Brand Upon the Brain! (2007)

This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

I really had no idea how I would react to this movie. I am fully aware of what Guy Maddin is capable of and that his films are anything but ordinary. My one fear coming into this movie was that the story wasn't going to be good enough to really grab hold of me. Within the first 10 or 15 minutes I was hooked. I have been very impressed with his technical skills thus far and this is no exception. The major difference here is that the story is so compelling. There are some flaws like the narration and I thought the ending could have been shorter, but overall I thought this was a fantastic production. It pays great homage to the silent era, in particular to some of Fritz Lang and F.W. Murnau's work. Like most Maddin films, this is certainly not for everyone. Only those who are aware of what he does or are extremely open to new cinema experiences should venture out and watch this one.

It's easy to make a film that is extremely personal to a filmmaker, or has some real level of autobiography going on. And, as a result, there's a crop of personal films out there that just are not very good, because a filmmaker will confuse their factual lives and interesting cinema as one and the same when he former may not be or is too conventional or improperly melodramatic for its own good. A strong personal story or tale of a troubled or just odd childhood is good but not enough; there needs to be ideas, some imagination even, to keep things worthwhile as compelling cinema. Brand Upon the Brain, under these conditions, is one of the most compelling things this decade as far as personal film-making goes. And, if for nothing else, it's for the virtuosity of the person(s) behind the lens.I'm sure it's mostly Candadian Guy Maddin's doing how the film looks and how it moves in such a splintered way as to come about as close to how memory works (I'm sure the excruciatingly talented editor and DP helped immensely, as no other film I've ever seen has this particular grainy but subtle and coarse and light look with the subliminal cuts all the way), which makes it all the more a directorial 100 meter dash with full-speed. Even if the story or the characters flat out sucked, which thankfully they don't at all, I would still be enthralled by the quality and experimentation in everything technical about the picture: how it's meant to be silent, and probably is in layman's terms, but also features narration (the track I had was from Isabella Rossellini, who does a fabulous job as part narrator and part character absorber), sound effects, the occasional scream or song sung, and how it's meant to be in black and white but every so often one may see color slip in a few frames or few seconds. That it was meant to be screened as a silent film, with full orchestra and actual Foley artists and chorus and possible narrator, makes it all the more wild - it wavers between real primitive film-making and pure fantasy.Which is just as well: all of the emotions here are laid for bare, and so much so for Maddin that the protagonist- a 30-something house painter who returns to his island home- is named Guy Maddin, it includes people like his actual mother and father and sister (not the actual people, the actors playing them), and many anecdotes are taken from his real life or from those closest to him (I started listening to Maddin talk about how the burial of Father in the movie is based on his actual grandfather's burial, but decided to stop to not let too many spoilers come through: it's actually a lot more fun and fascinating to figure out what's totally real or just slightly twisted). This works completely because of two reasons: 1) the autobiographical bits *are* interesting and captivating enough for cinema, this torn and weird relationship between siblings and parents, and 2) because it's wrapped up in a made-up plot by co-writer George Toles about an orphanage and crazy experiments done for rewinding aging on top of the already amazing surrealism on display with the film-making.In short, it's not only allowable, it's required for Maddin's passion to spark through. If for nothing else, even if you hate the movie (which I can understand, it's a like it or not enterprise, like with a piece baroque period music in several consistent parts), it's passionate film-making and storytelling, and it brings forth a number of unknown actors into a quantity like this. And Maddin picks well, since the actors save for Rossellini or whomever on narration have to have striking faces and be able to act completely and honestly in physical form. They also submit incredibly to any of Maddin's whims (even the gaggle of would-be Lords of the Flies orphans), which include dazed/feverish sleepwalking, insatiable lusting for the same/opposite sex, brain manipulation for the "nectar", and other mad things. It's also a great structure Maddin uses (taken from Godard's Vivre sa vie mayhap) as we go along like in some book that grows weirder and darker as it goes along... but also sadder and more touching and with moments that come as delightful almost in spite of the gloom and eerie sets and lighting and smoke and so on.Brand Upon the Brain won't be for everyone, but then how could it in the 21st century? Maddin has crafted something out dreams and recollections and visions and nightmare and hallucinations and ruminations and (of course) his libido and whatever else he could out of a love for movies and a love of his family (love enough to imbue them on screen as eccentric figures out of a dark fairy tale or science fiction opera), and it's something for the film fans out there who crave something out of the past to be represented with life and urgency and twists on what's expected - and at the same time, for all self-indulgent purposes, keeping true to what is solid about the emotional filmgoing experience. A+

First of all, I have to say: finally! I was almost positive that I was going to have to wait for DVD for this one, and God knows how long that was going to take. Secondly, I have to speak my only criticism of the film up front: the live show experiment might have been something truly awesome. I'll never know. But I do know that the disembodied voice of Isabella Rossellini, which you'll find in the general release, and presumably on the DVD, is extremely distracting. It works once in a while, but I would much prefer Maddin to have had a slightly separate version that was only silent. Unfortunately, several sequences wouldn't be comprehensible without the spoken narration, so I doubt we'll find it gone on the DVD (though I do hope that they might include some of the other narrators they used in the live show). Thankfully, as the film progresses, she pops up less and less. If not for this, I would have had no problem calling this a masterpiece.What to say about Brand Upon the Brain!? It's a Maddin film, and if you've seen his other films, you know pretty much what to expect. Not that his style hasn't varied between films (although all of his films since his first huge success, Heart of the World, have existed in a similar silent film milieu), but he is just so far beyond what anyone else has ever done, his style can be called entirely unique. As are all of the director's films, Brand is a hilarious nightmare. Maddin creates situations that can only ever exist in the subconscious. The plot of this one includes a lighthouse orphanage, a mad scientist and his sexually repressed wife, teenage detectives à la Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys, lesbian erotica, incest and the haunting presence of dead memories. Maddin is sometimes criticized as being little more than a snarky jokester, but the more I watch his films, the more I disagree with that assessment. His films are, of course, comedies. All of his films are meant to be funny. But I can also feel the pain, the yearning and emotional honesty behind his work. If the movies illustrate tapestries of the dreamworld, as I am certain they do, then the moods behind them, though melodramatized to high heaven, contain glimpses of the deeper truth. I think David Lynch is a rather similar director. Only where Lynch seems to look at the nightmares from the inside, Maddin's point of view is from that of a man who has just awoken. Nightmares sure are scary when we're in them, but they sure can seem ridiculous when recalled.

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?