BRAND UPON THE BRAIN! (NOT RATED) ***

 

Directed by Guy Maddin. 95 minutes.

Starring Gretchen Krich, Sullivan Brown, Maya Lawson, Katherine E. Scharhon and Todd Moore. Released by The Film Company.

 

Winnipeg-based Guy Maddin’s films are often a mixture of any of the following: German expressionist films from the 1920s or any silent era films, comedic horror films, oddball comedies that rival David Lynch or Jim Jarmusch for pure peculiarity or autobiographical tales. They are never anything less than personal and are always shot in such a way that they appear to have surfaced from 80 years in a vault somewhere. Maddin’s work is often surreal, avant garde and offbeat, using numerous editing and film aging techniques to pay homage to filmmaking of the 1920s, but they never feel forced as if he is trying to outdo the filmmaker for weirdness sake. Many of his films feature title cards, most of which feature hilarious narrative accompaniment to the story and include exclamation points at the end (for example, The Past! The Past!).

 

Maddin’s latest, Brand Upon the Brain!, is undoubtedly his most experimental film to date, not only in its visuals but also literally in its presentation. That is, at least for its first week of release in New York and for a limited engagement in Los Angeles and Chicago. I only mention this because Maddin fans may want to see the film once it opens with a score and Isabella Rossellini narration, but they will really want to see the film presented as I saw it presented at the CC Village Cinemas East theater – with live piano and orchestral accompaniment, foley artists and narration by a bevy of famous actors and cultural personalities, including Lou Reed, Crispin Glover, Rossellini and Eli Wallach. I saw the film narrated by Justin Bond, of Shortbus and Greenwich Village’s long-standing duo Kiki and Herb.

 

As is the case with Maddin’s other films, Brand Upon the Brain! features the same schizophrenic editing style, delirious titles, brilliantly melodramatic acting and archaic-looking visuals we have come to expect from the director. As always, the story is a doozy. Maddin must have had fun conjuring up the pseudo autobiographical tale he spins of his life in an orphanage based in a lighthouse, where his wicked mother and mad scientist father drain nectar from the brains of the orphanage’s young children. His bold sister (played with verve by Maya Lawson) and the young Guy fall for a girl/boy detective named Wendy/Chance who comes to the island to solve a mystery involving punctures on the backs of the orphans’ necks. Mama calls young Guy home through a large, staticky aerophone as he wanders through the nearby woods taking part in, as the titles tell us, a black mass! or a boy crush!

 

The film works in its own right, but the live accompaniment, narration and foley effects make Brand Upon the Brain! a film going experience like no other, that is, like no other since 1926. And, even if it does not make the top echelon of Maddin films – The Heart of the World, The Saddest Music in the World and Careful, it is still in the company of his impressive second tier – Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary and Cowards Bend the Knee. You can officially tell people who moan that they don’t make’m like they used to that they’re wrong. Maddin draws inspiration from an era and a style that moves him, but adds in his own flavor, his own cinematic techniques and his own brand of peculiar invention and inspires us.