The Saddest Music in the World

Plot synopsis:
During the Great Depression in 1933 in Winnipeg, Canada, baroness Helen Port-Huntley (Isabella Rossellini) announces a competition to find the saddest music in the world, as a publicity stunt to promote her company, Muskeg Beer, as Prohibition is about to end in the United States. The prize is $25,000 "Depression-era dollars" and musicians from all over the world pour into Winnipeg to compete. Chester Kent (Mark McKinney), a failing Broadway producer, decides to enter the contest representing America, even though he is Canadian and originally from Winnipeg. An old fortune teller predicts his doom, but Chester mocks this prediction by having his nymphomaniac amnesiac girlfriend Narcissa (Maria de Medeiros) masturbate him. Also entering the contest are Chester's father Fyodor (David Fox), representing Canada, and his brother Roderick (Ross McMillan), representing Serbia as "Gavrilo the Great" (even though he is also Canadian).
It is revealed that Fyodor is in love with Helen, who he had once hoped to marry. However, Helen and Chester had an affair, and an accident involving the three occurred when Fyodor stepped out in front of Chester's car as Helen was performing oral sex on Chester. Helen's legs were both amputated as a result, and Fyodor became an alcoholic, while Chester left for Broadway. With Chester returned, and his relationship with Helen renewed, Fyodor swears off drink and fashions prosthetic legs filled with beer in an attempt to earn Helen's love.
Roderick meanwhile discovers that Chester's girlfriend Narcissa is his missing wife, who has forgotten both their marriage and their son after the boy's death (Roderick carries the boy's heart in a jar, preserved in his own tears). Helen rigs the contest to favour Chester/America, and Fyodor/Canada quickly loses after singing "Red Maples Leaves," although Roderick/Serbia advances. Although Roderick and Narcissa have sex, she still doesn't remember their marriage, and he accidentally breaks the jar containing his son's heart (which is pierced by a glass shard), and although Helen loves her new glass beer legs, she still hates Fyodor. Fyodor then drinks a leg's worth of beer and falls through the concert hall rooftop to his death.
Helen appears in Chester's final performance, but her legs leak and explode when Roderick plays. Roderick then changes his tune to play "The Song Is You," which he had sworn not to perform until reunited with his wife. The song recovers Narcissa's memory and Chester, meanwhile, is stabbed to death by Helen (using a long shard from her glass legs). Chester refuses to let this sadden him, and staggers away, accidentally setting the building on fire with his victory cigar. Chester dies playing "The Song Is You" on the piano as the building burns.

Tags: comedy, avant garde, depressing, flashback, absurd, psychedelic, melodrama, romantic

