Joseph (Jan Nowicki) travels through a dream-like world, taking a dilapidated train to visit his dying father, Jacob, in a sanatorium.

Among the many occurrences in this visually potent phantasmagoria include Joseph re-entering childhood episodes with his wildly eccentric father (who lives with birds in an attic), being arrested by a mysterious unit of soldiers for having a dream that was severely criticized in high places, reflecting on a girl he fantasized about in his boyhood and commandeering a group of historic wax mannequins.

"[1] The time period of the film is a mixture of elements from the turn-of-the-century Galicia where Schulz grew up, and Has' own pre-World War II memories of the same region.

Not only was the crumbled sanatorium interpreted as a parallel to the poor condition of many institutions and manor houses in contemporary Poland; Has had also chosen to emphasize the Jewish aspects of the source material, and this soon after an antisemitic campaign the government had launched in 1968, which had prompted around 30,000 Polish Jews to leave the country.

Artur Sandauer noted that the book was a great material for a film, however, he strongly rejected Has's adaptation since in his opinion it changed Schulz's story "of cosmic dimensions" into "grotesque folklore".

[11] Jacques Siclier writing for Le Monde stated that the viewer watching the film experiences "an emotional and breathtaking shock".

The compositional clasp, binding the material of the middle sequences on both sides into one cohesive whole, is the motif of the conductor-guide that appears at the beginning and at the end of the film.

This motif is recognizable only in one scene, when Józef watches through the basement window a crowd of people fleeing in panic with all their belongings.

Interpreting The Hourglass Sanatorium through the prism of Gilles Deleuze's and Feliks Guattari's theory of rhizomes, Jakubowska noticed that not only the film's non-linear narrative, but also the presence in the film world of shoots, ivy and ferns growing luxuriantly in various directions proves the artistic implementation of the idea of rhizome avant la lettre.