Brand Upon the Brain! (2007)

Just perfect...

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

I stopped the DVD after an hour when it became repetitive. Before that, it was an interesting but weird movie. It's filmed as a silent movie with the characters dressed in the robes and hair styles of the early 1900's. Nobody talks but you do have a narrator who told you what is happening and words written in white on a black background that let you know other things. It's made in black and white with grainy images and I actually had to check the date of he movie o make sure it wasn't 70 years old. It was interesting but slow for about 40 minutes, until the story stopped moving. I debated whether to stop for about another 15 minutes then fast forward for another five then finally stopped it. I don't mind movies made today in black and white(I'm a big fan of film noir), and I like movies that are different. What I don't tolerate are movies that are boring and waste my time.

Here's the problem: Maddin is an impressive filmmaker. He is important and has made at least two films that are important to me. But he is not a very interesting person. So when he applies his mastery to making a personal film - a film essentially about his dreams and demons, it turns into something of a tragedy for the opportunity misspent. This really is a wonderful film in the way it is put together. The whole team seems be closely attuned, with a central role played by the editor. The sound effects are astonishing - and this is a silent film. The references, duly abstracted, from past masterworks are copious and respectful. The narrative structure is suitably complex with manifold overlapping metaphors. The problem is that what we actually get directly from him is boring. Sex and mothers matter; dreams are real; nothing recedes. But we knew that better and more deeply than he shows. Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

I had the unique opportunity to see one of the few theatrical screenings of this film featuring live musical accompaniment, a foley crew, a live narrator (whose narration was, if I recall correctly, quite different to Rosselini's narration in the TV version used here in Canada), and a male soprano. It was a tremendous experience, but even then I thought it had the feel of a latter-day Aerosmith concert- a professional show masking a lack of substance and inventiveness in the performance and execution of the songs. In short, it felt perfunctory and almost like a cover-up."Brand Upon the Brain!" is certainly not one of Maddin's better films. It works fantastically in style and features an arresting, low-budget visual sensibility, but is quite severely lacking in the sort of substance one might expect from a Maddin film. Sure, there are themes being explored here, but they've already been covered better and in more detail in his other work. The narrative itself is outrageous, bizarre, and quite entertaining. I can forgive the film's shortcomings given how fast Maddin wrote this script (five weeks; the movie was shot in one fifth that time), but I don't really think there was that much potential in the idea of the film to begin with.The film's visuals are all there is that's worth talking about here. The editing is brilliantly jarring and wonderfully enhances the film's emotional moments, the cinematography is breathtakingly beautiful given its purpose in the film, and it is very fast-paced. As far as the rest of the film goes, I'll just say this: Maddin is frequently accused of treating his subject matter too lightly although his films are never overtly comedic. "Brand Upon the Brain!" is intentionally funny as are most of his other films, but there is a genuine lack of any clever humor here, as well as a complete lack of any real substance or worth. It works tremendously in style, and it's easy to watch, but there's just nothing more to it.7/10

'Brand Upon the Brain' is the perfect example of the kind of intriguing art-film still taking place in remote sects around the world. The kind of film that will go unnoticed by the majority of the film-making and film-going world. The film is heavily stylized and all the more engaging for it. The cinematography is washed out, hazy, even intentionally blurred at times, but consistently breath taking and beautiful. The starched white's bleed into the blacks establishing a nostalgic, dream-like quality. Overall the film is consistent in looks with Guy Maddin's 2003 silent film 'Cowards Bend the Knee,' it is myriadly more comprehensible than 'Cowards,' while by no means stepping into any mainstream consciousness. The film, for all practical purposes, is silent, but is lead, throughout, by an animated Isabella Rossellini, who often narrates the action, at other times is the voice of the characters or the voice of their subconscious. The film also heavily relies on naturalistic noises, artificially produced as sound effects to sporadic events taking place. This treatment of sound, so well executed that Maddin's crew deserves an Oscar for best sound editing, contributes to the overall sense of a hazy dream state. Which is precisely where we join the main character of the film, Guy Maddin, as the film opens. He is traveling by canoe back to the island that he grew up on. His family and a host of orphans inhabited a large lighthouse on an ambiguous island. His mother is dying and needs him to repaint the lighthouse, with two coats, so that she may visit it before she dies and remember it how it was. As he paints he realizes he is painting over the past and becomes lost in memories of abandonment, sexual promiscuity and confusion, an over- bearing mother, a treacherous and loving sister, immoral scientific experimentation, and the hi-jinx of a child brother/sister detective team, among other acts of sexual experimentation, near incestuous contact, voodoo curses and paganism. To say the least the film is sprawling, but it is pulled together nicely through cyclical imagery and themes (though this film is out there, the cyclical nature of themes in films about families is pretty standard), but it works nonetheless. The editing of the film is up to par for Maddin. Jarring, painfully emotional and crass. Another aspect of this film that will likely be overlooked by the advertising teams whom decide what films people are going to go and see. The film is short, only clocking in at around an hour and a half, but it is fast paced and the kind of film that you walk out of knowing, whether you felt it was brilliant or not, that it was worth how ever much you had to pay for it, a unique experience that Hollywood will never be able to offer an audience and that the assimilating forces of independent film don't offer audiences often enough.