Brand upon the Brain

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🎙️ EPISODE 651: 02.23.23 🇨🇦 𝙿𝙰𝚁𝚃 𝙾𝙵 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝙳𝙸𝚁𝙴𝙲𝚃𝙾𝚁 𝙵𝙾𝙲𝚄𝚂 𝙾𝙽 𝙶𝚄𝚈 𝙼𝙰𝙳𝙳𝙸𝙽 🇨🇦 Here we go again. The second entry in Maddin's ME Trilogy, Brand Upon the Brain! is the closest thing to a straight-up horror in the filmography, even if the setup — demented parents are harvesting nectar from the kids in their orphanage, which also happens to be a lighthouse — is comical at best. Yet, like the best Maddin has to offer, it transcends its quirky premise in the most genuine, most confounding and — to this writer's great dismay — most untranslatable way. Why are these movies so good? Don't ask me! I'm just the critic whose job it is to explain. And I've never felt so ill-equipped for the task.

If my unlistenable podcasts during this series weren't blights enough, I now find myself drowning in words when it comes to parsing this lovely filmography with something more than "Yeah man, you really gotta check this guy out for yourself." But that's the sentiment I keep landing on. In many ways, I think this might be his best film yet. It's perhaps the most explicitly experimental (and that's saying something this deep into a career as weird as his). The Saddest Music in the Word is still his most accessible, brimming with a simple joy that plays with its absurdity in a straightforward — in terms of Maddin, at least — way.

But this might be his best to date. It's stockpiled with themes concerning gender roles and the parent-child dynamic. Some are tropes, sure (the overbearing mother), but many are far less concrete. And this is kind of the wonder of Guy Maddin in a nutshell: he takes what is known (both concerning form and content) and twists it, like a wringing a wet rag dry. The average moviegoer likely will never see past the physical act, the admittedly showy artifice. But the real magic is in that oblique residue. And I can't for the life of me explain the trick.

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 650 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 652 ⫸

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Brand upon the Brain! (2006) is an avant-garde silent film directed by Guy Maddin and shot in Seattle with local actors. Maddin directed the film from a script co-written with George Toles, shooting over nine days and editing over three months, on an estimated budget of $40,000. It was released on September 8, 2006.