Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass
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(The Quay Brothers, 2024, U.K./Poland/Germany, 77 minutes)
The first feature film from stop-motion animators the Quay Brothers since 2004’s The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes (which the Webster Film Series was also the St. Louis venue for, circa April 2007), Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass concerns a ghostly train journey on a forgotten branch line that transports a son, Jozef, to his dying father at a remote Galician sanatorium. Upon arrival, Jozef finds the sanatorium entirely moribund and run by the dubious Dr. Gotard, who tells him that his father’s death has not yet occurred and that here they are always late by a certain interval of time of undefined length. Jozef comes to realize that the sanatorium is a floating world halfway between sleep and wakefulness and that time and events cannot be measured in any tangible form.
In Polish with English subtitles.
The first feature film from stop-motion animators the Quay Brothers since 2004’s The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes (which the Webster Film Series was also the St. Louis venue for, circa April 2007), Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass concerns a ghostly train journey on a forgotten branch line that transports a son, Jozef, to his dying father at a remote Galician sanatorium. Upon arrival, Jozef finds the sanatorium entirely moribund and run by the dubious Dr. Gotard, who tells him that his father’s death has not yet occurred and that here they are always late by a certain interval of time of undefined length. Jozef comes to realize that the sanatorium is a floating world halfway between sleep and wakefulness and that time and events cannot be measured in any tangible form.
In Polish with English subtitles.
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