This is part of the Guy Maddin blogathon over at Fandor's Keyframe blog. Thanks to Kevin Lee for inviting me to participate.
Back when I was in the video business, we got a steady stream of requests for Guy Maddin movies. I think we eventually got Tales of the Gimli Hospital and The Twilight of the Ice Nymphs before we closed up shop. There was a constant and surprising demand for these movies, given that this was the pre-Internet era and given that we were not doing business in a major city. I have to admit that I didn't "get" either of those movies when I initially saw them. Which is to say, I understood what Maddin was up to, but they seemed like intellectual exercises to me. They didn't grab me by the short hairs and drag me into their delirium. I didn't come around to Maddin until sometime later.
"The Heart of the World," Maddin's 2000 short film for the Toronto Film Festival, turned out to be the Rosetta stone for me regarding Maddin's aesthetic.
"The Heart of the World," like most of Maddin's films, looks back at disused cinematic traditions that the director rescues from the dustbin of history. It's mainly inspired by Russian silent films, with an emphasis on rapid montage. It's what you might get if Eisenstein had got it on with Vertov and been unleashed on the scene dock at UFA. A staccato score that emphasizes its forward motion accompanies the rapid flow of images. The score sends an affectionate elbow into the ribs of contemporary scores for silent movies.