This was my first film from Guy Maddin, a Canadian director well-known for doing his own thing. Most of his films, I hear, recreate the look and feel of 1920s silent cinema and early talkies – 'The Saddest Music in the World (2003)' is no exception. Not only is the film set in Depression-era Winnipeg, but it actually looks as though it was shot around that time. Maddin shoots his film on washed-out and grainy Super 8 film blown up to 35mm, uses irises and other outdated storytelling techniques, badly-synchronised audio, and lots of Soviet-style montage. Several scenes are shot in colour – and they jar strikingly, like the dream sequence in 'Shock Corridor (1963)' – to imitate the aesthetic of early two-strip Technicolor. Even the use of Isabella Rossellini is a stroke of anachronistic genius: at times you're fooled into thinking that Ingrid Bergman is on screen.
The story is bizarre to say the least. A Canadian beer company, under the instruction of baroness Lady Port-Huntley (Rossellini) (who lost her legs in unfortunate circumstances), holds a competition to discover the "saddest music in the world." Competitors arrive from every country to vie for the $25,000 prize, including a smug washed-up Broadway producer (Mark McKinney, of 'Kids in the Hall' fame); his cellist brother (Ross McMillan), a hypochondriac nursing a broken heart (quite literally); and their father (David Fox), an alcoholic war veteran who is in love with Lady Port-Huntley. Not bizarre enough, you say? Well, Lady Port-Huntley gets herself a new pair of legs, made entirely out of glass and beer. As you do. This film is perverse, surreal, and extremely wacky; you can't deny that Maddin's got a quirky sense of humour. I don't know exactly what to make of it, but I didn't mind it.
The story is bizarre to say the least. A Canadian beer company, under the instruction of baroness Lady Port-Huntley (Rossellini) (who lost her legs in unfortunate circumstances), holds a competition to discover the "saddest music in the world." Competitors arrive from every country to vie for the $25,000 prize, including a smug washed-up Broadway producer (Mark McKinney, of 'Kids in the Hall' fame); his cellist brother (Ross McMillan), a hypochondriac nursing a broken heart (quite literally); and their father (David Fox), an alcoholic war veteran who is in love with Lady Port-Huntley. Not bizarre enough, you say? Well, Lady Port-Huntley gets herself a new pair of legs, made entirely out of glass and beer. As you do. This film is perverse, surreal, and extremely wacky; you can't deny that Maddin's got a quirky sense of humour. I don't know exactly what to make of it, but I didn't mind it.