thoughtcrumbs

Less sad, more bizarre

The Saddest Music in the World left me wondering whether I actually watched the movie, or if I promptly fell asleep in the theater and dreamed (dog-style, in black and white) the most bizarre fantasy possible. Guy Maddin's unusual film about a music contest in Winnipeg in 1933 was shot in a kind of grayscale tunnel vision, with distorted, blurry edges, similar to the way the main characters monomaniacally pursue their weird goals. Drunken Duncan has a workshop full of prosthetic legs, where he desperately concocts a glass pair filled with frothy ale to be worn by the beer baroness whose legs he accidentally amputated years ago. And the hypochondriac Roderick, miserably searching for the wife who abandoned him after the death of their son, secreting a jar containing his son's heart preserved in tears. And then there's Chester, debonair ne'er-do-well subverting the contest by recruiting other teams to join his, as they strive to perform the saddest music in the world. Spinal Tap could tell them that it'll be in d minor.