Brand Upon The Brain
A master of cinematic synthesis, Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin returns to the screen with his latest provocation Brand Upon The Brain! Currently traveling across the country in a number of special screenings featuring live musical accompaniment, live foley crew, and guest narrators (running the gambit from Maddin himself to Isabella Rossellini to Crispin Glover among others), the film is yet another link in Maddin’s chain of films which combine classic, silent era movie techniques with a modern sensibility and choice of dramatic content. Thus merging the two together into a true synthesis of old meets new as he has done with films like The Saddest Music in The World, The Heart of the World, Archangel, etc.
Already successfully screened at the 2006 New York Film Festival, the 2007 Berlin International Film Festival, the 2007 Mexico City Film Festival, and the 2007 Buenos Aires Film Festival, in its live performance format, the film has been touring across the country in order to both delight lucky audiences as well as promote its regular theatrical screening run. The tale begins when an adult Guy Maddin is summoned by his ailing mother to return to the lighthouse that stood as his familial home. Recognizing the end is near, she requests that her son return to his childhood home and repaint it before her passing so that she may once again gaze upon its glory.
While embarking on this makeover project, Maddin’s mind drifts back to memories of childhood, specifically regarding an adventure including mad scientist experiments, sexual discovery, and strange scars on the back of children’s heads. When he was a young lad, Maddin lived on the island with both his over bearing Mother (Gretchen Krich), older sister Sis (Maya Lawson), and their eccentric, inventor Father (Todd Jefferson Moore), who spent his time holed up in his laboratory night and day, working on secret experiments as well as creating odd inventions. Doubling also as an orphanage, the lighthouse and adjacent property also acted as home to a number of young orphans who were carefully watched by Guy’s mother within her ominous watchtower enclave, scanning across the horizon like Big Sister.
As Guy and Sis pine away their time on the island, bristling under the strict rules of their mother, a new child arrives on the island focused on stirring the proverbial pot. Half of the famous sibling sleuths, The Lightbulb Kids, young Wendy Hale (Katherine E. Scharhon) comes to the island in order to investigate the cause of strange head wounds inflicted upon orphans who lived under the Maddins’ care. Akin to a twenties’ version of Nancy Drew, Wendy is young, energetic, and refuses to rest until the case is solved. However, complications soon arise when she is introduced to the Maddin siblings. Immediately infatuated, Guy pines over Wendy as she becomes his first crush. However, knowing that Mother keeps an eye on everyone staying on the island, Wendy plots to keep Mother off balance as much as possible.
Seeking to continue her investigation and diffuse Mother’s suspicions, Wendy disguises herself as her twin brother Chance. Saddened by what he believes is Wendy’s departure, Guy becomes sad and longs for his first crush to return while Sis, on the other hand, becomes enamored of Chance herself. The feeling is reciprocated and as Chance, Wendy begins romantically courting the young Maddin girl who is on the verge of becoming a young woman. As the investigation continues, further family secrets are revealed and the layers of repression are stripped away to lay bare the dark history of the Maddin family itself.
As with much of Maddin’s other work, Brand Upon The Brain! is composed of classic techniques reappropriated from the silent film era. Never one to discard old cinematic traditions for what’s hot at the moment, Maddin essentially has crafted a silent movie for the new millennium. There is no spoken dialogue included with the exception of Isabella Rossellini acting as narrator, all pertinent dialogue between characters is handled via dialogue cards which are flashed across the screen. The vintage black and while look and feel tricks one into thinking that the film could have been produced in the 1920’s. Yet Maddin is able to infuse a modern sensibility into the project via his editing methods, quickly cutting sequences and imagery together in a near MTV-like manner, surreal imagery and dream like passages flash before one’s eyes in a collage of pure cinema.
The method is akin to his strategy used for the acclaimed short The Heart of the World. So while the film looks antique, its pacing and subject matter certainly places it within a modern context. Indeed it is the film’s content that becomes the greatest shock of all, as the family is revealed to be rife with sexual repression and control which leads to unexpected consequences, especially the pliable sexuality exhibited by Sis and Wendy Hale as they engage in a nascent lesbian relationship. Raising her children with no firm awareness or concrete knowledge of sexuality, Mother essentially allows such open sexual thoughts to manifest themselves within her children, which ultimately leads to their own experimentation.
However, there also remains the matter of the mysterious head wounds themselves and how they are linked to Father’s own machinations involving Mother’s own life force. In the end though, Maddin uses these melodramatic tricks as a jumping off point into a study of teenage sexuality and parental oppression which one suspects is closer to his own life than he may openly let on to. Perhaps this is as close as Maddin can come in crafting a genuinely autobiographical film, and if indeed it is, it certainly is no different than the factual flights of fancy that other such filmmakers like Fellini and Bergman crafted, using their own personal histories and realities to create worlds that exhibit greater resonance within a fictional context than if they were simply presented as basic fact while still offering illumination for their audiences. Further refining his iconoclastic style, Guy Maddin once again brings to the screen a film that will both delight his ardent supporters and prove that cinema indeed hasn’t fallen to serve only webslingers or yellow buses.
For more information on the film, screenings, etc. go to www.branduponthebrain.com, and www.myspace.com/branduponthebrain.