Truly Dreadful Film

Stylish but barely mediocre overall

i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

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.

I didn't manage to see this until the last day (it played but a week here in little Burlington VT, no surprise) and I was the sole patron at the showing, but it was worth it, and seeing a film alone in a theater seems fitting when we're talking about Maddin, whose films are certainly the definition of personal and uncompromising, never geared towards a mainstream audience, or anybody it seems but Maddin himself.Brand Upon the Brain! continues the frenetic, almost entirely montage-based style that was first evident (from what I've seen anyway) in Heart of the World; I don't know how many shots there are in the 100 minutes or so of the film, but I'd guess it's got to be over a thousand. "Guy Maddin" returns home to the lighthouse where he grew up (yes, this is typical Maddin!) on a remote island....somewhere....and his memories take him back to childhood, to the tyrannical mother and weird inventor father who kept him a virtual prisoner along with the orphans in the school they run, until one day they are visited by girl detective Wendy Hale, star of the "Hale Twins" books for boys and girls, who is convinced that there is a mystery to be solved on the island....What follows is madcap sexual perversions, gender confusion, strange Dr. Moreau-like experiments, a fairly sick mother-son relationship and an extraordinarily implausible love triangle, all done in furious silent black-and-white montage, with dramatic and urgent Isabella Rossellini narration and beautiful, sometimes frightening music by Jason Staczek. This is one of Maddin's faster-paced, more propulsive films, though it does seem to end about half a dozen times and there is a bit of a long-in-the-tooth aura both to the story itself and its telling. On the whole, though, it's another wonderfully inventive and magical journey to a lost era in film-making and a warped and resolutely uncommercial creative mind, and is for this fan at least, proof that Maddin is the oddest, and most fascinating filmmaker this side of David Lynch.theatrical viewing

Brand Upon the Brain! is Guy Maddin's 2nd film in an autobiographical trilogy, which started with "Cowards Bend the Knee" (2003) and ended with "My Winnipeg" (2007).I have been a fan of Maddin for a long time and absolutely loved The Saddest Music in the World (2003) but Brand Upon the Brain! is by far the best film I have seen by him (I have yet to see My Winnipeg which also got rave reviews).Maddin is one of the few directors who still makes silent films. This film is in fact only partly silent. There was a short time when silent films had soundtracks (music and sound effects), and Maddin does the same thing here. He also uses a narrator, but they where sometimes used at the time of the silent films (then live), especially in Japan.The film is pure surrealism. It is autobiographical in the same way as Kafka was in his books. It has the humor of Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet and the horror of David Lynch. It is, in a nutshell, insane and amazing. Strongly recommended to anyone interested in Avant-Garde cinema.

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?