Cowards Bend the Knee

Understand that I'm getting a bit tired of people comparing every strange movie that comes along to a David Lynch film too. Unfortunately, Lynch is the norm and just about one of the most accessible strange filmmakers out there, so sometimes the comparison is needed for a starting point, like in this case.

This movie is, roughly speaking, the story of a swinging hockey player who gets entrapped in a bunch of relationships, including most prominently one with a scarred daughter who wants her father's death revenged. Her father's killer? Her mother. It includes but is not limited to perverse sexuality, weird psychoses, and severed arms.

It's shot in black and white and is a silent film, which creates for it a sort of removed surreality/abstractness which is, honestly, reminiscent of Eraserhead and Lynch's Lumiere and Company short.

What makes it Maddin's, though, is the use of imagery from his childhood (the barbershop, the hockey players, etc.) set to a blatant sexuality which goes beyond just being blatant but enforces it: you see the sexual image, and then the words follow saying exactly what you were thinking. No more subtlety and deranged fetishes, this is straight-forward Freud and primal scene.

Because of this, this film as a whole remains true to itself and never lets go of its own private Universe, one that we could never live in and yet, terribly, can relate to, figure out, and eventually even understand.

Beyond that, there's not much that can be talked about this movie besides the fact that it there's no common approach to it. It has no genre (besides maybe Silent film) and is disconcerting, requiring a certain level of viewer interaction that most movies don't ask for. For fans of strange and insane cinema, it's great; for anybody looking to be entertained, this is most definitely not for you.

--PolarisDiB

It's not in Guy Maddin to make what Hollywood people would call a "normal" movie. Armed with 8mm cameras, loads of lights, sound effects (if not actual sound equipment), and a mind like a steel Dziga-Vertov trap marinated in Winnipeg and sex and murder, he makes movies the way he damn well pleases to do them, which usually are done like super-kinetic, libido-charged fever dreams that come to represent a kind of consciousness that could be misconstrued as a music video if not for the fact that it's a 1920's silent film about revenge-plotting women and blue hands ala Evil Dead that kill innocent victims while hockey is always a major subject (and, sometimes, with players in full wax museum mold).

It might not always make sense- and by this I mean relatively to some of Maddin's best and strangest like Brand Upon the Brain! and The Saddestmusic in the World- but it's never less than boring and always more than enough for the open-minded. And by this I mean open-minded enough to find oneself in the horror-movie world of a hockey player named Guy Maddin (yeah, not the first time and wont be the last the director has a character named by himself), who goes through a psycho-sexual-homicidal journey through a pair of blue hands which belong to a devious girl's father. They aren't actually his hands put on his, however, they're just painted blue. But there's an effect that comes with this: the hands kill ala Evil Dead without Maddin really wanting to. So come a series of events involving wax-painted hockey players who can come to life, an abortionist that works out of a beauty parlor, another woman who cant stand how Maddin waxes her legs, and, yes, plenty of frenetic Canadian Hockey.

That's what it's aboot, so to speak, but there's more, much more, particularly in Maddin's 10-chapter set-up, and featuring Beethoven's 7th among other classical selections (frankly I enjoyed the 7th in Saddest Music more, but this is even crazier, which helps). Everything moves at such a pace and clip you wont know what stops and goes. But Maddin's mind works wonders as a master of his craft and at relaying his own personality and life experiences in the framework of what is essentially a really demented B-movie. It's like with Jodorowsky: he makes movies with his you-know-what as opposed to his head. I wouldn't want it any other way.

Well, this is quite probably one of the most uncategorisable films I've seen - you couldn't possibly call it a comedy, with its beauty salons that moonlight as abortion clinics/brothels, and its disturbingly self-lacerating portrait of the director as a cowardly lecher and cold-blooded murderer. But parts of it are hilarious. Go figure. In brief, the plot concerns Guy Maddin, hockey player for the Winnipeg Maroons, who takes his pregnant girlfriend to the above-mentioned clinic for a termination and then leaves her (literally in the middle of the procedure) for the brothel-keeper's beautiful daughter, played with incandescent and slightly scary intensity by Melissa Dionisio (that surely cant be her real name, can it?) only to discover that she can't allow herself to be touched by a man's hands (an uncharacteristically direct quote from Lon Chaney's 'The Unknown') until her father's murder has been avenged. And then she produced the jar in which she keeps, preserved, her father's hands... After that we get a twist on that old chestnut 'The Hands of Orlac', combined with a surprisingly explicit dose of sexual excess and weird psychology, as young Guy ends up in deep trouble of every sort imaginable, through his own inability to control his lusts. Told in ten chapters of six minutes apiece, this was intended as a gallery installation but it works just fine as a movie. As long as you don't mind a regular dose of jawdropping strangeness and a large splash of shocking, unfathomable directorial masochism.

