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As a grave disease (& luckily, the movie never bothers to tell us
which disease) is roaming the countryside, lonely fisherman Einar
(Kyle McCulloch) - infected of course - ends up in weird Gimli hospital,
where patients are dying by the dozen. Einar soon finds his loneliness
unbearing in the hospital's surroundings, while his bed-neighbour,
Gunnar (Michael Gottli), seems to have no problems in finding contact
with the nurses who listen to his stories for hours & even show him
sexual favours. When Einar tries to imitate Gunnar & takes up that
man's hobby, fish-carving, for some reason Gunnar wants to borrow his
carving shears, to be reminded of his own sad story by a bglance at
them, which he now tells Einar: He tells of Snjölfridur (Angela Heck), the girl that
meant everything to him, who taught him to carve fish, who would nurse
him when he fell ill, even marry him & be infected by him. In their
wedding night, she died, leaving Gunnar with grieve. Einar now tells
Gunnar, he got the shears from an Indian burial-pile where he took, to
his shame, the token given to the dead girl. Enchanted by her beauty,
though, he took much more than only the tokens. Gunnar now ends his
story, concluding that Einar had molested his Snjölfridur. Enraged but
now blinded, Gunnar stalks a fleeing but delirious Einar through the
countyside, until a final battle between them has no winner ... Next,
Einar wakes upt in the hospital again, with all the other patients
either dead or gone, & he is cured & free to go, too. Outside
his shack, he one day sees Gunnar who has obviously found a new love.
He, Einar though is still the lonely fisherman he always was. Any
synopsis could never do justice to any of Guy Maddin's films - &
neither could a description of the outrageous things happening
on-screen. His films are usually incredibly cheesy (& intentionally
so) melodramas set in a bizarre, surreal, absurd, nightmarish world all
of its own, filmed in a cinematic language developed by Maddin himself
that looks as if the evolution of filmmaking took a somewhat different
turn around the late 20's, developed into another direction. This
filmmaking style makes all of Maddin's films easy to recognize &
stand out of any crowd of movies - & this, Maddin's first
feature, started the madness !
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