directed by Guy Maddin
2000
length: 6 minutes
Guy Maddin has made a career out of tirelessly plumbing the depths of a niche so specific that most people would be surprised to know that it even exists. Since the late 1980s, Maddin has been making highly stylized films cut from the mold of early silent cinema. His most recent releases have been Brand Upon the Brain! and My Winnipeg, both of which are terrific experiments in autobiography and human memory. The most obvious visual references in his work come from classic German Expressionist films by directors like F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang, but he has said he's also heavily indebted to the works of Carl Dreyer and the surrealist collaborations between Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali. Maddin is perhaps one of the most polarizing figures in modern cinema. His detractors cite him as a textbook example of style-over-substance filmmaking and tend to throw around that damnable expression "art for art's sake." But Maddin lovers (myself included) see him as a unique visionary in a world where films increasingly lack courage, creativity and any sort of factor that makes them exciting and, in turn, worth watching at all.
The plot of the film makes it sound more like an absurdist epic than a six-minute short: two brothers (Nikolai is a mortician and Osip an actor who plays Jesus in passion plays) fall in love with the same woman, Anna, a scientist studying the biology of the earth's core, "the very hear tof the world." One day, Anna discovers that the world is about to suffer heart failure. Unable to choose between the two brothers, she marries a rich entrepreneur, which sends the ailing world into an even more drastic tailspin. Anna realizes that she must make the ultimate self-sacrifice to save the world: she must travel to the earth's core and replace the heart of the world with her own. Once she does this, the word "Kino" (which means "cinema" in German) appears repeatedly on the screen, and then the credits roll.
The Heart of the World is my favorite of the Maddin shorts I've seen. Not only is it a visually dazzling little piece, it is also a clever commentary of the inherent brevity of short films themselves. The themes that Maddin tackles in Heart of the World (apocalypse, jealousy, self-sacrifice, salvation through art, etc.) are larger than life, the kind of themes usually only found in feature-length films. By touching on these themes so lightly here, Maddin coyly mocks the thematic limitations of short films and then flies in the face of them by making such an "epic" short. He also scoffs at filmic conventions like exposition or well-developed character arcs here. In a feature film, Osip's career as an actor playing Jesus would be a goldmine of intriguing exposition in which other filmmakers would gladly find all sorts of symbolism and religious commentary. But Maddin introduces Osip with a simple intertitle that reads, "An actor, playing Christ in the passion play." With its quick cuts and dismissal of filmic conventions, Heart of the World races through to its dramatic conclusion at light speed.
The critical reaction to Heart of the World fascinates me. It still remains one of Maddin's most acclaimed films (it received awards at the San Francisco International Film Festival and the National Society of Film Critics Awards), and it has the highest rating of any of his films on IMDB (a whopping 8.2!). Not that IMDB is any sort of scientific barometer of things like this, but very few short films on the site have as lively a discussion board as Heart of the World (one of the threads is entitled, "Favorite part?", something that most users would not think to ask about a film that only runs six minutes.) Even people who find Maddin's style grating seem to enjoy this film. So my question is this: WHY? For those of you familiar with Maddin's feature-length work, do you find that his films are easier to "stomach" in a compact form like this? And for those of you who have never seen a Guy Maddin film before, do you think you could deal with 90 minutes of this, or is "novelty" of his style more suitable for shorts?
If "KINO" wasn't enough, the reel flapping to a stop as the screen goes black hammered home the meta quality of this film.
ReplyDeleteWas it worth the six minutes of manic piano music and retro visuals that would have made for a poor, forgettable silent film in the first half of the 20th century? Does something that would have sucked then suck just as much now? Or do we view it differently because of that meta reflection?
I lean toward quality never changing. It would have been lame without the meta reference. It should be just as lame with the meta reference. Your mileage may vary.
Jonathan Rosenbaum has a great piece about the film. If I'm not mistaken, it was also cited by some major paper (perhaps the New York Times?) as the best film of that year. Interestingly, the origin of Heart of the World comes from the same festival that gave us Camera.
ReplyDeleteJeremy, just curious as to why you thought it sucked (both then and now). Even though I like that it is working on a number of levels, I think the film is incredibly entertaining even without all of the "meta" stuff.
ReplyDeleteI love this film! I was thinking of posting on it too, but I guess I'm not anymore...
ReplyDeleteAnyway, "kino" apparently also means "cinema" in Russian. I'm not really familiar with Soviet-era cinema, but my feeling is that Heart of the World is an homage to it. There's an obvious nod to Russia with, again, the use of the word "kino," as well as the names of the characters. I also noticed that the font used--and the specific example I'm thinking of is when Anna's name comes up--looks like Cyrillic characters. But beyond the surface, silent film seems a fitting medium for Maddin's project, if in fact his goal was a Soviet homage. Perhaps one of the (if not THE) most accessible forms of art, silent film has the power to appeal to the masses, which obviously would be in the interest of the Soviet government. And then there's the debasing of organized religion through Osip's Christ character, when his role in the passion play devolves into a role as a false prophet. I'd be interested to know if anyone has done research on this.
I think we'd be remiss to not mention Maddin's superb usage of typography and throughout "The Heart of the World." In particular, when Anna is describing to the crowd that the heart is going to fail, Maddin intercuts formulas and numbers to explicate the science behind her words, and then moves away from the abstract to the direct "ONE DAY LEFT" punctuation at the end of her speech. There's as much creative expression in choosing what to say and what not to say as there is in the visuals, and Maddin fully knows and exploits this. Makes me want to sing "O Canada."
ReplyDeleteI love how the music keeps you in constant high. About half way I started to get worried that it would stop and as it seems to reach momentum around minute 3 But, Maddin manages to keep you in with the visuals and the music.
ReplyDeleteyea i agree the music takes it to a whole new level. I probably wouldn't watch this again and again, but thought it was really ambitious and succesful
ReplyDeletehow many cuts is in the film?
ReplyDelete