Sad Sad WorldThe Saddest Music In the World

Guy Maddin makes movies that are unlike those of any other filmmaker working today. The latest from the Canadian director, The Saddest Music in the World, is another one of these unique concoctions, brimming with retro-stylistic ingenuity, deadpan absurdist melodrama, and a crazed personal passion. It may not be his best film--that honor probably goes to his bracing, brilliant short The Heart of the World (2000)--but Saddest Music is still an often exhilarating movie. It's a jolt of demented fun which should become the perfect introduction to the work of an artist who deserves to be better known.

In Depression-era Winnipeg, a beer company is holding a competition to discover "the saddest music in the world" with a hefty cash prize going to the nation that performs the most heartbreaking of melodies. In the past, Maddin has certainly shown his talent for inspired set-ups; Careful (1992) centered on a mute mountain village living in fear of an avalanche and Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary (2002) reinterpreted Stoker's gothic horror classic as a frenetic silent movie ballet. But Saddest Music moves in a direction more outrageous than all of his previous work. Maddin's gloss on Hollywood musical melodramas of the 1930s features, among other things, a double amputee beauty, multiple perverted love triangles, an amnesiac nympho, and a series of bizarre, international music showdowns.

The host of the contest is the proprietor of the Muskeg brewery-cum-saloon, a bitter, legless businesswoman named Lady Port-Huntly (Isabella Rossellini). As she puts it in just one of the film's many bits of hilariously ripe dialogue, "If you're sad and like beer, I'm your lady." Banking on the imminent repeal of Prohibition, she positions the contest as a promotion for selling her "suds" on the global market.

Working with a bigger budget and with his first real star in Rossellini, Maddin may be moving away from his status as an underground amateur, but his distinct aesthetic remains intact. Saddest Music continues his ongoing project of mining antiquated styles for new formal energy. He shoots in tinted, soft-focus black and white, building scenes out of frenzied montages, jump cuts, jokey inserts, and exaggerated sound effects. The film is even somewhat restrained in comparison to his prior work. A certain amount of lyricism is sacrificed to the demands of a more emphatic narrative and increased dialogue.

Once the various competitors flock to the "world capital of sorrow" (which is also Maddin's hometown, a place fraught with associations as his image of Canada), past romantic entanglements and a circus atmosphere take over. Broadway producer Chester Kent (Mark McKinney) comes ready to win the contest as a way to stick it to his former lover, Port-Huntly, or perhaps as a way to win her back. Kids in the Hall alum McKinney gives a great performance opposite Rossellini, playing a smart-assed scoundrel to her twisted Blue Velvet icon.

Representing the United States in the contest, Kent has devised a surefire strategy for success that is everything you'd expect from an American optimist and crass go-getter: an upbeat mega production of "California Here I Come" with panpipes and Eskimos. Other countries' delegations are given their own affectionately caricatured numbers, from a brigade of Scots bagpiping away to some West Africans drumming out their misery.

With its tongue-in-cheek tone, Saddest Music often threatens to descend into full-on camp, but it manages to avoid that sort of soulless self-consciousness through the sheer force of its emotional convictions. Underlying the comedy is the film's melancholic heart--the pathos of missing limbs and memories, and the pain of obsessive, thwarted love. And as always, Maddin's irrepressible infatuation with moviemaking is visible in every frame.