth in a Hasidic village. Not only are his old friends and family there, but so are the Three Wise Men with advice on buying on credit, as well as some samba-dancing, saber-wielding Haitian soldiers from his boyhood fantasies.

Eventually, Joseph returns through the corridors of time to the pedestrian present and crawls into bed with his ailing father, who complains that his son has not visited him sooner. Childhood memories fade as Joseph tumbles back through the Slavic looking glass to take back the responsibility of middle age.

An exploration of immortality, memory and the functions of psychoanalysis, "The Sandglass" pours out its grains of wisdom in a deluge of ambiguity. Not for clock-watchers or fans of quick pace or plot.

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Our protagonist is on a train to go visit his sick father. Apart from that very little of the plot can be known for certain. Time is treated in a wild manner, where the past is visited and jumped through with little more than a masked scene transition. We are inside our protagonist’s memories, as people, moments, and historical events from his life return to entice and haunt him. The subtext points towards the Holocaust, but there seems to be more than that going on in this often traumatic, personal, surreal adventure. Sexualised, voluptuous females bare their flesh with abundant and bountiful cleavage. Nature intrudes into the buildings as vines wrap around the walls and water drips continuously in the background. The cinematography is atmospheric with its soft, dreamlike tracking shots and layered framing. The soundtrack beats and shrieks, adding to the disorientation and uneasiness of the fragmented narrative. It is almost Felliniesque in the way that characters come and go and dreams and reality mix together whimsically.

The greatest glory of The Hour-Glass Sanatorium is the set design and use of locations. The sets are complex, beautifully constructed and endlessly detailed. They create an expansive, distinctive world that is rich with both the beautiful and the decrepit. Subtle use of unnatural colour lavishes each wonderful location. Characters have self-reflexive discussions about the nature of time and memory, and the film has a strange obsession with birds. We are asked to ponder just what is real and what is fake, and if it really matters in the context of past events. There are mystical, playful scenes, such as a mannequin tea-party, although that quickly turns eerie and frightening. There is a strange sense of humour throughout the film, even as the tone shifts more towards horror as danger sets in around our protagonist and his paranoia grows. Everything is highly poetic, metaphoric and decorative. It is easy to get lost in such an imaginative, surreal, deeply textured film, with an exceptionally powerful, visually epic ending.

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