The Saddest Music in the World

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🎙️ EPISODE 643: 02.09.23 🇨🇦 𝙿𝙰𝚁𝚃 𝙾𝙵 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝙳𝙸𝚁𝙴𝙲𝚃𝙾𝚁 𝙵𝙾𝙲𝚄𝚂 𝙾𝙽 𝙶𝚄𝚈 𝙼𝙰𝙳𝙳𝙸𝙽 🇨🇦 This is the one that got me into the world of Guy Maddin. I first discovered it at one of Al Nigrin's film classes while at Rutgers. He was hands down one of my favorite teachers I ever had (and an experimental filmmaker himself), and I actually figured out his name AS I was recording the podcast for this review. He must have played The Saddest Music in the World as soon as it was available on DVD because I probably took the class around 2004. I wound up taking two or three of Nigrin's classes, all as electives (I believe because this was before I transferred into the art school program). So I'm not sure when and what for this one was screened, but I fell in love instantly. This is also easily the most accessible Maddin film to date.

At this point in the filmography, it's clear we're not going to be breaking much or any new ground with each subsequent entry. He's set in his ways. This one, featuring a loose and indelible performance by Isabella Rossellini and a confidant and comedic one by Kids in the Hall's Mark McKinney, is the most outwardly humorous movie by a good deal. The premise alone says it all: "an experimental musical-of-sorts set in 1930s depression-era Winnipeg, amputee beer baroness Lady Port-Huntley organizes a competition offering $25,000 to the person who can compose the saddest music in the world." Like with the previous efforts, this — co-authored by frequent collaborator George Roles — has a language all its own. In my eyes, what elevates it is that the actual language has caught up with the visual language. The two elements are firmly on par here, playing off one another in a spectacular way (and give credit to all of the actors who treat this extreme silliness with nothing but the utmost dedication).

Like his best film before this, 1997's Careful, this is a film about brothers. Of course, boiling a Maddin picture down to something some so specific is beyond reductive. But it's worth mentioning, as he clearly finds, in the duality inherent in that relationship, inspiration to unpack and dissect myriad other ideas. Although, I think I've maybe given up on trying to interpret exactly what those might be. There's a submission which takes place when you enter into this arena, HIS arena. These are very human movies in a lot of ways, but the purpose of all the aesthetic choices seems to be to distort it in such a way where all that remains is the art and the story. For example, the notion of a dead son here is so explicitly just that (a notion), it's rendered as simply more artifice, like a piece of stage design or antiquated cinematic trick. It's a maddening and masterful stroke simultaneously. All previous ideas about what a film is (and, more specifically, what a film's purpose is) need to be checked at the door. Maddin's rewritten the rules. And here he's done so in the most entertaining fashion yet.

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 642 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 644A ⫸

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The Saddest Music in the World is a 2003 Canadian film directed by Guy Maddin. Budgeted at $3.8-million and shot over 24 days, the film marks Maddin's first collaboration with actor Isabella Rossellini. Maddin and co-screenwriter George Toles based the film on an original screenplay written by British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, from which they kept "the title, the premise and the contest – to determine which country’s music was the saddest" but otherwise re-wrote. Like most of Guy Maddin's films, The Saddest Music in the World is filmed in a style that imitates late 1920s and early 1930s cinema, with grainy black-and-white photography, slightly out-of-sync sound and expressionist art design. A few scenes are filmed in colour, in a manner that imitates early two-strip Technicolor. It was released on September 7, 2003.