Make no mistake about it, Canada's Guy Maddin is an enigma. We're talking about somebody who's main inspiration seems to be old Soviet newsreels (the Kino Pravda series,to be exact,by Dziga Vertov,the father of the newsreel). Watching 'Brand Upon The Brain' was very much like watching an old Kino Pravda (Cinema Truth,by the way,for those who don't speak Russian)newsreel while running a temperature about 110 degrees,while on a mixture of psychedelic mushrooms washed down with codeine based cough syrup (and I wouldn't want it any other way!). The plot (but who needs a plot in a film like this?) concerns a middle aged man who is by some strange twist of fate, named Guy Maddin, returns to the island he grew up as a young boy, and hasn't been back in over 30 years,to try & clean up the old lighthouse/orphanage he grew up in. All I can say is....man!....if I had as screwed up a childhood as Maddin had, I guess I would turn out making films as bizarre as Maddin's are (not that I'm saying that's bad,mind you---check out his short film 'Heart Of The World',which won an award some years back as the best experimental short at some film festival who's name I forget). Although the film features a cast of unknowns (on these shores at any rate),it benefits from a narrative by Isabella Rossilini (daughter of Ingrid Bergman & Roberto Rossilini),who is unfortunately never seen on screen. Honestly, you can do a lot worse than not seeing 'Brand Upon The Brain', but why would you want to?
