The Forbidden Room

The derivative extracted percolates like pirouetting chestnut, the motion of which extends imaginative license to respect exfoliating indulgences, transitioning from text to subtext to limbo as tasks require undertaking in unwound fecund interdimensional free verse.

Rapscallions.

Tin cups.

Motivated to achieve yet strangleheld by absent physical qualifications, footholds, dreamlike advice metaphorically displacing, insubstantial links riveting unconnected clues, a Kafkaesque hesitance, pursuing, deliberating.

Insecurely supernatural.

Rasputin.

It's possible that the act of distilling the metaphorical displacements through poetic conjecture could construct links in a theoretical chain attached to anatomical veins focused on discussing Lacan or conjuring the ingredients for a delicious microbrew.

Contentment forthcoming.

A stash.

Treasure.

The flames unextinguished as sparrows scatter to intermittently supplant discourses of the heroic.

Cloth delicately swathes young suckling.

Eternal springs of adolescent visions abscond with gruff jingling clairvoyance, you must do something, respond, jangle, consider, trek, quaff, imprisoned existential platinum withstanding phantasmagorical creosote, a glass of milk, chocolate, prime rib, crackerjacks, blankets in winter, firelight, white pine.

The master narrative's unacknowledged marrow.

O negative.

Superlative improvisational resin.

Whole grains.

The Forbidden Room.

Keyhole

Where to begin.

We've broken into a building that's surrounded. Some of us have passed on. A search must be conducted. The patriarch is in charge. Part of his family is in attendance. Memories are temporally fluctuating.

Clocks ticking, imperious and constant. Joy revels in an immediate departure. What's to be made of these meaningful incursions? Electronic fissures resonating incorporeally.

And there's need of wallpaper.

Guy Maddin harnesses a permanently detached constructive sensibility to his productively ironic surreal cheeky familial incandescent aesthetic in his new film Keyhole, and this time there's no foundation to which one can directly cling, other than Ulysses, or David Lynch's Black Lodge, perhaps.

Few filmmakers can successfully unleash structured serpentine points of disjointed transient distinct significations through the popularized lampooned esoteric intellectual constituency as multidimensionally as Maddin.

We are provided with clues to what in fact might be going on. From these clues, depending upon the ways in which they are strategized, specific arguments (rhetorical facts) can be generated. Supporting evidence can be gathered from interpretations based upon hypotheses framed by logic, inasmuch as they fit into the whole, insofar as they cohesively belong.

To this precise moment.

Ulysses Pick (Jason Patric) is in charge. This much we know. His authority is paramount to Keyhole's flexibly united incongruity as he tries to comprehend the motivations of the other.

He is also invincible.

He is trying to return to his family, some of whom he doesn't recognize. He seeks answers to questions he is in/capable of asking. The high seas have become his house as the internet minimizes geographic exploration. His omniscience is tempered by his forgetfulness as he struggles to determine what has been substantially dematerialized. An idea becomes pragmatic when historical echoes align themselves with its potent focused intent.

For the time being.

Leap frogging from estimation to realization for genuine enigmatic jaunts, from which catalysts instructively and divergently testify, while pliantly managing internal disruptions, his allegiances deteriorate as the hierarchy pulsates, made all the more hauntingly vivid by its enduring staggering lack.

It's about generating inextricable mysteries from which manifold dimensions (jurisprudence, politics, science) can find practical applications after mining their way through the discursive data.

And a good old-fashioned game of catch.

Careful

Oedipal values. Strict discipline. Polished refinement. Unyielding dedication.

The Alpine village of Tolzbad is stricken with alimentary sentiments whose counterproductive yearnings threaten its cohesive fortitude. Silence and obedience are resolutely inculcated as objective reminders of embryonic resuscitations remain cast off and docile. Dreams serve to lacerate adhesions, while palpating intoxicating allegiances, whose nostalgic loyalties resist ethereal pressures and condemn those seeking both forbidden and propitious pleasures, arduously seek satisfaction.

In the flesh.

The vocal chords of animals must be cut. Hearts punctured after death ensure eternal sleep.

I will do anything for you.

Relinquished yet stilted rebirth.

