The Hour-Glass Sanatorium (1973)

The tragic history of the Polish nation, and in particular the Polish Jews, depicted in the form of a non-stop surrealist fantasia. Something like Fellini meets Zulawski by way of Monty Python. But those comparisons are superficial at best, there really is nothing quite like this one. A young man goes to visit his aging father in a sanitarium where time has been stopped so that all the deceased patients may live forever. He sees himself walking outside with a boy dressed as a sailor, and enters this world where everything is upside-down but sideways at the same time while all at an obtuse angle to reality. For the expressionistic visuals alone, this movie is worth watching. The set pieces push the limit of exaggeration and artificiality. In fact, the whole movie pushes limits. It is not easy to watch; the nesting doll narrative with its layers within layers within layers are like a mobius strip in that it circles into itself, but never comes back to the beginning. It just keeps going. But I came away having felt and learned something, I am just not entirely sure what it is.