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BRAND UPON THE BRAIN!
Directed by: Guy Maddin.
Produced by: Amy E. Jacobson & Gregg Lachow.
Written by: Maddin & George Toles.
Director of photography: Benjamin Kasulke.
Edited by: John Gurdebeke.
Music by: Jason Staczek.
Released by: The Film Company/Vitagraph Films.
Country of Origin: USA/Canada. 95 min. Not Rated.
With: Gretchen Krich, Sullivan Brown, Maya Lawson, Katherine E. Scharhon, Todd Jefferson Moore, Andrew Loviska, Kellan Larson & Erik Steffen Maahs.
Brand Upon the Brain!'s web site

This “remembrance in 12 chapters” has its own dream-logic, chock-full of themes and ideas borrowed from Frankenstein, Oliver Twist, Victorian melodrama, German expressionism, and then some (Lord of the Flies). As in his Cowards Bend the Knee, director Guy Maddin places his alter-ego, also named Guy Maddin, in a dense melodramatic maelstrom, both as an adult and a sensitive 12-year-old boy. Though these two films have no dialogue, technically they’re not silent since they have a soundtrack. However, a live orchestra will accompany the film in selected cities with a celebrity guest narrator. Other screenings will hear the score by Jason Staczek and voice-over by Isabella Rossellini.

On mysterious Black Lodge Island, Guy’s authoritative mother (Gretchen Krich) runs the lighthouse-cum-orphanage with an iron fist. Out of the blue, Guy’s idol, Wendy Hale (Katherine E. Scharhon), a Nancy Drew-like detective, arrives on the island to investigate the strange experiments in the lighthouse basement. (Miraculously, Guy’s mother appears some mornings looking decades younger.) Guy secretly harbors a crush on Wendy, but the teen sleuth disguises herself in drag as Chance in order to pursue Guy’s blossoming sister, Sis (Maya Lawson, an ideal silent ingénue-turned-siren with her Baby Jane-like curls and pouty lips. At one point she looks eerily like Garbo.) Sis lives dangerously, surreptitiously smoking and sneaking Chance into her bedroom, dodging Mother’s eagle eye.

The beautifully grainy black-and-white film seems frail enough to disintegrate at any moment, but there’s no chance of confusing this film from an actual silent movie; the nudity should be one tip-off, and that no shot lasts more than a few seconds. Without a variation of pace, the visual bombardment becomes wearying.

Even if you have seen his previous films or shorts, the sense of discovery or the admiration for Maddin’s out-of-left-field tales will deflate by the film’s expansive 95-minute running time, especially compared to his compact Coward. It wouldn’t be unfair to say one Maddin film is strikingly similar to another. You could swap Coward’s Oedipus complex for Brand Upon the Brain!’s Electra. An exception would be Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary, his most lyrical film and a seamless combination of Bram Stoker’s sexually loaded horror tale and Maddin’s silent movie tropes. Starring the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, it’s also a great dance film. Kent Turner
May 11, 2007