06.01.04
The Saddest Music in the World

Hmmm.

Huh.

Yeah.

Kids in the Hall alum Mark McKinney plays a Broadway producer who returns to Depression-struck Winnipeg to enter a songwriting contest sponsored by his former lover and local Beer Baroness, Isabella Rossellini. He is accompanied by Maria de Medeiros, a narcoleptic nymphomaniac with a psychic tapeworm. Also entering the contest are McKinney’s father (Claude Dorge), who looks to prove his love to Rossellini either through his musical talents or a special gift that he has created for her; and McKinney’s brother (Ross McMillian), a hypochondriac cellist masquerading as a Serb.

I’m tempted to describe the end result as “David Lynchian”, but it’s probably just Isabella Rossellini’s presence that brings that to mind. Or possibly the glass prosthetic legs filled with beer. Or the human heart floating in a jar of tears.

It’s also a musical, but the camerawork evokes DW Griffith more closely than Busby Berkeley. Actually, it evokes DW Griffith tossed in a blender with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and The Blair Witch Project, but that’s a little too much evoking for me to get my mind around.

Is it any good? Well, yes. But that’s not why you should go see it. Go see it because it’s the most insane movie you’ll see all year.

Canada: just like the United States, only much, much weirder.
© 2004 IFC Films