A controversial film remembered
LAMBSWOOL CINEMA
Caelum Vatnsdal
It’s been twenty years since the hot summer of 1988, when Icelandic-Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin unleashed his first feature-length film, Tales From the Gimli Hospital, upon the world.
At first, the world did not notice. It was only another lowbudget Canadian movie, after all – or so it was assumed! The story told of the early settlers’ times in Gimli, Manitoba, during the smallpox epidemic that killed off nearly a third of the population.
Two men, Einar the Lonely and Gunnar the Large, fall with the pox and end up in the same M*A*S*H-style tent hospital, where they are ministered to by pre-pubescent angels of mercy and sadistic doctors brandishing puppets in one hand and bone saws in the other.
Eventually, through the tales they tell one another, the two men become mortal enemies, so much so that even a climactic glima wrestling match fails to settle the conflict.
By the summer of 1989, Maddin had his first review in the Old Grey Lady, the New York Times. The notice, written by Stephen Holden, was positive, if perplexed. The movie, Holden wrote, “is not recommended to those who demand polished film making or clear-cut storytelling, but it might tickle those whose tastes run to elliptical movie parody.
“Many bits of seemingly surreal business,” he continued, “supposedly draw on ancient Icelandic customs, like using oil squeezed from fish as a hair pomade, cleaning the face with straw, and sleeping under dirt blankets… it is a strange piece of work.”
These very same “ancient Icelandic customs” had already attracted attention a good deal closer to home for Maddin. Citizens in Gimli, and even the town’s mayor, were up in arms about the picture, accusing it of grossly mischaracterizing the Icelandic settlers and their curious ways. According to some – including, apparently, Gimli’s mayor Ted Arnason – the film styled the Icelanders as uncouth barbarians and was a despicable mockery that should sink like a dynamite barge to the bottom of Lake Winnipeg.
Even the L-H did not take kindly to the movie at first blush. “The headline GORY GIMLI MOVIE has hit the syndicated news and stirred Icelandic Clubs to include a write up in their newsletters and others to send in clippings of this unusual black and white movie,” wrote editor Einar Arnason in July of 1988.
“When Guy Madden [sic] was struggling with his limited budget, he probably correctly concluded, the need for attention was paramount. He succeeded in establishing his name... Perhaps Guy will be a bit kinder in his portrayal of Icelanders in the future.
It is hard to take, especially when you take pride in your heritage such as the Icelanders have so successfully established.” “I remember a front page [Winnipeg Free Press] story that tried to whip up a frenzy about it,” Maddin recalls.
“I guess they succeeded! I had anonymous letters sent to me through the Winnipeg Film Group, some containing hardfiskur, and someone tossed a handful of chicken gods [Lake Winnipeg stones with holes worn through them – ed.] through my window at home. I’d spent enough time in Gimli to know what that meant!
“And then there was the time I came home to find an angry fisherman had entirely wrapped my bicycle in one of his sturdy fishnets, complete with flagged buoy! It was days before I managed to free it.”
Maddin was reluctant to even speak to this subject lest it whip up the frenzy anew, but he remains defiant. “Those were days of terror, but the tales had to be told, and no amount of pressure from the community could silence me.”
Eventually, in an unexpected turn of events, Maddin found himself redeemed. “The film was shown in Reykjavík,” he recalls, “and I was seated next to President Vigdis [Finnbogadóttir].
Some Icelanders had teased me that the president was going to be my date. Suddenly, the national anthem played, and Vigdis strolled regally up to this empty chair, swiveled on her hips in the way ordained by the Viking maidens of ancient times, and deposited herself upright in the seat next to me.
She was my date for the night. We watched the film in extreme serenity together – nothing undignified (although someone nearby, and I pray it wasn’t Vigdis herself, had eaten herring for dinner and was burping it up). Once the movie was over, I recall some anthem or another revving up; and just as regally as Vigdis had arrived she marched out again. Other than poking around in her lap for some popcorn during the film I had no other contact with her.”
So, armed with this experience, Maddin returned to Canada to find that the foofooraw had died down. He credits the film’s acceptance in Iceland for this development.
And now the film is a clearcut cult classic and acclaimed by critics around the world; and not only this, but Maddin has repeated his crime by lampooning not Gimli, but the city of Winnipeg in his newest picture My Winnipeg.
Here again it appears he will be let off the hook scot-free. For twenty years, Guy Maddin’s Tale From the Gimli Hospital has been, for many viewers, the true face of Gimli, and of the Icelandic settlers. But truth comes in many forms, and here we might say that, while the truths expressed in Gimli Hospital are not to everyone’s taste, they have resonated with screen audiences around the world for two decades, and perhaps we must allow history itself to bend to this new cinematic reality.
For now, Maddin and his screen-crimes continue to flourish, and in Gimli there can no longer be heard bellowing cries of outrage. An uneasy détente has been reached, and the greenbrown waves lap quietly at the beach once again.
|
