Sanatorium<\/a>, located near Odesa in southern Ukraine, could be a power station, military base or even a sewage treatment center. In fact, treatments of another kind draw everyday people to this imposing Soviet-era construction: Mud baths, massages and all sorts of other wellness procedures are the stock in trade of the striking but down-at-heel institution.<\/p>\n\n\tDenys Melnyk film\u2019s the facility\u2019s guests with compassion but also honesty, preserving their dignity without airbrushing their reality. The variety of body types and shapes shown here, often covered in very little, is a reminder that despite the smoothness of the people held up as worthy of admiration on Instagram, most people\u2019s bodies and faces have lumps and bumps and creases and crinkles. Showing this in such a contemplative fashion feels quietly radical in an attention economy that has normalized loudness. <\/p>\n
\n\tWith no narrator to impose an interpretation, \u201cSanatorium\u201d is the opposite of a spoon-fed social issues doc: It observes, listens and trusts the audience likewise to observe, listen and to draw their own conclusions. That\u2019s not to say it isn\u2019t characterful or funny; it is. As guests dance to George Michael\u2019s lush classic \u201cCareless Whisper\u201d at the spa disco, a viewer might recall the Austrian director Ulrich Seidl\u2019s witty scene construction, but where Seidl\u2019s warts-and-all work sometimes crosses a line into mercilessness, the humor here doesn\u2019t erase anybody\u2019s humanity. There\u2019s always a warmth and dignity to the portrayal of the people involved.<\/p>\n
\n\tThere\u2019s even a sense of religious ritual to some scenes: As clients are painted gently with healing mud and wrapped in cloth, it\u2019s like witnessing the embalming of saints, an effect emphasized by Denis Kilty\u2019s score. When the Renaissance painter Caravaggio first started to attract fame, a big part of his appeal was that although his subjects were notionally saints and Biblical figures, his models were everyday people from the streets of Rome, leading to Madonnas with the face of a popular local sex worker, disciples with the frame of the skinny old man selling fish in the market or a prosperous Archdeacon bearing a fleeting resemblance to the proprietor of a nearby dive bar. These are the kinds of faces O\u2019Rourke foregrounds, similarly centering the quotidian to sanctifying effect. This contrasts beautifully with the modest effects of the treatments, as reported by the clients themselves: \u201cPsoriasis is no longer getting worse.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe location is an important character as well, with the crumbling building itself providing a striking arena for the low-key drama. The ambition and pride that would have been involved in its construction, during the height of the USSR\u2019s power and influence, contrasted with its current state of managed decline, provides a piquant Ozymandias monument: \u201cLook upon my works, ye mighty, and despair\u201d \u2014 a topical theme, as aging men in power across the world attempt to ensure they will be remembered, often with harmful consequences.<\/p>\n
\n\tWith values like wit and stoicism baked in, \u201cSanatorium\u201d always felt like a long shot in the Oscar international feature race, where it is representing Ireland this year. But if the Academy were ever to introduce a category honoring most nuance, this kind of film would be a frontrunner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gar O\u2019Rourke joins the likes of Frederick Wiseman with an immersive observational documentary that takes a sensitive look…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":353967,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,72361,134,344,60839],"class_list":["post-353966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-best-international-feature-film","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-sanatorium"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}