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By PAUL BRENNER
Compare Martin Scorsese and
Guy Maddin: Scorsese in his decades long efforts
to become accepted by the Hollywood film
establishment has continually twisted and
contorted his film style to satisfy the dictates
of the status quo and his grasping for popular
acceptance has resulted in high budget curios that
are neither this nor that, with the decidedly
idiosyncratic Scorsese voice undercutting the
entire proceedings (for a few recent examples,
note how the Daniel Day Lewis character arc
completely subsumes the DeCaprio-Cameron Diaz love
story in "Gangs of New York" or how Scorsese goes
beyond the conventional happy ending of "The
Aviator" to end up with Howard Hughes in a toilet
ranting about "the wave of the future"). Maddin,
on the other hand, utilizes his bigger budgets
(although not in the "bigger budget" sense of a
Scorsese/Miramax spectacular) to solidify his
distinctive style and incorporate higher profile
actors and actresses into his cinematic worldview.
Such is the case with Maddin's "The Saddest Music
in the World," now available on DVD from MGM Home
Entertainment. In this film, Maddin is at his most
coherent and accessible with Isabella Rossellini,
Mark McKinney, and Maria de Medeiros on the
roster.
But a coherent Maddin is still madness for the
uninitiated. Take the plot of "The Saddest Music
in the World": The film takes place in 1933 in
Winnipeg (where else?). When Winnipeg has been
chosen as The World Capital of Sorrow,
double-amputee Winnipeg beer baroness Lady
Port-Huntly (Rossellini) decides to capitalize on
the international honor by holding a contest,
inviting international singers to perform in order
to win $25,000 ("in depression-era dollars") for
The Saddest Song In The World. Port-Huntly
determines the winners with a thumbs-up gesture.
The winner then celebrates by slipping down a
slide into a giant barrel of beer. The musical
numbers are dotted through the film like scenes
from "International House" or "The Big Broadcast"
and accompanied by color-commentary like, "The
always impetuous Spanish offers us a jail-side
view of the wages of sin."
Converging in Winnipeg along with bagpipe players,
Cameroon drummers, and Flamingo singers, is
Chester Kent (McKinney), a Canadian expatriate and
now an overbearingly optimistic American
theatrical impresario (although now broke and an
ex-lover of Port-Huntly); his father Fyodor (David
Fox), a Canadian nationalist and another ex-lover
of Port-Huntly, who had mistakenly sawed off both
of her legs after a car accident; and Chester's
brother, the ultra-sensitive Roderick (Maddin
regular Ross McMillan), who is now parading around
in a black veil as the Serbian cellist Gavrillo
the Great. Tagging along with Chester is Narcissa
(de Medeiros), a typical Maddin amnesiac who can't
recall having born the child of grief-stricken
Roderick. In response to the question, "Are you
American?" Narcissa responds, "I'm not an
American. I'm a nymphomaniac."
The cast gleefully adapts to Maddin's style and
Rossellini is in particularly fine form, radiant
with incandescent joy when she models a gift of
two prosthetic legs filled with beer. And nothing
tops her come-on glint when she says invitingly,
"If you're sad...and like beer, I'm your lady."
Maddin doesn't slight his stylistic excess one
bit. The actors become cogs in Maddin's early
talkie reverie, part of the glitter and shimmer of
blown-up Super 8mm footage, tinny Vitaphone audio
effects, and haphazard color sequences, as if the
film has suddenly transformed into "Whoopee."
Maddin's high style is never worn and tired but
always high-spirited and exhilarating. And
Maddin's exuberance hides the sorrowful in his
crazed technique. Amidst the talking tapeworms,
the phony snow, and the Caligari sets, Maddin
bemoans the suppression of the artistic and
American cultural imperialism. Maddin both loves
and hates Chester, the manic American showman. In
Port-Huntly's contest, there is no question that
Chester's pyrotechnics will win out over true
artistic emotion, which is why Roderick/Gavrillo
can only conquer the inevitable by striking some
harsh notes on his cello and cause an apocalypse.
But Maddin with his energizing visual feast is his
own Chester Kent impresario, a man who brings us
"sadness with sass and pizzazz."
The extras include two featurettes of the making
of "The Saddest Music in the World"; teaser
trailers; the theatrical trailer; a collection of
MGM trailers, and three Maddin shorts -- "A Trip
To the Orphanage," "Sombra Dolorosa," and the
astoundingly wonderful "Sissy Boy Slap Party." |
