The Heart of the World

As with all of Guy Maddin's films, "The Heart of the World" left me, well, speechless. I'm rarely insightful, usually articulate, but I can never write well about a Guy Maddin film. That Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote a whole essay on this film is not surprising, but it does leave me in awe. A wacky narrative featuring the usual Maddin love triangle, this is six and a half minutes of pure joy. The genius of "The Heart of the World" isn't its wackiness or the technical and stylistic qualities of the film, it's that it's not a bit of showboating, but a fascinating experimental success- what Maddin has done is made a whole feature in six minutes. Most short films are short because that's how they were written, that's how much material the filmmakers had and wanted to make. "The Heart of the World" could have easily been a feature. In fact, it has a more interesting 'plot' than a couple of Maddin's actual features (especially "Brand Upon the Brain!" for me). Rosenbaum suggests this might be the world's first 'subliminal melodrama'. That's a better description than I could come up with. I watched the movie twice in a row but I have a feeling I'll be watching it many, many more times. I absolutely loved this film, but not enough to eclipse "Elimination Dance" as my favorite Canadian short, though "The Heart of the World" is almost unquestionably the greater accomplishment. I prefer Maddin's features "My Winnipeg" and "Careful" to this, but again, it's the staggering accomplishment of this film that makes it so worthy of awe. How many filmmakers have done montage better?

Few weeks ago I wrote about the last year's biggest and "quietest" black and white silent movie-surprise "The Artist" - "the most charming, original and unexpected" movie of 2011. It is true about the last year but for me, The most original, joyful, and truly unexpected film-homage to the silent era since few days ago has become the six minutes long stunner "the Heart of the World" (2000) from the Canadian auteur, Guy Maddin, which he wrote and made for 2000 Toronto Film Festival. "The Heart of the World" has been named by many critics the best Canadian short film. Watching it for the first time, it was the experience that I can only compare to watching few years ago for the first time Dali's -Buñuel's' "Un Chien Andalou"/"The Andalusian Dog" and Chris Marker's La Jetee/The Pier. All three short films left the long lasting impression and became my favorites.

Since the first time, I've already watched "the Heart of the World", perhaps dozens of times. Each time the beating of its "Kino"-heart made my heart pump the blood faster. I am not exaggerating. The energy and rhythm of the images changing rapidly and creatively to the innovative, magnificent score by the Soviet composer Georgiy Sviridov "Time Forward", have some hypnotizing power of physical and emotional impacts.

This film which took only five days to finish is a wonderful homage, dedication to, summation, and the parody of many kinds of early filmmaking. First, should be mentioned the French visionary, and the "alchemist of light" Georges Méliès whose legendary "A Trip to the Moon" (1902) made Gay Maddin forever fell in love with the old movies from the youth of the cinema. Maddin also found deeply symbolic that his and Méliès ' initials (GM) are the same, and it was one of the reasons for Maddin to have chosen his way in creating uniquely complex yet entertaining and deliciously weird films using the old techniques thus bringing together the past and presence of film medium.

Maddin's interest to the early Russian silent filmmaking, specifically, the propaganda films from the early twenties, the works of Sergei Eisenstein, Yakov Protazanov, and Dzega Vertov is also on the full display in "The Heart of the World". I recognized the shots reminding me of Battleship Potemkin, Ivan the Terrible, and Aelita. But there is more; for example, the German expressionism - Metropolis by Fritz Lang and without doubt Luis Bunuel whom Maddin names as his prime inspiration, especially the early surrealistic gem, Golden Age. The final of "The Heart... is pure Ingmar Bergman's Persona, with the shot of the cameraman behind the camera and then the sound of camera running while the film is over and the screen turns black.

Only six minutes long, the little film pays tribute to the very popular in the past science fiction genre with a brilliant if slightly mad scientist as the main character. It also tells the complete story of love, passion, lust, greed, making the wrong choices and willingness to self-sacrifice for the benefits of the humankind. Yes, it is all here, and it ends with the fascinating statement from its creator that "Kino" (cinema) is the new better heart of the world. This is the message from the true film lover-director to the film lovers everywhere in the world.

And you know what? I am going to watch it again right now.

