Brand Upon the Brain! A Remembrance in 12 Chapters

Writer and Director Guy Maddin's interesting homage to silent films. It is about a man named Guy who returns to his childhood home on an abandoned island and asked to paint a lighthouse by his aging mother. As a child Guy was subject to his bizarre parents secret lives running the orphanage he grew up in. He unearths a strange world of disturbing science experiments and diabolical schemes. This movie gets weirder as it goes on. It was shot on 8mm film and that works well for the movie. It was written in about 5 weeks by director Maddin and filmed in much less time in Seattle. The actors are unknowns to the screen but I get the idea that they are all very theatrical trained stage actors. It is narrated beautifully by Isabella Rossellini and features a good musical score. It has a good look and feel and has a good pace but lacked something that I just can't put my finger on. Perhaps I expected to get in the head of Guy a little more. I had a better understanding of a lot of the other characters better then the leading man even with seeing the crazy life that he led. However, this film is worth a look for its uniqueness and style even if it's not the type of thing you may want to watch many times over.

I really had no idea how I would react to this movie. I am fully aware of what Guy Maddin is capable of and that his films are anything but ordinary. My one fear coming into this movie was that the story wasn't going to be good enough to really grab hold of me. Within the first 10 or 15 minutes I was hooked. I have been very impressed with his technical skills thus far and this is no exception. The major difference here is that the story is so compelling. There are some flaws like the narration and I thought the ending could have been shorter, but overall I thought this was a fantastic production. It pays great homage to the silent era, in particular to some of Fritz Lang and F.W. Murnau's work. Like most Maddin films, this is certainly not for everyone. Only those who are aware of what he does or are extremely open to new cinema experiences should venture out and watch this one.

Canadian cult filmmaker Guy Maddin's ecstatically perverse jaunt into childhood's protracted gestation period is a hypnotic murk-fest filled to the brim with Sturm und Drang neo-psychedelia. Guy (Erik Steffen Maahs) returns to his childhood homestead, a lighthouse to restore it with two coats of paint for an ailing mother. Outsized delirium takes over: ghoulish rituals, surreptitious experiments, demented ghosts, social vampires and other phantasms of psychosis of an overextended memory is underpinned by distinctly Freudian impulses turned into artistic statements. The miscegenation of silent-era aesthetics, a mosaic of encoded visual cues and Maddin's continued fascination with high theatricality punctuated with trippy pop iconography delivers a Gothic fever dream that remains etched in your mind, whether you like it or not.

Make no mistake about it, Canada's Guy Maddin is an enigma. We're talking about somebody who's main inspiration seems to be old Soviet newsreels (the Kino Pravda series,to be exact,by Dziga Vertov,the father of the newsreel). Watching 'Brand Upon The Brain' was very much like watching an old Kino Pravda (Cinema Truth,by the way,for those who don't speak Russian)newsreel while running a temperature about 110 degrees,while on a mixture of psychedelic mushrooms washed down with codeine based cough syrup (and I wouldn't want it any other way!). The plot (but who needs a plot in a film like this?) concerns a middle aged man who is by some strange twist of fate, named Guy Maddin, returns to the island he grew up as a young boy, and hasn't been back in over 30 years,to try & clean up the old lighthouse/orphanage he grew up in. All I can say is....man!....if I had as screwed up a childhood as Maddin had, I guess I would turn out making films as bizarre as Maddin's are (not that I'm saying that's bad,mind you---check out his short film 'Heart Of The World',which won an award some years back as the best experimental short at some film festival who's name I forget). Although the film features a cast of unknowns (on these shores at any rate),it benefits from a narrative by Isabella Rossilini (daughter of Ingrid Bergman & Roberto Rossilini),who is unfortunately never seen on screen. Honestly, you can do a lot worse than not seeing 'Brand Upon The Brain', but why would you want to?

Here's the problem: Maddin is an impressive filmmaker. He is important and has made at least two films that are important to me.

But he is not a very interesting person. So when he applies his mastery to making a personal film - a film essentially about his dreams and demons, it turns into something of a tragedy for the opportunity misspent.

This really is a wonderful film in the way it is put together. The whole team seems be closely attuned, with a central role played by the editor. The sound effects are astonishing - and this is a silent film. The references, duly abstracted, from past masterworks are copious and respectful.

The narrative structure is suitably complex with manifold overlapping metaphors. The problem is that what we actually get directly from him is boring. Sex and mothers matter; dreams are real; nothing recedes. But we knew that better and more deeply than he shows.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.