Many people have compared Maddin to David Lynch - although there are some psycho-sexual similarities, they have it wrong. He's the Tom Waits of film. To watch his films requires not the suspension of disbelief, but an open subconscious.

Throw your mind away and enjoy this film. Hockey players ensconced in sperm and a combination beauty salon, brothel, day care center and abortion clinic all make appearances here. And an interesting story mixing "Hands of Orlac" in reverse and...well, a lot of Maddin. Unlike any film experience you'll see, but you'll come away a better and more open person because of it. And Melissa Dionisio is the most stunning actress I've ever seen on screen.

For people new to Maddin, I'd recommend starting with The Saddest Music in the World, which really works as a movie and a story and almost makes sense from a realistic point of view.

I come away from his films glad that we have somebody who thinks like that, and glad that he put it on film.

In a version of his life, Maddin tells us the tragic story of how the young Guy was once a great ice hockey player with the Maroons, until his girlfriend got into 'trouble'. A visit to a hairdressers-come-bordello-come-abortion clinic leads Guy to fall for Meta, the daughter of the bordello owner Liliom. However Meta wants revenge on her mother and her lover (Shaky – Guy's friend) for the murder of her father (who's blue hands she still has in a jar). A sinister 'transplant' by Dr Fusi, sets Guy on the road to destruction – all for the 'joy, joy, joy of finding love'.

I saw this film at a film night recently dedicated to showing several of Maddin's short films and this semi-feature. Despite the event being a little amateurish in its organisation, with a late start and 20 minutes spent watching a band tidy up in front of the screen, I enjoyed the evening and was glad for the chance to see several of the films for the first time. This film was the one I had actually come to see, but I didn't know anything about it and I wondering if Maddin would do his usual selective-substance thing over the whole 60 minutes. This I consider to be a problem with his shorts – sometimes, unless you are really aware of his influences then you'll struggle to get the substance of the short (kind of like watching Shrek without any knowledge of popular culture – you just wouldn't know what it was trying to do). However, the visuals are always impressive and even someone with only a passing knowledge of the silent movie period should be able to enjoy the sheer imagination and flair that Maddin directs with.

With 'Cowards' I didn't have to worry long; after a first scene that seems to set the whole story within a drop of sperm the film manages to retain Maddin's usual flair of the weird as well as setting up a story that is an enjoyable narrative flow – in other words, you're not riding on influences and style for the whole hour. Far from the case; in fact this film is funny, weird, engaging and just plain great! This is not to say that the story takes place in the real world – it doesn't, it is still very weird and strangely comic/weird but it still hangs together. The stretch to an hour shows a little bit towards the end but I still really enjoyed it.

The cast do a great job acting considering they are never heard (it's silent of course!) and they emulate the silent era acting really well. Fehr's Guy is great and he delivers the comic lines (well – 'cards') as effectively as he does the darker stuff. Dionisio is great and conveys so much with her face and, it must be said, a fantastically gorgeous face it is too! Stewart has less of a presence in a smaller role but Birtwhistle is funny as the oversexed mother and support is good from Negin (sinister), Evans (all-American) as well as a few of Maddin's own family members.

Overall this is a great film but one that will put many viewers off by the nature of its content. It is dark, it features full male nudity and it is totally silent – with dialogue cards that have French subtitles. To understand what I'm saying you really need to see (experience) it for yourself but take it from me: I am the first to highlight the weaknesses in substance with Maddin's shorts but here he has a good narrative that sacrifices none of his visual style and feel of the weird, wonderful, dark and comic. A brilliant film that is worth hunting down.