The Forbidden Room

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🎙️ EPISODE 704: 04.20.23 🇨🇦 𝙿𝙰𝚁𝚃 𝙾𝙵 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝙳𝙸𝚁𝙴𝙲𝚃𝙾𝚁 𝙵𝙾𝙲𝚄𝚂 𝙾𝙽 𝙶𝚄𝚈 𝙼𝙰𝙳𝙳𝙸𝙽 🇨🇦 The swarm of visual ideas (and literary ones) have finally run amok; we're just floating from whim to bonkers whim here. It's as beautiful as it is disorienting. If you ever felt lost before while watching a Maddin movie, well, that was just training for The Forbidden Room. It's right there in the title: you're not allowed inside. The viewer is at the impulse of a forever wandering mind, like being inside someone else's daydream or hallucinogenic fever. Good luck. A collage of mini-movies seems to sprout like moss or mold spores upon an inorganic object, or they're revealed like the components of a nesting doll; sometimes there's a connecting of the dots — albeit obliquely and at random — other times it's not so easy, if not nonexistent altogether.

There's clearly a freedom to do even more in the digital medium, both on set and in the edit, and that's evident in the longest runtime to date (still a manageable two hours). As many new tricks as old are utilized: Found footage is deployed; no two inter-titles are designed alike, one scroll of words is in Spanish; Udo Kier plays a man who gets a lobotomy because he's obsessed with asses and it's soundtracked by an original song by the legendary art rock duo Sparks (one of three, maybe four roles — (?) I lost count — Kier portrays, as do several of the other players as well); and on and on and… A curious morphing effect is present throughout and it is very cool. Like the images themselves are breathing, another conscious effort to make the movie about being a movie, first and foremost.

Bookended by a tutorial on "How to Take a Bath" (based on a poem by John Ashbery) narrated by the great and frequent Maddin collaborator Louis Negin (just one of his several roles in this insanity), this instantly registers as the most explicitly experimental work of the auteur's career (and I'm pretty sure this is the second or third time I've written a variation of that sentiment — but I MEAN IT now). The climax enters a kaleidoscope and we see everything, everywhere all at once: all the various threads and little stories intercut with one another... before the woodsman finally finds his amnesia-stricken kidnapped girl hidden away on the submarine. Whereas previously, it's felt like Maddin has been daring the audience to unpack the plot, here he seems to be screaming DON'T BOTHER. And yet still, there's clear thematic resonance shining on through, not to mention direct ties to his own preceding work (from Keyhole to The Dead Father). It's perhaps too arcane to ever love as fully as his very best work, but good lord is it ever the equal (and then some) in terms of audaciousness. It's truly something to marvel at, and I really can't ask for more. But I'm sure that's what we'll get next time.

UPDATE: Rescored this as a 10 when I was doing the final RANKING
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CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 703 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 705 ⫸

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The Forbidden Room is a 2015 Canadian experimental fantasy drama film[1] co-directed by Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson, and written by Maddin, Johnson, and Robert Kotyk. The film stars Roy Dupuis, Clara Furey, Louis Negin, Jacques Nolot, Charlotte Rampling, Udo Kier, Gregory Hlady, Sparks, Karine Vanasse, Adele Haenel, Mathieu Amalric, Maria de Medeiros and Geraldine Chaplin. It was released on January 21, 2015.