Brand Upon the Brain!

Ladies and Gentlemen! Boys and Girls (Over 18)! Welcome to the Spectacle of the Summer! Prepare Your Eyes for Popping and Your Jaw for Dropping! We Invite You to Partake in the Newest of Celluloid Contraptions Created by that Crazy Canadian himself: Guy Maddin! Cross-dressing! Ritual Sacrifice! Incest! Teen Detectives! The Fountain of Youth! Vampirism! Cannibalism! The Resurrection! You Can Find All of This and More in Maddin's New Film: Brand Upon the Brain!


Don�t be surprised if you find a carnival barker outside the theatre saying these very words. Maddin's latest malcontent thrust into the yesteryear goes all out to recreate the real deal in a silent film experience. Besides the mealy, jumpy photographic camera work and the burnt-out trickery found in the best mute films, Maddin has commissioned an orchestra to play all the music hot and a bevy of celebrities to provide live, spoken narration to the piece. Names as wide-ranging as Crispin Glover, Lou Reed, and Isabella Rossellini stand at a stump, shouting and retracing the short bursts of words seen on the screen. For whatsoever true cinephile, this has Venom and the Sandman beaten by a country mile.


The history goes like this: Guy Maddin (Erik Steffen Maahs) returns to his hometown on an island that once housed a half-crazed orphanage run by his mother (Gretchen Krich) and his unhinged scientist father (Todd Jefferson Moore). As he tries to resort the pharos his female parent once occupied, he flashes back to his early days at the orphanage when he would pal around with Sis (Maya Lawson), a fatal flirt with chastity forced on her by her mother.


One day, they ar visited by Wendy Hale (Katherine E. Scharhon), half of the brother-sister team of sleuths known as the Lightbulb Kids. Young Guy (Sullivan Brown) apace develops a crush on Wendy but she and then disappears in lew of her sidekick Chance Hale. In fact, Wendy has just dressed to kill up as Chance to better investigate the unknown markings on the back of children's necks. While investigating, Hale also begins an affaire with Sis and discovers nectar that can get people youthful again, created by Guy's father.


Following his fantastic short My Dad is one C Years Old, Brand Upon the Brain shows Maddin being more calculated and restrained in his redaction style and his overall aesthetic. Brain continues a longing to create that perfect proportionality of silent film rhetoric and nostalgia-blasted camp that reached its pinnacle in 2004's extraordinary Cowards Bend the Knee. Maddin's further tunneling into his past and his psyche creates a crackers diversion, only there's besides a fondness and warmth to the film that elevates it beyond gimmickry. Even the casting comes off as mnemonic: All the actors seem to have been chosen for their faces and expressions, none more than evocative than Scharhon's childlike mixture of curiosity, despondence, and lust. Through his camera, his editing, and his ever-unique style, Maddin alludes to the ghosts of puerility not through imaginary friends and monsters but instead the monsters and friends we all wish were imaginary.


The Criterion DVD replicates the Brand experience for the small screen, with eight (count-'em) narration tracks (three recorded in the studio and five unrecorded, ranging from Isabella Rosssellini to Eli Wallach to Crispin Glover to Maddin himself). One deleted scene, a objective about the making of the motion-picture show, and two new Maddin short films are likewise included.