The Saddest Music in the World

I tend to love any non-Hollywood type movie if for no other reason than I like to actually be surprised. I love movies without all the Hollywood cliches. I like Isabella Rossellini, and I adore Maria de Medeiros. So why did I hate this movie? It was like some kind of disjointed surrealistic LSD trip. It barely made any sense at all. I found a few of the early campy overacted scenes a little entertaining but you can't carry a whole movie on that and it gets old quickly. I don't know how to enjoy a movie with no sense of reality at all. Also, I don't mind the B&W. I don't mind sepia. When it's so grainy you can't make out what you are seeing it is tiring to the mind and the eyes.

In classic Film Noir style, Guy Maddin directs The Saddest Music in the World, set in Winnipeg, Manitoba, (1933) during the depths of the Great Depression. Maddin, in collaboration with George Toles, sets the mood with an astute level of cinematography, employing old-fashioned iris lens techniques to create the antique, distressed look of a Golden-age movie-screen, using grainy blues and silvers to invoke moods of emotional intensity. He skillfully manipulates stark camera angles and chiaroscuro to accent light and shadowy effects, while highlighting exuberance and humor with unconventional music and dialogue.Isabella Rossellini plays the role of the clever and tragic Lady Helen Port-Hunsley, a wealthy Canadian beer baroness who launches a world competition seeking the most melancholy music on the globe, as she endeavors to dramatically increase beer sales at the tail end of America's failed experiment of Prohibition. The purse is a huge twenty-five-thousand-dollar award that brings forth competitors from as far away as Scotland, Serbia and Siam. The main protagonist in the film emerges as the cynical Chester Kent (Mark McKinney), in contention with his brother, Roderick as Gavrillo the Great, and others in this great rivalry, where winners in each round slide into a giant vat of beer.Twists and turns of emotion fill the plot, pulling you from humor to tragedy within a framework of grandeur and the absurd. As bygone secrets unravel, Fyodor, father of Chester and Roderick, attempts to exonerate his past guilt by fashioning glass legs filled with beer for Helen, his former lover, and the victim of an accidental amputation.For those who appreciate imagination and avant-garde expressionism, Saddest Music is nourishment for the senses.

This is one of the best movies I've ever seen and probably my new favorite movie. With expert use of both black and whote and color, beautifully stylized sets, and a complex and intriguing family drama, Guy Maddin's The Saddest Music in the World is the perfect tribute to the early days of cinema as well as a much watch for any film buff!

Guy Maddin's work really defies description. Words fall short. I'll try.Script: quirky and understatedly hilarious. Performances: Quirky and understatedly hilarious. Plot: Quirky and understatedly hilarious, a parody of early black and white melodrama.All I can say is if you're thinking of watching it, check out the trailer first, and don't go into it expecting anything very similar to anything you've ever seen before, or you're bound to be disappointed.I feel like Maddin accomplishes effortlessly the bizarre-yet-subtle hilarity that so many other independent filmmakers I've watched my whole life try desperately to force, and fail miserably (i hesitate to name names because I know we all like different filmmakers for different reasons, but after watching Jarmusch movies all my life and thinking they were almost-but-not-quite-really-good, when I recently discovered Maddin's body of work, I quickly came to the conclusion that Jarmusch is just a poor man's Guy Maddin, and let's face it, Jarmusch hasn't had anything remotely interesting or original since Dead Man, and even that was mediocre like all his movies that went before, there I said it, although the comparison may not be really quite fair since they may not be trying to accomplish the same things/evoke the same mood).Anyway, I personally loved this movie so much that I own it for frequent and repeated viewing (and even quote it almost constantly at odd and inappropriate moments, because it's just that fun!), but it definitely won't appeal to everybody.If you're sad, and like beer, I'm your lady.I'm not an American; I'm a nymphomaniac.Get up, get your boots on, hurryuphurryup, time's a wastin' if you're not tastin' Lady Port Huntley's Beer!

Guy Maddin's most accessible movie is still my favorite. It's funny, surreal, and enjoyable start to finish. The cast is great and the look is classic Maddin with all the right flourishes. If you like Guy Maddin then you will love it, if you don't or never heard of him then this might be a good place to start as it's more straightforward than a lot of his others. The making of featurettes are good too. It was a pleasure watching this bizarre musical comedy again and sharing it with people who had never seen it and had no idea what they were getting into.

I love this movie. I've seen it probably 5 times? There's so much going on, but overall it's EXTREMELY entertaining. Toles' screenplay is so smart and SO sneakily subversive. Maddin is a mad genius of a director, and makes the world a less normal (and therefore less boring) place. It's gorgeous musical melodrama with beer. It's a great time.

A musical, comedy? Hardly. It USA very unusual and difficult movie, but rewarding

A surreal wonderful blending of Busby Berkeley, Luis Bunuel, a 1930's "documentary" on marijuana of venereal disease with a little early Nation Geographic television added to give it spunk. It all works out fine.

This is an exquisite film which draws on silent cinema, Steam-Punk and more easily recognisable melodrama to fabulous effect. There are plenty of laughs to be had if that is your wont but it would be wrong to misconstrue Maddin's film as devoid of heart. Rather than wholly cynical, there is gentle and affectionate mockery here too. Yes, there are savage digs at rampant consumerism and commodification of people and emotions. However, there are genuine moments of poignancy which certainly succeeded in moving me alongside more superficial, zany comedy. The cast enter into the (organised) chaos with considerable gusto whilst the set design (in particular the home of three of the protagonists which is reminiscent of 1920s German Expressionist Cinema) is a perpetual source of delight.Rarely have I experienced such unadulterated joy and piquancy on first viewing of a film. Sensational!

v.happy

an enjoyable and well made and directed movie

good and in time

Das Deckblatt zur DVD verspricht ein melodramatisches Musical mit satirischem Einschlag. Herausgekommen ist ein wirres Durcheinander von ineinander geschnittenen Bildern, aus denen ein Handlungszusammenhang mühsam herausgefiltert werden muss. Das Ganze in einer offenbar absichtlich veralteten schwarz-weißen Bildtechnik (die dreißiger Jahre nachempfindend), deren Bilder in grauem Gries unscharf und oft kaum erkennbar ablaufen gerade dann, wenn man die Darsteller/innen gerne scharf gesehen hätte. So kommt die Schönheit der Rosselini und de Medeiros nicht richtig zur Wirkung, wenngleich diese beiden Protagonistinnen alleine verhindern, dass ich die DVD wegwerfen würde. Es ist rührend, die Medeiros mit ihrem dünnen Stimmchen nicht immer ganz sauber singen zu hören. Weniger rührt schon, wenn man McMillan das Cello maltraitieren sieht. Seine linke Hand simuliert blamabel schlecht und sein Bogen verirrt sich über die Saiten, dass in Wirklichkeit nur krächzender Lärm hätte entstehen können. Die Musik ist an sich nicht schlecht ausgewählt und auch passabel dargeboten, doch kann sie nicht genossen werden, weil sie ständig unterbrochen und mit Gequatsche und anderem Lärm überlagert wird. Die Dialoge sind erschütternd schwach. Wieder einmal regieren Gewalt und blinde Zerstörungswut die Handlung. Manchmal kann man mit verächtlichem Unterton lachen, aber Traurigkeit entsteht an keiner Stelle. So nenne ich den Film intellektuellen, auf tiefsinnig gemachten Murks. Wer's mag.