The Personal Recommendation Hall of Fame V: Comedy Edition

Saw Arthur at the cinema with my parents as a kid. Loved it then but it's been decades now.

Are you a hooker?!!! Jesus, I just thought I was doing great with you!

Update...we have less than 2 months left until the Deadline May 24th.

How's everybody doing? If you think you can't finish please let me know!

@Allaby watches: 6 of 10
Citizen Rules Done, ballot finalized
@cricket watches: 2 of 10
@edarsenal watches: 1 of 10
@John Dumbear watches: 2 of 10
@PHOENIX74 watches: 2 of 10
@Siddon watches: 4 of 10
@Takoma11 Done, ballot received
@TheUsualSuspect watches: 2 of 10
@ueno_station54 watches: 5 of 10
@Wyldesyde19 watches: 1 of 10

I’ll get cracking

Guy Maddin is an artist speaking to us through the language of early silent film, finding a unique voice which he has used in a variety of ways - at times crossing over into performance art, creating a theatrical experience for those lucky enough to see his films in their full splendor. I've only just now began to watch them - it was only recently that I saw The Heart of the World, which seems like it may have been the exact right place to start. This short film, released in 2000, was a kind of reinvigorating restart for a filmmaker growing disenchanted with the influence producers were beginning to have on him. It's simply one of the best short films I've ever seen - a propogandist take on cinema, using a very 'early Soviet film' style, which has his certain brand of humour streaming from it as a kind of byproduct - using exaggerated styles and theatrical accentuations to maximum effect. You laugh because it's funny, but also in joy - then underneath everything you see that his work hasn't been produced primarily for comedic effect, but for much deeper meaning and thematic resonance.


Having not seen anything else from Maddin, I was unsure as to how his style might change from film to film, but I was very happy to see that Brand Upon the Brain! keeps true to that kind of rapid-cut early silent film motif - only here we not only have intertitles for dialogue, action and suggestive meaning, but a narrator who lyrically expounds on what is going on. Maddin now has the freedom to not only have a score for his silent film, but sound effects, intertitle cards and a narrator - combinations from which he can create limitless impressions and reactions. On it's initial theatrical release, Brand on the Brain! actually had live narrators, foley artists creating effects live and a singer, giving the audience a true reflection of how theatrical silent features used to be to witness live. Visually, it would take an expert in early silent cinema to do justice with written explanations - but there are frequent short cuts as in the early Soviet style, and there is full-screen mixed with the more rounded keyhole type of projection where we see action as if looking through a telescope. Colour shots are very seldom, and the film stays true to the fuzzy, overlit, high contrast effect noticeable when old films are shown.

The story features a main character called Guy Maddin, for Brand Upon the Brain's writer and director considers this film to be "97% autobiography" - a contention which is hilariously absurd when considering the film's plot. Maddin (the character) has been called upon by his ageing mother to return to the place he grew up - a place he hasn't been to for 30 years - a lighthouse, which she wants him to paint and spruce up before she comes and sees it one last time. When he arrives, Guy is beset by memories and visions of the past. The lighthouse had been the setting for an orphanage his parents used to run, where he once lived with his sister and dozens of orphans. One day, Wendy Hale, a teenage detective famous in literature comes to the island and finds Guy's parents to be a suspicious duo - returning disguised as her brother Chance Hale when she falls for Guy's sister Sis. The three of them eventually discover that Guy's mother and father have been drawing 'nectar' from the orphan's brains - a nectar which is being used to reverse the effects of ageing on Guy's mother, who secretly wishes to be an infant once more. It's Wendy's desire for Sis that will have the ultimate say in all their futures though.

It's difficult to succinctly sum up Brand Upon the Brain's plot - such are it's intricacies and interconnected surreal elements. Guy's mother is overprotective and obsessively demanding, taking particular efforts to subdue the hormonal awakening in Guy's sister. His father has invented a device called the "Aerophone", which allows two people who love each other to communicate based on how passionate their feelings are. His mother watches over the two of them from the top of the lighthouse with a telescope, constantly demanding that they come home (usually for "dinner!") She often feigns suicide, complains that nobody loves her and threatens to sell their home. Sis's sexual awakening upon the arrival of Wendy/Chance further upsets this unstable relationship - sending her into a rage which usually undoes the work the nectar has done in de-ageing her. Guy spends a fair amount of time in either confusion (he's unaware that Chance is actually Wendy disguised as her brother) or in a trance, which he falls into when bizarre events prove to be too much for him.

