[Film] Guy Maddin: God?
Got a Halloween treat when Sundance Channel screened Guy Maddin's Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary, with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. One of the most erotically charged and emotionally compelling Dracula films I've seen; would fit on my Top 100 Films of All Time, easily. And easily the best Maddin film I've seen, although I've only seen 4 of the 25 films he's made. (I missed Twilight of the Ice Nymphs by one night a few years ago in Atlanta.) I think because he was forced to work with a more formal medium (ballet), and with a story that allowed for little extrapolation, the result was not completely overwhelmed by self-indulgence — a problem at times during Saddest Music. For the first time I felt something I never thought I would ever feel — a hunger to see a Hans-Jürgen Syberberg film again.
Before Dracula they showed a documentary shot during the making of Ice Nymphs and narrated by Tom Waits. Maddin's father had been the business manager for the National Canadian Hockey Team, and he let his young son squeeze orange wedges into the players' mouths — a nice Maddin touch — and towel them down in the locker room, "especially the places they couldn't reach themselves." (Maddin can make comments like that sound simultaneously less salacious and more disturbing.) His father's premature death. His brother's suicide. He talks about the waves of static that floated across the prarie, carrying bits and pieces of radio signals from far and wide, and how that comforting blanket of sound has informed all his soundtracks. About Archangel one of his crew says "Our audience — to the extent we had an audience — found that a tough go." Following Archangel, Maddin relates how he caught a cold from a nephew, which spread to his spine and then to his brain, resulting in some quirky neurological damage. (All the while Maddin is talking, ostriches from the set of Ice Nymphs keep peeking over his shoulder.) The transcendent Alice Krige speaks about working with Maddin on Ice Nymphs, as does Shelley Duvall, an actress built and bred for a Maddin film. He speaks while lying in bed, dizzy and lightheaded from editing. About Careful he says that he had just been to the West Coast and seen mountains for the first time; his long-time screenwriter wanted to to a pro-incest film: and so they compromised, making a pro-incest movie set in the mountains. And he talks about the film he didn't make after Careful, The Dikeman's Daughter, in which Winnipeg was portrayed as a town divided between dike builders and Opera industry workers. The director Paul Cox, who appeared in Careful, put it succinctly: "Why couldn't they just give him $1 million? That's the cocaine budget for most action films these days!" Dikeman was to have starred Christopher Lee and Leni Riefensthal. Leni Riefensthal. Leni Riefensthal. "It would have been her comeback!" Words almost fail me. In 1995, at the age of 39, Maddin was awarded the Telluride Lifetime Achievement Award.
In another life, I would love to teach a course on Almodóvar and Maddin, just so I could spend a semester talking about how the self-destructive nature of passion is critical to human nature, and perhaps our finest quality.
Before Dracula they showed a documentary shot during the making of Ice Nymphs and narrated by Tom Waits. Maddin's father had been the business manager for the National Canadian Hockey Team, and he let his young son squeeze orange wedges into the players' mouths — a nice Maddin touch — and towel them down in the locker room, "especially the places they couldn't reach themselves." (Maddin can make comments like that sound simultaneously less salacious and more disturbing.) His father's premature death. His brother's suicide. He talks about the waves of static that floated across the prarie, carrying bits and pieces of radio signals from far and wide, and how that comforting blanket of sound has informed all his soundtracks. About Archangel one of his crew says "Our audience — to the extent we had an audience — found that a tough go." Following Archangel, Maddin relates how he caught a cold from a nephew, which spread to his spine and then to his brain, resulting in some quirky neurological damage. (All the while Maddin is talking, ostriches from the set of Ice Nymphs keep peeking over his shoulder.) The transcendent Alice Krige speaks about working with Maddin on Ice Nymphs, as does Shelley Duvall, an actress built and bred for a Maddin film. He speaks while lying in bed, dizzy and lightheaded from editing. About Careful he says that he had just been to the West Coast and seen mountains for the first time; his long-time screenwriter wanted to to a pro-incest film: and so they compromised, making a pro-incest movie set in the mountains. And he talks about the film he didn't make after Careful, The Dikeman's Daughter, in which Winnipeg was portrayed as a town divided between dike builders and Opera industry workers. The director Paul Cox, who appeared in Careful, put it succinctly: "Why couldn't they just give him $1 million? That's the cocaine budget for most action films these days!" Dikeman was to have starred Christopher Lee and Leni Riefensthal. Leni Riefensthal. Leni Riefensthal. "It would have been her comeback!" Words almost fail me. In 1995, at the age of 39, Maddin was awarded the Telluride Lifetime Achievement Award.
In another life, I would love to teach a course on Almodóvar and Maddin, just so I could spend a semester talking about how the self-destructive nature of passion is critical to human nature, and perhaps our finest quality.
posted by Chris Hodge at 9:36 PM
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