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Directed by: Guy Maddin Starring: Mark McKinney, Isabella Rossellini, Maria de Medeiros, David Fox Maddin is maddening. I have tried to be a fan of his work. His visual sense is so astoundingly unique. A pastiche of silent-era styles, heavy on the expressionism, with modern avant-garde touches. I'm pretty sure no one else is making movies that look anything like this. But goddamn it, he is simply incapable of making a story worth sitting through. I almost gave up after a half hour, but against my better judgement I plowed onward. Quirk built upon meaningless quirk, humor that falls completely flat, a somewhat interesting premise utterly wasted, awful casting choice in Mark McKinney, and to top it off, it's tinged with that vague but rabid sense of anti-Americanism that seems epidemic among Canadians. Oh yes, our lovable neighbors to the north certainly have us pegged, we're all greedy and soulless down here. To be fair, this is the closest Maddin has come to developing a decent plot, but ultimately it still feels empty and mindlessly gimmicky. I wish the man would either find a good writer or stick to shorts. RATING: 2 PROS: incredible visuals and unparalleled sense of style CONS: the rest of it sucks ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0366996/
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Mar 22, 2005 05:57
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 01:49 |
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I thought McKinney was perfect for the role. He's an American actor, but he basically spent the majority of his career pretending to be Canadian on 'The Kids in the Hall', so casting him as a Canadian that pretends to be an American is a nice little reversal. He also does an incredible job of reproducing the "bad acting" associated with the era the film is set in. I never thought he would be up to the task, but he really impressed me here. A lot of Maddin's trademarks are visible in this as well. The dead/abscent father is always a biggie, and of course the sexual competition within the family (brother vs brother for the singer and brother vs father for Rosselini). He usually just goes for straight-up incest (which is actually due to his screenwriter, who is obsessively pro-incest), but this is a sort of coded variant on that. I think this works into the relationship between Canada and America as well, and I don't think the film (or Maddin) are necessarily anti-American, but a lot of the characters are, which is all the more complicated because of their own relationships across borders. Canada and America have always had some difficulty negotiating their friendship and ideological differences, and I think Maddin does a lot to personify that in his film's cast. And I love the music. There's so much stuff going on, but I like that it all essentially revolves around the same song in the end. What I thought was really strange was how he filmed some of the musical sequences, which were much more rapidly edited than his other films. It was almost MTV-like. And the way that the American band kept absorbing everyone else was really funny as well. I can't really call Maddin gimmicky, because I'm positive he is utterly incapable of making a film in any other style. I think this film shows his evolution as a filmmaker a lot, and while it looks a lot like silent era film on a some level, the truth is this is something completely new. I love the way her alternates between film stocks, formats, colors and b&w, the vaseline on the lens, the expressionist set design, the super-impositions, etc. He started out basically just imitating older films, but I think he's really grown into his own bizzaro sense of auteurship.
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Mar 22, 2005 19:07
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