The other characters in the film are sources of fun and intrigue. "Savage Tom" is the oldest orphan on the island, and is constantly holding black masses and inciting the other orphans with dark rituals. Neddie (who is a bundle of ticks) is a small innocent who accidentally caused the death of his infant brother - innocent and wholesome, he's at the mercy of nearly everyone else. Guy's father is the mad scientist of the bunch, at one point killed by Sis in a trance, but reanimated and put back to work before even being clothed again - he eventually finds himself stuffed into a harp case. We only ever hear about Guy's grandmother and his mother's aunt, whose jealousy led to a vicious attack on each other so brutally horrifying that it becomes a legend often reenacted in a theatrical sense. This is the madness of Brand Upon the Brain! Mixed with the surreal quality of the language of silent cinema it becomes a maelstrom of crazy images and exaggerated expression, into which much of Guy Maddin's real life story have been fed - producing a delirious swirl of memory expressed as feverish dream.

A good example of how Maddin's real life and Brand Upon the Brain! correlate can be found in the juxtaposition of Maddin's grandfather's death as it really happened and his father's death in the film. In the film, when the father dies, his clothes are ripped and cut from his body to prepare him for his burial shroud, where the nakedness and proximity of his genitals to his daughter's face feel somewhat disturbingly inappropriate. When it comes time to bury him, it's decided to put him in ground very close to where the sea is lapping the shore - creating the strange image of a dozen or so orphans standing on the coffin to try and sink it beneath the water which fills the hole they've attempted to dig. There are significant parallels to real life - for Guy's mother really did have to cut all the clothes from her father's body to prepare him for burial (also having to fight rigor mortis) - and, added to this, the family lived in a flood-prone area which was undergoing significant flooding at the time, so the grave that had been dug inevitably did fill with water, which meant many people had to stand on the coffin to get it to sink. Maddin has taken the unusual true facts, and placed them in context with his surreal film. The most unlikely parts of the story are the most true parts.

Brand Upon the Brain! deals with the past, but what Maddin mostly seems to want to examine here is memory, and the way he personally deals with memory. There's a preoccupation with all events happening twice - and Guy in the film posits to himself that the second time around is when he'll get things right. In interviews Maddin says that he often reacts to events in his life in a fashion he deems inappropriate to the occasion, and that when he recalls these events long after they have passed he eventually has what he deems to be the correct way of feeling and reacting to them. In the film, Guy seems to want to truly understand his childhood and the events which shaped him (conversely though, Guy's feverish painting is an effort to cover up the past - or at least, this is his mother's motive for the two coats of paint everything needs covering in.) He never seems to have a true appreciation for everything that happened to him as a child - he still doesn't realise that Wendy was in fact Chance when he visits and worships at the feet of his romantic idol. In the end, his revisit mostly serves to bury the remnants of this past. Perhaps, in a sense, he can at least put these memories to rest, even if he misinterprets aspects of them.

Although appreciable as art with meaning, there's a great deal of demented and hysterical amusement to be had with Brand Upon the Brain! Everything is looked at through a lens of humorous exaggeration and comic madness. Maddin, frequent screenwriting collaborator George Toles along with Louis Negin have a sharp feel for the kind of lunacy that is clever and very much on a wavelength I appreciate. The actors are all basically unknown, and play the material straight - the material itself creating the absurd comedic impact it has. Composer Jason Staczek does with music what the script does with words and it has an offbeat, crazy kind of dissonant feel with violins and odd piano notes adding to the exaggerated silent film era tone. Fairly new to film composition, he'd find a place on future Maddin projects. Cinematographer Benjamin Kasulke was similarly green, and needed to be particularly creative and wild - but more mainstream work on notable films such as Safety Not Guaranteed make it apparent that this wasn't just a particularly strange niche the director of photography would have. All together, they made a film with a budget of only $40,000, thereby safeguarding Maddin's freedom - a freedom he felt he was losing while making films with higher budgets and the influence of those providing funds.

