After establishing his one-man niche in cinema with previous features like Careful! and The Saddest Music in the World, Guy Maddin became a Canadian cause célèbre, offering an imaginative avant-garde vision that combined silent-film aesthetics with an eccentric, unfiltered expedition into his fevered psyche. Brand Upon the Brain! is Maddin's most overt foray into “97% true” autobiography, although it's essentially a pretext for another weirdly wonderful excursion into a mad, imaginary fantasy. Here, Maddin (Erik Steffen Maahs) returns to his childhood home on Black Notch Island, where he's thrust into flashback memories of his frenetic youth (played by Sullivan Brown), a time when his rigidly disciplinarian mother ruled over the island's one and only structure—a lighthouse and former orphanage with a dark history—while his inventor father conducted mysterious experiments in the cellar. In Maddin's “plot” (which visually manifests itself as a frantic silent-movie melodrama), sexual jealousy simmers between his sister and mother, and the siblings become involved with a pair of youthful sleuths (nicknamed “The Light Bulb Kids”) investigating a murder mystery at the orphanage. Of course, this bare synopsis can hardly prepare the uninitiated viewer for Maddin's singular style of filmmaking—a dreamworld delicate and precious, unlike anything you've ever seen…outside of Maddin's previous work. Recommended. [DVD extras include multiple narration tracks (in addition to the “official” narration track by Isabella Rossellini) in an effort to partially recreate the film's original live performance tour, which featured assorted narrators (including Laurie Anderson, Eli Wallach, Crispin Glover, Maddin himself, and others) along with sound-effects artists and a live orchestra. Also included is a 50-minute documentary about the film and Maddin's career (featuring interviews with Maddin and his closest collaborators), two short films directed by Maddin, and a booklet with an essay by film critic Dennis Lim. Bottom line: a characteristically excellent Criterion Collection extras package for an interesting experimental film.] (J. Shannon)
Brand Upon the Brain!
Criterion, 99 min., not rated, DVD: $39.95 Volume 23, Issue 6
Brand Upon the Brain!
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