come anticipate "the saddest music in world" with me!

If that makes any sense.

maybe if i saw it again i'd discover that the editing was less capricious than i first thought. but i've had similar reactions to other maddin films.

When Mark McKinney is getting dressed and Maria DeMedeiros is still lying on the bed, I was dead sure she was going to say, "I want a pot."

Beer Fest

Guy Maddin’s The Saddest Music in the World must be seen and heard to be believed, though not necessarily enjoyed. It depends on how desperate you are to see something "different" on the screen. The screenplay by Mr. Maddin and George Toles, based on an original screenplay by Kazuo Ishiguro, is certainly different. I must confess that it kept reminding me of the old aphorism "Everything changes except the avant-garde." From time to time during the 99-minute running time, I kept thinking of those old Off Off Broadway impositions on wriggly audiences—or was it just me who was the transplanted Village square trapped among all the hipsters? With this in mind, I’m not sure that I’m the right person to review this film.

Mr. Maddin seems to be admired by most of my colleagues, and I don’t mind, on this occasion, if you take their word over mine. I suspect you’ll find that this helter-skelter merry-go-round is not nearly as funny as it comes across in print descriptions. And neither is it nearly as ghastly as some have described.

Isabella Rossellini plays Lady Port Huntly, a legless beer baroness who lives in Winnipeg during "the depths of the Depression" in 1933. As a means of promoting her beer, Lady Huntly stages a worldwide contest for "the saddest music in the world." During the contest, the baroness is fitted with two glass legs full of beer. About all that held this chaotic conceit together for me, if only intermittently, were the many different arrangements of the Oscar Hammerstein–Jerome Kern classic "The Song Is You," which one of my esteemed colleagues unwisely dismissed as a "chestnut." But then I never made it a secret that I’m forever caught in a Jerome Kern time warp.

There are several singularly uninteresting back stories brought forward for the riotous climax, during which the beer baroness’s legs are first pierced and then smashed, leaving her legless once more. This sort of thing could be gruesome or offensive, but it’s neither because it verges so close to sheer silliness. Chester Kent (Mark McKinney), a bankrupt Broadway producer representing America in the World Series of sad music, was also the beer baroness’ lover before she became legless. Chester’s current mistress, coyly named Narcissa (Maria de Medeiros), is also the former wife of Chester’s older brother, Roderick, who has never recovered emotionally from the death of the little boy he had with Narcissa.

Ms. Rossellini is always pleasantly genial, except for that hideous moment when she realizes that both her legs have been amputated by Chester’s drunken surgeon father, Fyodor (David Foster)—and a happy Dostoyevsky to you. The other players are afflicted with such flat dialogue that it’s difficult to discern if any of them have any talent. Ms. Mediros does shine fitfully with a sparrowesque rendition of the Kern song; Chester gets some circusy mileage out of a weirdly choreographed extravaganza to the tune of "California, Here I Come."

Ah, but the faded archaeological look of the film is the real avant-garde selling point. Mr. Maddin simply ignores most of the rules of mainstream moviemaking, even shifting into incongruous color on occasion, though most of the time the movie resembles some lost footage from the German UFA Company, or the golden age of silent Soviet cinema. The result is that the movie looks more cultivated than it sounds and plays.

I'm in the "respected it, didn't like it" camp. But I don't give up yet on non-short Maddin films. I'll chance it on Cowards Bend the Knee.

the latter idea would be asinine if i had any idea what it meant for a film to have a "point."

It's just a film.

I like that.

This is in no way my favorite movie ever but I'm finding it really interesting that the reasons people have been dismissing it are the same reasons I enjoyed it.

There are several singularly uninteresting back stories brought forward

But yeah, back stories are almost always uninteresting. Characters, plots, these are all uninteresting. They are shells upon which the interesting stuff hangs. And it's nice when they're treated as shells.

>"Saddest Music" would have probably been a less interesting movie if it had succeeded in being more emotionally, hm, "there".<

Funny, I found the final scene with Chester banging on the piano quite moving both times. As Maddin said, he figures it all out a few minutes late... (btw, Chester is named after Cagney's character in "Footlight Parade," and Mark McK said he had to restrain himself from "doing Cagney" throughout.)

Maddin has said he's fascinated by the use of "dead" styles and genres, which is why he uses pastiche to make personal films. He also cites Lynch as a major influence.

Jonathan Rosenbaum's fine review:

http://www.chireader.com/movies/archives/2004/0504/051404_1.html

I think amateurist was pretty much OTM with his comments upthread. There were only a few really touching moments near the end (with the brother), and the 'inventiveness' of changing visual forms from shot to shot wore off pretty quick. The set design was incredible (esp. the father's house all grown up, the repeated but unstated everything's buried in snow gag) and the general lack of establishing shots to create spatial distortion was a nice change of pace. I understand his point comment much better now - at some point this just stopped adding up to anything, kind of just riffing on the same gag for two hours without taking it anywhere.

I find Maddin's working methods infinitely more involving than the film itself (I can't wait to watch the making of). Do his other films rely on a more restrained palette of effects and methods? I really think that aspect (so self-conscious and distancing) hurt the film as a viewing experience.

Saw this last night, and thought it was amazing. I wonder if the discussion here doesn't somehow focus itself too much on Maddin and style -- a lot of the things I was responding to in this actually did come from the writing, ideas, content, and performances, and (with this being the first Maddin film I've watched) I was thrilled to see how much his style doesn't distance you from that stuff at all.

I tried watching this recently and couldn't get through it. I probably should've stuck with it but the faux early film styling was irritating, mostly because it wasn't very convincing. is that supposed to be part of the point? maybe I should take a run at cowards bend the knee.

define "convincing"... other film styles are just as artifice-laden as his, they're just what you're used to.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0293113/

^^ really beautiful!! shot on dv, if i remember right, making the 'silent movie' stylization even more present, obvious and knowing, but the seamlessness of it renders it transparent, yeah

Beer legs!

define "convincing"... other film styles are just as artifice-laden as his, they're just what you're used to.

"convincing" meaning he could've done a better job of emulating the older production styles he's obviously striving to reproduce. I don't mind fakery, just make it good fakery. it seemed half-assed, like seeing a cheap commercial that tries to look like the 50s by shooting video in b&w. maybe the lack of total committment is supposed to provide some intentional brechtian distance, but it would be a lot more impressive if the film actually convinced me it was shot in the 1920s. why not go all out and actually use a hand cranked camera?

or maybe this was just the wrong place to start.

He does used hand cranked cameras all the time, I thought.

But I think "being inspired by" and "trying to reproduce faithfully" are two entirely different things.

Apparently I missed my brief chance to see My Winnipeg here. Dammit.