The story takes place in a "Gimli we no longer know" (Gimli is a village on the shores of the lake Winnipeg).

Einar, a fisherman, catches a disease and goes to the Gimli hospital, an extremely primitive institution where beast and men shares the same large room.

Einar is placed in a bed near Mr Gunnar, a sympathic man that attract the sympathy of the three pretty nurses of the hospital. At first they are friends, but Einar got jealous as he fails to get any attention from the nurses.

Gunnar then began to tell his story. He was ill when he falled in love with Snjofridur, a young seductive woman. They married, and during the wedding night Gunnar discovered that he infected his wife and she's also covered by the wounds of the disease. He rejected her, and she promptly died, her hard broken.

Einar also revealed than before he was ill, he stealed objects in the grave of a beautiful woman... and worse.

They realise that was the tomb of Snjofridur and began a fight, pinching violently at each other's buttocks and wandering in the night in the surrounding fields.

They finaly recovers health and returns to their primary occupations. A better world awaits them... but not on this earth.

This is a first film, as Eraserhead or Tetsuo are, in black and white and with a relatively short budget (about $20000), although Maddin had the chance to be produced by Greg Klymkiw.

It is an excellent achievement with extremely sucessfull references to the aestetics of ancient cinema such as Murnau's or Fritz Lang's movies. This is quite impressive, especialy as a frist movie.

Although the plot is short, this is not a slow movie. Your attention is constantly attracted by funny things or behaviors, the way the story is telled is renewed often and it is an overall interesting tale.

There are sometime a welcome touch of humor, albeit this is qui a particular sense of humor.

Many scenes are very interesting. Especialy the one where Einar find he's ill, with a nearly subliminal picture of a bacteria, or the very begining (and end) of the film, with superposed pictures of painted clouds and naive angels, or the fight, accompanied by bagpipe music as would be a traditionnal scottish competition, or ... well there are really a lot of interesting things in this movie.

This is, as far as I know the first short of Maddin. It already shows a fascination for the death and relations established between living people and dead ones.

The atmosphere of this short is quite disturbing, with the dead man involved in usual daily situations such as a meal with the kids, or a night with his wife, and then unexpectingly comming to life.