The Saddest Music in the World

The flamboyant exercises of eccentric Canadian writer-director Guy Maddin (Dracula: Pages From a Virgin's Diary) are considered works of genius by an admittedly small group of rabid fans, and his latest is unlikely to increase their number. Set in Winnipeg, Manitoba, circa 1933, The Saddest Music in the World, based on an original screenplay by Kazuo Ishiguro (The Remains of Day), sports a bizarre plot revolving around a competition established by a legless brewery magnate (Isabella Rossellini) to determine the world's most melancholy tunes. Among the contestants are three old acquaintances of the brewer--a WWI veteran and his two sons; the father and one of the sons were responsible for the amputation of her limbs after a car accident, while the other son is desolate over the death of his child, whose heart he carries around in a jar filled with his own tears while bemoaning the disappearance of his wife. These characters toy with one another over the course of 99 minutes (at one point the father gives Rossellini's character glass legs filled with beer!), but plot is clearly incidental here to Maddin's love of the extravagant melodramas of old Hollywood and his desire to resurrect that ambiance here in a loopy, hallucinatory experimental style (with the exception of a few oversaturated color inserts, the film is shot in luminous black-and-white, with the print then distressed and manipulated to look like an old disintegrating movie). Unfortunately, the strained effects are visually exhausting, while the oddball story will strike most viewers as infuriatingly obscure and oddly repellent. Not a necessary purchase. Note: DVD extras include three shorts by director Guy Maddin: “A Trip to the Orphanage,” “Sissy Boy Slap Party,” and “Sombra Dolorosa,” (4 min. each), the 25-minute making-of featurette “Teardrops in the Snow,” the cast featurette “The Saddest Characters in the World,” and trailers. Bottom line: a solid extras package for a film that split the critics.] (F. Swietek)