Sanatorium pod klepsydrą / Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (2024)

Timothy Quay & Stephen Quay: Sanatorium pod klepsydrą / Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (GB/PL/DE 2024).

Sanatorium pod klepsydrą według braci Quay

United Kingdom, Poland, Germany 2024

Director: Timothy Quay, Stephen Quay

Based on the novel (1937) by Bruno Schulz (1892-1942).

Animation with short live action inserts

Starring: Tadeusz Janiszewski, Allison Bell, Andrzej Klak, Wioletta Kopanska

Languages: Polish

76 min

    Distributor: The Match Factory, subtitles: English

    Love & Anarchy 38th Helsinki International Film Festival (HIFF)

    Viewed at WHS Teatteri Union, Helsinki, Sat 27.9.2025 at 16.30–17.46 

The Polish writer and painter Bruno Schulz was murdered by the Nazis on 19 Nov 1942 in the Drohobycz Ghetto in German-occupied Poland.

Previous film adaptation (live action): Wojciech J. Has: Sanatorium pod klepsydrą / The Hourglass Sanatorium (PL 1973). IMDb: "Józef visits his dying father at a remote mental institution, where time itself doesn't seem to exist, and the line between dreams and memories becomes indistinguishable."

Eija Niskanen (HIFF 2025): "The legendary Quay Brothers return with a surreal new ghost story, blending stop-motion animation with a dreamlike train journey through Eastern Europe."

"The twin brothers Timothy and Stephen Quay have spent decades creating their peculiar animations of captivating micro-worlds. Their latest work is their third feature-length film, following the path paved by Street of Crocodiles (1985). Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass is also based on the novels of the Polish-Jewish writer Bruno Schulz. The Quay brothers were fascinated by Schulz’s masterful use of language and the metaphorical imagery that seemed to detach from reality. Animation provides excellent tools for visualising such imagery."

"Sanatorium is divided into seven episodes, each beginning with looking through the retina of a dead eye. Jozef travels to an Eastern European sanatorium to visit his father, who is half in the realm of the dead, half alive. The story and characters seem to split in two, and the sanatorium reveals itself as a mysterious place full of misleading corridors and labyrinths."

"The Quay brothers spent nineteen years making the film, animating and filming it mostly on their own to a pre-existing musical score. When Polish television joined the production, live-action segments with Polish actors were filmed. Even these transform into dreamlike unreality in the hands of the Quay duo. Seeking a logical narrative is hopeless, but the film flows according to the reasoning of dreams and the subconscious." Eija Niskanen (translated by Kati Ilomäki)

"Legendaaristen Quay-veljesten surrealistinen uutuus on stop motion -animaatiolla maustettu kummitustarina, joka heittää katsojan huuruiselle junamatkalle Itä-Eurooppaan."

"Kaksoisveljet Timothy ja Stephen Quay ovat vuosikymmeniä luoneet omalaatuisia kiehtovien mikromaailmojen animaatioitaan. Uusin niistä on heidän kolmas täyspitkä elokuvansa, joka jatkaa Street of Crocodiles -animaation (1985) viitoittamalla tiellä. Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass perustuu niin ikään puolanjuutalaisen Bruno Schultzin romaaneihin. Quay-veljeksiä kiehtoivat Schultzin romaanien taitava kielenkäyttö ja niiden todellisuudesta irtoava metaforinen kuvasto. Niiden visualisointiin animaatio tarjoaa hyvät välineet."

"Sanatorium jakautuu seitsemään jaksoon, jotka alkavat aina kuolleen silmän retinan läpi katsomisesta. Jozef matkustaa jonnekin itäeurooppalaiseen parantolaan tapaamaan isäänsä. Isä on jo puoliksi tuonelan mailla, puoliksi elossa. Tarina ja henkilöt tuntuvat jakaantuvan kahtia, ja parantola paljastuu mystiseksi paikaksi täynnä harhaanjohtavia käytäviä ja labyrintteja."

"Quay-veljekset käyttivät 19 vuotta elokuvan tekemiseen animoiden ja filmaten sen pääosin kahdestaan jo valmiiseen musiikkiin. Puolan television tultua mukaan tuotantoon kuvattiin live-jaksot puolalaisten näyttelijöiden kera. Nekin muuntuvat Quayn parivaljakon käsissä unenomaisen epätodellisiksi. Loogista tarinaa on turha hakea, mutta unen ja alitajunnan logiikalla toimiva elokuva soljuu." Eija Niskanen

IMDb: "A ghostly train journey on a forgotten branch line transports a man visiting his dying father in a sanatorium to the edge of a mythic forest. Based on the book of the same name by Bruno Schultz."

AA:  The masters of stop motion animation, the Quay Brothers, return in Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass to the source of their breakthrough movie Street of Crocodiles (GB 1986): the Polish writer Bruno Schulz.

The movie is image-driven. It is a remarkable achievement in visual art.

I discovered the Quay Brothers (born in America, based in England) via Street of Crocodiles, and at the same time I found their soulmate and predecessor, the Czech stop motion guru Jan Švankmajer (born in 1934, still with us). The brothers had found their style before discovering Švankmajer. In our 1987 spring season we screened a Švankmajer/Quay program curated by Jayne Pilling for the BFI titled "Alchemists of the Surreal". During the same season, Tampere Film Festival mounted a Švankmajer retrospective of their own, and Street of Crocodiles won a prize. The impact was huge in the golden age of the music video, and directors from Terry Gilliam to Christopher Nolan became fans.

Last year was the centenary of surrealism, and after the passing of David Lynch earlier this year we can observe that the legacy is very much alive in the unique cinema of Matthew Rankin (Universal Language) and the Quay Brothers. (Neither of them filming in their native language: Rankin in Persian, the Quays in Polish).

The preposterous plot is a pretext for seven reflections in the dead eye of the voyager's father. But really the movie is a poem about time itself as the original title "sanatorium under the hourglass" announces. Time regained? Certainly not. It's more "time out of joint" to quote Hamlet, the play that has unexpectedly become a key text for this year.

Time is incarnated in the very object world: worn and torn, obsolete, yet conveying history, experience and life lived. This movie, like others in the Švankmajer / Lenica / Borowczyk / Norstein / Quay tradition, has affinities with the Japanese concept of wabi and sabi: the culture of the old and used, therefore connected with the "sculpting in time" aesthetics of Tarkovsky and Sokurov.

On the other hand, there is the lineage of Archimboldo animation: eccentric nature morte installations come alive.

In the middle I felt exhausted (which may have nothing to do with the movie), but the last chapters I found the most inspiring.

It's a treasure trove of imagery, carried by a restless and fecund imagination. It's cosmic and intimate. There are short live action inserts, like homages to late silent cinema of the 1920s. There are also short CGI passages that stand out and not in a good way. Their presence highlights the superior quality of the handcrafted stop motion animation. In it, the brothers are still at their greatest.