THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD
Canada, 2003, 100 miinutes, Colour.
Isabella Rossellini, Mark Mc Kinney, Maria de Medeiros.
Directed by Guy Maddin.
Canadian Guy Maddin is a maverick film-maker with a cv of shorts, commercials, videos and some feature films. His cast of mind is experimental - which means that critics will laud his films because they appreciate their originality and flair but may not indicate that audiences who are looking for entertainment are likely to be driven, uncomprehendingly, out of the cinema.
Firstly, it's his options for visual style. He favours digital camerawork. Sharp focus is not a major concern which means that the audience, appreciative or not, spends a lot of the running time peering at the images. Since he is emulating some of the styles of the early silent films, the images look as if they were photographed decades ago. It is an aesthetic choice, as a painter might do, to present somewhat familiar subjects in a stylised and challenging way. With a painting, one can glance and move on. With a feature film, the unwary and the unwilling are trapped.
That can serve as warning as well as some aspects of review.
Smooth plot continuity is not a major concern either. We are in Depression-hit Winnipeg in 1933, we are in flashbacks (from different characters), we are sometimes in colour (that might have made the early Technicolour consultants wince). A failed producer returns to Winnipeg from the US, accompanied by his brother's amnesiac wife. They have no money but hear on the radio of a beer baronness's challenge for a contest in Winnipeg to hear the saddest music in the world. Contestants come from Mexico, Spain, the US and other countries.
There are performances (presented in a somewhat haphazard way), including the producer's old soldier father and his hyper-sensitive brother. It should be said that Lady Port- Huntley, played by Isabella Rosselini, has lost both legs in the bizarre aftermath of a car crash but has received two transparent artificial limbs filled with beer. And so on... A film for those who like to be intrigued rather than entertained.
