The Saddest Music in the World

The Saddest Music in the World represents Guy Maddin’s most mainstream effort, but don’t be fooled; the film is just as obtuse and impossible to penetrate as his earlier, more experimental works. Shot in maddeningly grainy black-and-white, The Saddest Music in the World is set in Winnipeg during the Great Depression. Lady Port-Huntly (Isabella Rossellini), a powerful beer magnate, has decided to hold a contest in search of the saddest music in the world – a competition open to every nation on earth. A down-on-his-luck businessman named Chester (Mark McKinney) decides to enter, along with his amnesiac girlfriend Narcissa (Maria de Medeiros), hoping to cash in on the $25,000 prize. Watching the movie, it’s impossible not to wonder just what the point of all this is. Maddin’s crafted a film that’s undeniably unique on a visceral level, but even that aspect of The Saddest Music in the World wears thin awfully quickly. Everything’s played far too broadly, from the dialogue to the performances, preventing the audience from ever connecting with anything onscreen. Worse than that, Maddin never gives us a reason to care about a single character; they’re either parodies (McKinney’s Chester is clearly a riff on the ’30s shyster) or impossibly over-the-top concoctions (Rossellini’s Lady Port-Huntly, with her beer-glass legs and gaudy wig, represents the actress’ most jarring performance to date). Maddin proves to be adept at creating a convincing atmosphere – the film actually looks as though it was filmed in the ’30s – but completely out of his league when it comes to crafting a story worth following. And by playing a piece by Beethoven in the film, Maddin makes the mistake of evoking Irreversible – a movie with style to spare and an engaging storyline. It’s hard to imagine who The Saddest Music in the World is meant to appeal to; aside from viewers that demand something different and arty out of a movie, it’s unlikely the film will mean much to a contemporary audience.

* out of ****

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