|
By PAUL BRENNER
Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin is one of cinema's greatest visual stylists (and perhaps the finest
contemporary visualist at work today). Zeitgiest Video has released the jaw-dropping The Guy Maddin Collection,
featuring two Maddin features -- "Twilight of the Ice Nymphs" from 1997 and "Archangel" from 1990 -- and his stunning
short "The Heart of the World" from 2000 (commissioned for the 25th Toronto Film Festival).
"Archangel" brilliantly re-creates an early sound ambience as Maddin weaves a weird melodrama of obsessive love in
Imperial Russia, three months after the end of World War I. The film is a mad mixture of German expressionism and
Russian constructivism with Emil Jannings and Aelita dancing toe-to-toe in montage mayhem. "Twilight of the Ice Nymphs"
presents smoldering libidos trapped in a primary colored, forever sunlit fairyland. Maddin calls the film his
"reconfigured Gilligan's Island, more bitter, more despairing." The bitter(sweet) tone is set by his curious cast of
Shelley Duvall, Alice Krige, and Frank Gorshin. The film blends together Gustav Moreau, Max Reinhardt, and the Josef von
Sternberg of "The Saga of Anatahan") into a sensual froth. Despite the two features, "The Heart of the World" is The
Heart of the Collection. The 6 minute short is such a rousing exercise, his "subliminal love story" can be shown in a
loop for days and the viewer will never grow tired of watching it. The visual splendors of "The Guy Maddin Collection"
are the closest thing in film to seeing the face of God.
Bonus features in the collection include audio commentary tracks for "Twilight of the Ice Nymphs" and "Archangel"
(Maddin and screenwriter George Toles for "Twilight of the Ice Nymphs" and Maddin, Toles, story collaborator John
Harvie, and producer Greg Klymkiw -- live via Radio Shack tape recorder -- for "Archangel"), a silent behind-the-scenes
extract, storyboards and production design collages. |