Grim dinners. The sound the Aerophone makes. Mother slamming the door yet again. "Too much for Guy". "Jealous Guy". Rumania! "Button up!" I can already reel off an endless source of fun I've had with this movie, and could go on with a list that goes on and on. It has awakened in me a desire to explore the filmography of Guy Maddin, so sure I am that it will conform to the kind of filmmaking that I really enjoy becoming acquainted with. Here's a voice that is wholly original and creative - someone who, during his life, became a very literary person but then transformed into a cinematic author, blending the two in a fashion that has a very distinct and intelligent signature. Into Brand Upon the Brain! he manages to slip in incestuousness, cannibalism and gender confusion as if without a second thought - unglued as it is to the very fabric of what we'd expect in an average film. Anything can happen, and when it happens it seems quite natural to the narrative of the crazy journey we end up going on. There's a sense of total freedom, and I feel it must be such a liberating joy to just open the gates and let every mad, comedic dream run wild through your own memories like he's done here.

When I first watched David Lynch's Eraserhead (one of Guy Maddin's favourites), I felt much the same way. I love watching something where there has been a complete freedom of expression run wild. The richness in this film's ideas makes it seem to me as if the budget must have been in the millions, for when I watch it I never notice any of it's restrictions, and the performances likewise don't seem lacking. If I were still a kid, I might have quietly chuckled every time my mother called me in for dinner - but if I were still a kid, I really don't think I could have appreciated Brand Upon the Brain! as much as I do now. Perhaps every now and then, when memories of childhood come back to me in a fractured way, I'll think of how memory is depicted in this film and what this film says about memory. I'd like to imagine I could have provided an example that is as outrageously funny and unhinged as it is in this, where the past becomes inextricably intertwined with vampiric mad scientists, black masses, teen detectives, reanimated fathers and sweet nectar sucked from the brains of compliant orphans in a trance. With a maximum of melodrama, a long dead cinematic language, his own memories and the depths of his imagination, Guy Maddin created something here that comes close to that David Lynch classic he revers so much, and I feel twice as rich for having both.

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I don't think I've ever heard of that

I’ve seen Brand Upon the Brain once. I liked it, but didn’t love it.

Never heard of Brand upon the Brain, but I thought that looked like an interesting choice for Phoenix. I've not seen Chicken Run I don't watch much animation as I don't usually connect to it much but that movie looks kinda fun.

It does have some fun little contraptions throughout that you might enjoy.

I'm a bit of a fan of Chicken Run with its tip of the hat to The Great Escape in the opening sequence. A fun lil bit of fun from the folks at Aardman Animations that bring us Wallace and Grommit and another one I really enjoy from them, Flushed Away.


It's been a couple of decades since I've seen Arthur and truly enjoyed it - many times when I did.

I grew up with W.C. Fields, and like Arthur, it's been quite a while except for one recently in an HoF, and I can't remember the last time I've seen Bank Dick. For me, it's always been his pairing with Mae West that I've always loved.

Swiss Army Man is, at its core, synonymous with its title. So, SO much more than the initial appearance of the outrageous multiple uses of a corpse that eventually assists with the mental breakdown of Dano's character. Bizarre and, quite surprisingly, at times, rather beautiful.

I have not heard of many of the others, which I think is a good thing for me as an opportunity to explore.

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What I actually said to win MovieGal's heart:
- I might not be a real King of Kinkiness, but I make good pancakes

~Mr Minio

I just finished watching Sunny (2011). Directed by Hyeong-Cheol Kang, this Korean comedy/drama is about a group of seven teenage girls that become friends in high school,drift apart and then reconnect 25 years later. For me, the best parts of the film were when the girls were young. There was a lot of charm and humour there and the girls were likeable and cute. The film felt a little too long and I think they could have cut out some parts and made it a touch shorter. Overall though, I enjoyed the film. There was some funny moments and some heartfelt emotional moments too. Good performances from the ensemble. This was a good nomination for me.

Haven't heard of Sunny

I liked Thank You For Smoking and would rate it a , but I would only rank it as Jason Reitman's 6th best film.

Cool, you guys are finding some comedies you seem to really like. I wonder if any of the choices here will end up on your ballots?

I'm confident that Siddon will put Camp Death III on his ballot.

It would be tops for me so far out of his four films I’ve seen.

Thank You for Smoking is the best and only Jason Reitman film I've seen.

My comedy ballot will be a tough one to crack, but we'll see when I put it together.

I might have one choice here for me that has a chance to make my comedy ballot...but I already have over 100 films on my long list, so it'll be tough to find it room.