A comedic sense of terror is dramatically worked into a stifling set of immutable characteristics which maintain a supple lighthearted generosity in Guy Maddin's imaginative Careful.

Multilayered scene after dynamic scene segregates its narrative from the realm of conscious production while providing a template for the remodelling of the expected whose boutique would most likely remain concealed.

Purposefully frustrating or frustrated with a purpose, Careful introduces a disengaged sense of disingenuous perplexity whose recalcitrant creative ethos should be heuristically taken seriously.

My Winnipeg

Guy Maddin's surrealist tribute to his dementedly prosperous relationship with Winnipeg is both a sustained reformulation of documentary motifs and a comedic critique of the techniques of Freudian psychology. The principle theme is identical to that found within Brand Upon the Brain!: a troubled man tries to find himself by reliving his childhood in a quest to discover his moment of castration, after which, he hopes to overcome it, or, doesn't. Maddin uses this theme to comedically/idealistically/awkwardly/ironically depict an interminable void within which the tortured learn to know that they cannot know themselves without attempting to discover that which no longer (and perhaps never) exists(ed), the picturesque and demonically productive consequences of never ending introspection: a tethered martlet. The principle trope throughout is that of meaning layered upon meaning, Native peoples believing that beneath the Red and Assiniboine rivers run parallel spiritual rivers, a complementary structure of back-roads and alleys (not listed on any map) are used to traverse the city, a bridge destined for the Nile ends up in Winnipeg, longing for its sunny paradise; when a demolition company attempts to destroy the Jets's former stadium, the original hull survives their first blast; actors are hired to play Maddin's family in a film shot in his childhood home, the goal being to discover his identity while indirectly delineating that of Winnipeg, and so on. His film challenges the conventions of the documentary by using a frame wherein it's difficult to tell whether or not anything he mentions is realistic or fantastic, while concurrently seeming quite truthful and frank, concretely mythologizing iconic Winnipeg citizens, groups, buildings, and traditions, as he travels throughout the city by train, always in winter, with bio-magnetic buffalo, wondering if he'll ever leave. Obviously, if he continues to relive his childhood in his childhood home with his overbearing mother he will never leave: he is quite aware of this. Obviously, documentaries attempt to supply a version of the truth while their styles distort it. Maddin responds to this tendency by overtly twisting the truth in order to unravel it, turning the genre upside down to pull its concrete insides out, outside of the cold, inflaming traditions, thereby donating to his community a host of peculiar legends, reminiscent of Greek and Norse ambition, within and without their culturo-historical austerity.

Winnipeg is very nice in Summer.

Brand Upon the Brain!

Brand Upon the Brain! is a stunning feast of visual carnage and reminiscent mayhem. Jason Stracek's haunting score compliments Isabella Rossellini's incarnate interlocution in a twisted grotesque romantic detective story sprinting along an horrific high-wire. Nectar is ripe for the harvest. Everything that has happened before will happen again, twice. A hamster and a metronome can indeed mimic life. And what's a suicide attempt without a wedding?

A disturbed Guy Maddin returns to his childhood island home to paint his family's lighthouse with two fresh coats. Cover it up Guy. It's been thirty years since he's visited the hideaway, and the past assaults him with frenetic familiarities. As a boy, Guy's island home was an orphanage run by his sadistic parents. The children must avoid mother's vigilant eye and savage Tom's vicious black masses. The Lightbulb Kids (Chance and Wendy) arrive at the Old Black Notch Orphanage to secretly investigate mysterious holes found on the backs of the orphan's heads. Guy's sister Sis quickly falls for Wendy as she pretends to be her brother Chance, and Guy, having fallen for Wendy, can't avoid longing for Chance either. Much to mother's dismay. But Guy loves his mother, and The Case of the Face in the Lighthouse uncovers a salacious, seductive enthusiasm. After all, what's a little sadism without love?

Part fairy-tale, part hallucination, Brand Upon the Brain! delicately exfoliates expectations with a succinct, unified vision. It's a cinematic treat the likes of which I haven't encountered since Blue Velvet or The Enigma of Kasper Hauser. Originally screened with two foley artists and full orchestral accompaniment, Brand Upon the Brain! is presented with sharp, acute editing, designed to mimic the presence of memory. Which makes it all the more memorable.