Modern Maestros: Guy Maddin

Robert here with the makeover of my Directors of the Decade series, henceforth known as Modern Maestros (because alliteration is always awesome).   The mission statement will be simple: an ongoing series celebrating working directors who define the state contemporary cinema.  Suggestions are always appreciated.  That being said, let's start!

Maestro: Guy Maddin
Known For: Modern purveyor of manic, kinky, autobiographical and sometimes silent films.
Influences: The expressionists… Eisenstein, Dovzhenko, Murnau, etc.
Masterpieces: His two most recent and most autobiographical.  My Winnipeg and Brand Upon the Brain.
Disasters: zero
Better than you remember: Maddin has yet to make a bad movie, so if you dislike any of them give it another shot.

Awards: Best Canadian Film at TIFF is the highest award that’s thus-far been bestowed on one of cinema’s most creative directors.
Box Office: The Saddest Music in the World has grossed over 600 thousand dollars to date.
Favorite Actor: Guy teamed with Isabella Rossellini for the feature The Saddest Music in the World the short My Father is 100 Years Old and as one of many narrators of Brand Upon the Brain.

No one makes silent films anymore. Even Chaplin eventually relented and made talkies. To make a silent film in these our modern times would be nothing more than a gimmick, right? Except Guy Maddin has found a way to make it work. Mind you, Maddin doesn't only make silent films, but his cinema is always and inevitably influenced by the great silent expressionist masters.  They never seem like an experiment or merely an intellectual exercise.  Every one of Guy Maddin's films is a stylistic homage to films past and every one feels completely modern, exciting and new.  Why?  Because Maddin's best films act as a recreation of memories, whether they be his own bitter loves (Cowards Bend the Knee), controlling parents (Brand Upon the Brain), or legendary hometown (My Winnipeg).  And memories do not exist in straightforward narrative form.  They're jumbled up, over-exaggerated, and intensified by fantasy and fear... as are Guy Maddin movies.  Even Maddin's non-biographical films exist in a world of fantasy where the expressionism becomes a necessity.  After all, if you're going to make a ballet version of Dracula, how else but as a silent film?  Although he may be best known as a silent filmmaker (even though he's technically made more talkies), Maddin's talents don't end when the speaking starts.  Take this line of dialogue from The Saddest Music in the World when Marie de Medeiros has been asked if she's an American: "No I'm not an American.  I'm a nymphomaniac."

Speaking of kinky sex, let's talk about things often found in Guy Maddin movies.  Forty-two years since the Hayes code expired and there's still something that feels just a little forbidden about seeing nudity and sex in a black and white or silent film.  But it's not just Maddin's intention to tittilate.  He's interested in how sex controls and manipulates us (the women in Maddin's films make the women in Truffaut and Godard's films look like Disney princesses).  And there are few areas where he's not unwilling to tread.  A chapter in Cowards Bend the Knee unexpectedly entitled "Fisty" turns out to be about exactly what it sounds like.  Invariably Maddin proceeds with a comedic touch.  He needs to, as the world he portrays is random, cruel and unforgiving (often with his autobiographical stand-in serving as the patsy).  But still there is that touch of non-seriousness that makes watching a Guy Maddin film a fun experience, never a burden.


Take his short The Heart of the World.  The world is ending as a woman cruelly rejects our two protagonists.  Yet there is not a depressing moment.

So what makes Guy Maddin a filmmaker of our time?  He made his debut feature in the 80's.  Followed it up with three features in the 90's and has made five (of his most successful) films since the turn of the century.  Few directors are doing what Guy Maddin does, that is using the medium outside of it's expected form. But be warned, watching a Guy Maddin movie will only make you wonder why it is that so few other directors are determined not to be bound by common cinematic narrative standards.  And those other directors may start to seem a little too average and conventional.  Guy Maddin's latest film, My Winnipeg allowed him to show off his talents to a new extent, adding elements of surrealism and documentary into his uncategorizable style.  Roger Ebert recently named it one of his top 10 films of the past decade. So is Guy Maddin at the peak of his career?  I hope not, as that would suggest an inevitable downturn.  His next feature project is as of yet unannounced, though he continues to make short films in between.  Whatever it is it will be wildly inventive and courtesy of one of the most creative filmmakers working today.