Watch “The Heart of the World” by Genius Guy Maddin
beingzoe 3 months ago // 1 response // Creative Endeavors Gibber-gabber

What is the antidote for bloated Hollywood franchise blockbusters slim on plot and big on special effects and product tie-ins?

Short “silent” anachronistic films.

If you are a lover of cinema and aren’t familiar with Guy Maddin, you should be . He is a Canadian filmmaker who brings a level of originality, creativity, and story telling rarely seen since the days of Orson Welles or Fellini.

What these films might lack in mainstream appeal they make up for in quality of story, production, and impact. Using low budget indie film methods and stylistic motifs of the early 20th century, coupled with various original and unique techniques such as using carefully applied Vaseline on the lens of the camera to create soft old-school visuals, Guy Maddin does not make movies, he tells stories.

His style most often draws on the look and feel of films from the 1920’s and 1930’s. IMDB refers to Maddin’s style as referencing and parodying soviet montage cinema of the 1920s, German Expressionism of the 1920s, and silent melodrama film.

Among my favorite movies of all time is The Saddest Music in the World . This is a feature length “talkie” that takes Maddin’s “retro-original” style blending it with some 1950’s style futuristic motifs in a story set during the prohibition era. That alone is genius, but the story, about a legless and wealthy beer baroness in Canada who creates a contest to find the saddest music in the world, because as she put it, people buy more alcohol when they are sad.

The Heart of the World originally produced for the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival, is a nice introduction to the world of Guy Maddin. This silent film is 6 minutes of simplistic visual and storytelling genius. The story of two brothers who love the same woman, a scientist who is researching the center of the earth. The Heart of the World says and conveys more in 6 minutes than many major Hollywood films.

Watch The Heart of the World by Guy Maddin at YouTube

Let me know what you think.