Silent, sexy and Super 8

>>Guy Maddin’s Brand Upon the Brain!
is a funny, deranged spectacle

by MARK SLUTSKY

It’s too bad everyone can’t see Guy Maddin’s Brand Upon the Brain! in the form it was originally intended. Presented in Toronto and New York with live sound effects, narration (by Isabella Rossellini at the NYC show—she does it on the non-live version’s soundtrack), and even singing, Maddin’s silent movie was created with the idea of being “a lavish spectacle for the masses,” in the director’s own words.

Which is not to say Brand Upon the Brain! isn’t worth seeing when it opens at the Cinéma du Parc this weekend. Quite the opposite, in fact. Maddin seems to be getting better and better as a filmmaker, as this and his more recent, brilliant experimental documentary/personal history/shaggy dog story, My Winnipeg proves. Brand is the kind of movie that actually gets better, and funnier (Maddin is a master of the silent movie intertitle) as you’re watching it.

It’s a Super 8 psychosexual stew. Erik Steffen Maahs plays “Guy Maddin,” who returns to the island on which he grew up and falls into a reverie as he recalls his childhood. Most of the movie is set in the past, as “Young Guy Maddin” (Sullivan Brown) grows up with his deranged lighthouse- and orphanage-keeper parents (Todd Moore and Gretchen Krich) and foxy sister (Maya Lawson). His father’s experiments on the orphans eventually draw the attention of sibling sleuths the Lightbulb Kids, and from there things get even more mysterious and weird and sexy.

Brand Upon the Brain! is presented as part of a Maddin retrospective Cinéma du Parc is running through Oct. 3. They’re featuring seven features and seven shorts; the program includes Careful, Tales From the Gimli Hospital, The Saddest Music in the World, Dracula: Pages From a Virgin’s Diary, Cowards Bend the Knee and more. Be warned, though, that only three films will be shown from 35mm prints: Brand, Saddest Music, Dracula and the rest will be screened from DVD. According to the Parc, film prints of the others simply don’t exist in Canada, which is a sad state of affairs indeed. Whether it’s worth your money to see the projected DVD versions is of course, up to you, but I recommend you don’t miss the chance to see Brand on the big screen.

Brand Upon the Brain! opens at the
Cinéma du Parc this Friday, Sept. 28

>> Movie Listings