TIFF Report: BRAND UPON THE BRAIN! Review

It was with a certain amount of giddy pleasure that I clutched my difficult-to-obtain ticket to the screening of Guy Maddin's latest autobiographical fever-dream. Brand Upon the Brain! is an indirect follow on to Cowards Bend the Knee and it uses the same 12 chapter structure to tell the story. The feature is silent, and one of the key pleasures to this particular screening of the film was the live score performed by members of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the live Narrator to do voice-over (I believe it was Maddin regular Louis Negin) and the three incredibly talented foley artists who provided all of the sound effects live (like Michael’s review below, I was almost as mesmerized by their contribution as I was the film).

Brand Upon the Brain! opens with Guy returning to the barren island of his childhood which has a decaying light house and a host of memories. Every blade of grass and grain of sand has memories for guy who grew up in the lighthouse while his parents ran an orphanage there. His father was an inventor and his mother spent most of her time running the orphanage with an iron fist (discipline was achieved by threatening suicide – often with props). Guy has returned to the light house to give it a couple coats of paint at his deceased mother’s request. The paint is a way to cover up all of the tragic events that took place over the battle between his sister and mother over her emerging sexuality. Using a large telescope and spotlight at the top of the lighthouse, his mother would spy on her children and call them in for dinner or discipline (often at the same time) by the Aerophone, a device invented by Guys father which is a cross between a telephone and a gramaphone that is powered by human emotion. It seems that Guys father has also been extracting something from the back of the orphans heads and concocting a potion which his mother is addicted to after it makes here look and feel younger.

Things get stranger from there. Witches covens with the orphans, a cross-dressing Nancy-Drew type detective who plays the harp and investigates in formalwear and has sexual trysts with both Guy and his sister, birthmarks in the shape of Romania, patricide, incest, resurrection, a potential fountain of youth and vampirism all spring from director Maddin’s half-rememberings of elements of his own youth in Winnipeg filtered through a layer of gleeful reinvention which would make James Frey blush. Many of the Maddin staples are present: the constant voyeurism of many characters, shifting identities, gloves and hands as the pathway to sexuality, Freudian hang-ups, overwhelming guilt and repression and a black tragicomic sense that these mistakes made are bound to repeat themselves. This is underscored again and again by the longing looks Maddin gets out of his actors in performances that are completely at odds from anything naturalistic and somehow closer to the truth nonetheless.

The fascinating thing (beyond the obvious dawn-of-cinema grainy black and white look) about Guy Maddins films is the way he amps the melodrama up to 11, fuses it with elements of the macabre and the outright silly and goes right to town mocking his characters in a deprecating way; chief among this is Maddins enthusiastic self deprecation. And yet no matter how over-the-top or surreal things get, his films still achieve an authentic richness of emotion. In both in Cowards Bend the Knee and Brand Upon the Brain, the principle character in the story is named Guy Maddin and is portrayed as a weak willed, spineless victim (and witness) to all of the wild and unusual goings on. After Guy himself the least flattering portrait is given to his mother who happily throws out spears of guilt in all directions. She is highly selfish and woefully put upon for raising her children and the orphans; and lets everyone know how difficult it is for her to be doing what she is doing. She has a borderline sexual attraction for her son and other than loyalty, not much attachment to her husband.

Brand Upon the Brain! is certainly Guy Maddin's most ambitious project to date. What was achieved with of Cowards Bend the Knee is taken to next level and making Cowards even richer for the experience. The editing here is more frenetic, in some cases it feels like every other frame is a cut at times. Rather than distancing from the emotion, it heightens the dream into an even deeper trance-like state. As seen in the grand Elgin theatre with the orchestra, singer, Foley artists and 1000+ fellow travelers into Maddin-world, it was a moving experience. Nonetheless when this film comes to DVD, it will benefit immensely from a directors commentary if one has the desire for insight to how a middleclass Winnepeg upbringing translates into the stew of images and emotions contained herein. As it stands, the effect may still be more powerful without any explanation.