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Sadly Over-hyped

Good movie but grossly overrated

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

This was my first film from Guy Maddin, a Canadian director well-known for doing his own thing. Most of his films, I hear, recreate the look and feel of 1920s silent cinema and early talkies – 'The Saddest Music in the World (2003)' is no exception. Not only is the film set in Depression-era Winnipeg, but it actually looks as though it was shot around that time. Maddin shoots his film on washed-out and grainy Super 8 film blown up to 35mm, uses irises and other outdated storytelling techniques, badly-synchronised audio, and lots of Soviet-style montage. Several scenes are shot in colour – and they jar strikingly, like the dream sequence in 'Shock Corridor (1963)' – to imitate the aesthetic of early two-strip Technicolor. Even the use of Isabella Rossellini is a stroke of anachronistic genius: at times you're fooled into thinking that Ingrid Bergman is on screen.The story is bizarre to say the least. A Canadian beer company, under the instruction of baroness Lady Port-Huntley (Rossellini) (who lost her legs in unfortunate circumstances), holds a competition to discover the "saddest music in the world." Competitors arrive from every country to vie for the $25,000 prize, including a smug washed-up Broadway producer (Mark McKinney, of 'Kids in the Hall' fame); his cellist brother (Ross McMillan), a hypochondriac nursing a broken heart (quite literally); and their father (David Fox), an alcoholic war veteran who is in love with Lady Port-Huntley. Not bizarre enough, you say? Well, Lady Port-Huntley gets herself a new pair of legs, made entirely out of glass and beer. As you do. This film is perverse, surreal, and extremely wacky; you can't deny that Maddin's got a quirky sense of humour. I don't know exactly what to make of it, but I didn't mind it.

I find Guy Maddin a frustrating director. His films have an interesting visual style and some amusing ideas, yet I always find myself restless and bored, not because Maddin fails in what he's trying to do but because he succeeds at doing something I find unappealing.Saddest Music has a typical Maddin approach. The movie aims to create something akin to old films of the 20s and 30s. Not brilliant old movies like All Quiet on the Western Front or The Thin Man but bad old movies. This film purposely has inane dialog, hammy acting, jumpy editing and muddled visuals.Why? I suppose it's an art thing. Saddest Music basically plays like a rather pretentious student film that should be about 20 minutes long. At 20 minutes, this might be worth watching, but I cannot for the life of me understand how Maddin's films are successful enough for him to have a career.Still, Maddin makes films for people who like this sort of thing, so I'm not really qualified to judge, any more than I can judge the quality of gay porn or brain pudding. Like Saddest Music, these are things made for someone else entirely.

I'll be honest, I loved this movie. That being said, I wouldn't recommend it to everyone or even anyone but a few arcane film technique fetishists. The movie has the feel of a lost classic, but it's so damn goofy that it's hard to figure out where it's coming from much less where it's trying to take you. People who watch expressionist films will understand the technique of "just going with it" and seeing how you feel at the end.Maybe that's Maddlin's flaw? He forgets that modern audiences are always checking in with themselves and questioning the images they see always ready to click away from content they dislike. My friend walked out of "Coffee and Cigarettes" after the second episode, he'd given it a fair shake and didn't see any chance of it improving. But it did. Oh man it did. He would have been rewarded if he would have just went with it for a bit.So admittedly, I was confused and alienated by big stretches of The Saddest Music In The World. It's true the characters are too ridiculous to care about much and the dissociative camera work does as much to take you out of the scene as put you in. And the brilliant Two-stripped color scenes are so bright and vibrant that the mono-tinted and black and white scenes that follow them don't have much punch. On the whole it pastiche's together more styles than a single movie should: expressionism, musical, silent, early talkie, early color, comedy, even some very documentary looking montages recalling the earliest documentaries. And the sound was as poorly mixed as any major film release i've ever seen. The film's message is obscured in it's own aesthetics so thoroughly that one can scarcely get a footing on anything like meaning or message.I could go on and on about the flaws of this movie. As for it's graces? its genuinely funny in parts, original in others, it feels like an old distressed classic which is fun for buffs like me. But all this is cursory.So why the hell did I like this movie so much? I liked it an awful lot. I liked it because it's messed up and it's messy. It seemed to be having fun throughout most of it and if you give yourself over to: stop asking sensible questions and try to have some fun, because really-if you do that you'll have a blast at this movie.

The Saddest Music In The World, is based on an original screenplay by Kazuo Ishiguro. The film is set in the 1930's in Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada during the Great Depression. A beer baroness named Lady Port-Huntley, announces that she will be having a contest where people from countries all over the world will compete and play music and the country with the saddest music will win twenty five thousand dollars. An American named Chester Kent, who used to have a relationship with Lady Port-Huntley, wants to win the contest and plans to use the current girl he is with named Narcissa, as the singer. Chester's father is also entering the contest as is his brother Roderick, who thinks he can play a sad song seeing as his son had died several years ago and his wife left him. Soon, Roderick begins to believe that Narcissa, is his wife who left him. The only person who has never seemed to be affected by sadness is Chester. He saw his mom die as a child but has never cried in his life and has always been happy. But now he needs to find a way to write some sad songs to win the big prize. Winner of The Chlotrudis Award for Best Adapted Screenplay at The Chlotrudis Awards, The DGC Craft Award for Outstanding Achievement In Production Design For A Feature Film at The Directors Guild of Canada, The Genie Award for Best Achievement In Costume Design, Best Achievement In Editing and Best Achievement In Music - Original Score at The Genie Awards and The Film Discovery Jury Award for Best Director (Guy Maddin, who also wrote the film's screenplay) at The U.S. Comedy Arts Festival. The Saddest Music In The World, has good direction, a good adapted screenplay, good performances from everyone involved, good original music, good cinematography, good film editing, good production design, good set decoration, good costume design and good makeup. The Saddest Music In The World, is a great looking film. The film is in black and white and is grainy and made to look like a film made in the early 1900's and it really does (which may turn some viewers off). The actors also do a great job and all the people who worked behind the camera on the sets, costumes, makeup and cinematography should really be applauded. This is a really great looking film and is very well made. Other than being very impressed by the visuals and the way the film was made it really didn't do too much for me. The film is very offbeat and it has some very clever and sometimes brilliant scenes but the movie doesn't work as a whole. At times it gets confusing and pretty muddled and even boring at times. I liked what the film was trying to do and I think if it was a little more focused then it would have been a great film but the result we get is not. It's not a terrible film but I'am mostly rating it this high because of the film's visuals and the way it was made and not for the film itself.