Pure fantasia, a race to save the world from a fatal heart attack, juxtaposed against a love rivalry between two brothers - a mortician and an actor playing Christ - for the heart of a scientist studying the earth's core. Whether or not there's any kind of deeper interpretation is hard to tell, with the film racing along in an almost stream-of-consciousness approach, as expressionist cinema conventions are cast against elements of Soviet propaganda films in Maddin's typically exciting and an anachronistic style. Although vague and enigmatic, there is a definite story here; one that is relatively easy to follow if we pay close attention to the incredibly quick cuts and barrage of on-screen information, as references to Metropolis (1927) and Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864) are combined with the director's intuitive sense of visual abstraction, humour and satire, whilst also featuring an almost heartfelt approach to its characters, even in such an exceedingly short-form.

At this point in time, I'm still something of novice to the films of Guy Maddin, though I have seen the vast majority of his short films and would rate them from good to excellent. Like the rest, The Heart of the World (2000) is worth watching more than once in order to pick up all of the information being offered to us in the continual bombardment of overwhelming and fascinating imagery and fragments of captivating narrative, whilst also standing as a simply astounding piece of film-making in the most basic sense. A masterful combination of wit, imagination, style, content and pure cinematic ability, in which the saviour of the world turns out to be none other than cinema itself.

Guy Maddin is the most brilliant film-maker working today! If there's somebody better, that person must be labouring in obscurity. Maddin is strongly influenced by the disciplines of silent film, but his vision is unique, distinctive, and utterly original.

'The Heart of the World' could easily have been a throwaway film, given the circumstance of its origin. The Toronto Film Festival commissioned Maddin to make a brief film to fill a gap in their programming schedule. A mere time-passer. What Maddin gave them was utterly unexpected.

Maddin uses large-grain film stock and Klieg-style lighting techniques to replicate the look of silent film. Maddin's production design (costumes, makeup, hairstyling) impeccably recreates the images of that period. It's easy to believe that 'Heart of the World' is actually compiled from old UFA out-takes, circa 1925. Only just occasionally does Maddin's grasp on the 1920s show the joins, and then those lapses are probably intentional.

'The Hearts of the World' depicts the rivalry of two brothers. Nikolai is an idealist engineer. Osip is playing Jesus Christ in a passion play, and seems to have developed a genuine messiah complex. Amusingly, Osip does his Jesus routine whilst toting a cross made from metal girders ... an Art Deco crucifixion!

The brothers vie for the love of Anna, a beautiful scientist who has built a device which enables her to gaze into the Earth's core, literally the heart of the world. Meanwhile, a bloated plutocrat named Akmatov lusts for Anna. All of this is explained in silent-film titles, in a 1920s typeface that looks vaguely Cyrillic. The actors employ authentic silent-film acting techniques while resisting the temptation to 'guy' those methods or exaggerate them. The only lapse occurs when Anna suddenly vibrates her eyes back and forth while attempting to choose between the two brothers. This seems to be Maddin's intentional parody of silent-film acting. For the rest of the film, his homage to the past is sincere.

I spent a delightful six minutes trying to spot all the references and influences in this movie. Maddin is clearly influenced by 'Metropolis' (my favourite film), but I also spotted the influences of 'Aelita', 'Vampyr', 'Potemkin' and 'Haxan' in this frenzied melange. This is not to accuse Maddin of plagiarism. He displays his influences openly, using them as a foundation for a vision uniquely his own. It's refreshing to see a 21st-century filmmaker who acknowledges a debt to silent films, in an industry filled with Tarantino wanna-bes and counterfeit Hitchcocks.

'The Heart of the World' is one of the most distinctive, exciting and exhilarating movies I have ever seen. No doubt of it: I rate this movie 10 out of 10, and I look forward to more work by this filmmaker whose work is at once utterly alien yet enticingly accessible.

6 minutes of my movie viewing life. I was amazed at the emotional impact of this short, the music, editing, visuals and subject matter all combine to make this a masterpiece of cinema...and it is a black and white, silent film at that. Just as satisfying as INTOLERANCE. To some and maybe the casual viewer this may come across as a cheap and quickly thrown together film, but with repeated viewings, you can see the care and time that Maddin lavished on this production, the pace is frantic and actually leaves you gasping for breath...and thinking what did I just see! A highly recommended film and one to include in a library of important and significant works of art cinema.