Tales from the Gimli Hospital (1988) on Netflix
In a Gimli, Manitoba hospital, two children visit their dying mother. Their Icelandic grandmother begins a tale of Einar the Lonely, a smallpox patient in a Gimli from long ago.
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- Netflix3.4/5
- IMDb6.6/101,622 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes71%
Trailer
Plot summary
In present-day Gimli, Manitoba, two children sit with their dying mother in the hospital. Their Icelandic grandmother, Amma, begins a tale of a Gimli from long ago. Einar the Lonely, a fisherman, catches smallpox and is taken to the Gimli hospital. There he meets Gunnar, another patient, and at first both men are glad of a friend nearby during their illness. Soon they are rivals for the attention of the hospital's young nurses. Gunnar wins more of it because he tells stories well and carves fish out of birch bark. The hospital stands above a stable, which heats it, and patients are told to watch a puppet show while a surgeon works.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Tales from the Gimli Hospital (1988)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Guy Maddin shot his debut feature in his aunt's former beauty salon, which was also his childhood home, and gave her a brief part as a bedside vigil-sitter in a shot taken just days before she died at 85.
- The cinematographer Maddin hired refused to come back after the first day of shooting, and instead taught Maddin how to operate the 16mm Bolex camera himself.
- Powerlines that were visible in the frame were hidden by Maddin smearing vaseline directly onto the camera lens.
- Maddin's screenplay for Tales from the Gimli Hospital earned a Genie Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay, even though the script was a series of Post-it notes.
- After losing a grant competition, Maddin asked the Manitoba Arts Council for $9,000 and the council gave him $20,000; his final screenplay for the feature ran only eight pages.
- The mayor of Gimli, the Manitoba town the film is named for, publicly criticized it for portraying the town's people as "some sort of barbarians".