Review:
I would have to see the film again, but I would like to go back and see it again to determine the link between the scenes which are suddenly shot in color as compared to the grainy black and white images that grace the rest of the film.Despite the quizzical looks from the three fellow moviegoers who occupied the theatre, I found myself laughing out loud quite a few times at the film's caustic humor.
The idiotic commentators obnoxiously chatter over a loudspeaker even as the musicians are performing, delivering such priceless wisdom as "Siam is known for its dignity, twins, and cats."The themes of the film revolve around the separation between the rich and the poor (one character enjoys a psychic connection with her tapeworm), American excess, Canadian self-loathing, humanity's relentless desire for the trivial and superficial over the meaningful and spiritual, the global domination of American pop culture, how the mass media controls the world, etc.
What could only be titled as Cinema of the Ridiculous, Maddin's latest masterpiece, about a no-legged beer queen who hosts a Winnipeg-set competition to see which nation has the saddest music in the world, is filled to the gills with wacky ideas, but the reason it's a great film is because of the heartfelt feeling behind it.
Maddin manages to balance the grotesque comic caricature of Mark McKinney as the shady mustached businessman who tries to win the competition, and Maria de Medeiros, who gets life advice from her tapeworm, with the pathetic goth character that's McKinney's brother, who's had to deal with the loss of a son, and the glamorous Isabella Rossellini, who's had to deal with the loss of her legs.
I feel like I can't believe I've actually seen it -- waking up dizzy at 2 PM today on a Saturday and pondering this movie.All I remember is the wonderful music, the great one-liners, and those fanciful legs.
The fusion of content and style is so brilliant, clever, and emotional, the film has to rank as one of the best of 2004 even with the year not yet being half over.Set in 1933, "the depths of the Great Depression", the location is Winnipeg, Canada, home of Lady Port-Huntly (Isabella Rosselini), the astoundingly wealthy beer baroness of Canada, who decides to hold a contest to select the saddest music in the world--for business reasons, of course.
The show-stopper is the version by Chester near the end, a big band production that fuses influences, in typical American fashion, from all over the world.Familial tensions converge with unrequited love, and with the most peculiar prostheses anyone has ever seen--either in real life or on film.
Lady Port-Huntly is a double amputee, and he whose reckless mistake resulted in her unfortunate current condition fashions for her a pair of legs that must be seen to be believed.The entire film is shot using a blue-haze filter, with a faux stereopticon effect that narrows the viewing screen to that resembling what one would see from the early days of film, and with the faintest, subtlest and tiniest of lags in action-speech synchronization that makes this uncannily resonate as a work fusing a 30s setting, a pre-20s style, and a contemporary sensibility that knows how to combine these elements in the first place.
Canadian writer/director Guy Maddin ("Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary,'  "Archangel') has created a film like no other this year except possibly `Triplet's of Belleville.' `The Saddest Music in the World' is a `musical' set in Winnipeg in 1933, where Lady Port-Huntly (Isabella Rossellini) is holding a contest to award $25,000 to the saddest music performer.
Shot in distressed mode with 8 mm blown up to be grainy and silent movieish, `Saddest' has blue-grays and silvers and occasional bursts of washed-out color that give it an otherworldly cast meant to satirize the old movies and create a new look built on nostalgia and freedom from convention that some call expressionism.Some of the bizarre acts vying for the prize are Fyodor (David Fox), a veteran of World War I representing Canada, who plays a deathlike version of ''The Red Maple Leaves'' on an upright piano he has turned over, and Indian singers in Eskimo costumes, who dance to  ''California Here I Come'' with sitars and banjos commemorating a 19th-century kayaking accident.
All the time an iris lens blurs the edges of the film to recreate the ancient look of film found in a vault after 50 years.That Lady Port-Huntly needs artificial legs is not as bizarre as the back story of how she came to need them, and that the new glass legs have local beer coursing through them is just another creative and absurdist touch.
Experiments, madness, comedy, drama, musical and some more.I was unaware of Guy Maddin movies until I saw this one, so from the start to the end I was in awe about a director that came to me from nowhere and managed to surprise me.
I am saying this as I have seen quite a few (1000's maybe) movies, and I am very hard to be surprised by something.Without any doubt the movie IS one of the most original ones I've seen in years, and beside the strange techniques used (black/white grainy film, alternating with color-grainy as well, theater-like sets, etc..) the originality of the director is never the less amazing.Of course quite a few people left the theater during the movie, but that's understandable, as this is just for the die-hard fans of good/art films.
Very few filmmakers attempt to use it at the length he does, or to such seemingly limitless invention, and all the while he has in mind an aesthetic somewhere in the middle of an expressionist silent film director and someone looking to break a little ground with a music video.
But its aesthetic is so bizarre and, indeed, eclectic to tastes of modern and pre-WW2 cinema that it has to be seen and heard to be believed.The premise is that a "Lady" in Winnepeg (Rossellini) is hosting a contest for everyone around the world to come to Winnipeg to sing the saddest songs known anywhere, and the winner will receive 25 grand (in "Depression-Era" money).
It has the dark, disturbing and mutedly surreal quality of Ishiguro's best novels - particularly The Unconsoled - and enough barely-glimpsed instances of homage to keep whole covens of film buffs happy for many a winter's evening.In some senses a riff on Moulin Rouge, Saddest Music is also disturbingly reminiscent of those Japanese game shows which sometimes surface, like weird fish, on UK television.
--Minor Spoilers Ahead-- The Saddest Music in the World plays out more like a short story than a film.
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.
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.
'The Saddest Music in the World' is a kind of pastiche of 1920s film-making, with interspersed scenes in cod-Technicolour; but to really give a flavour of its oddness, I should say that it's the tale of an amputee brewery heiress with a pair of glass legs, filled up with beer (writer Kazuo Ishiguro borrowing from one of his own novels in the story of how she lost her originals).
But you certainly won't see too many other movies like it; and director Guy Maddin makes brilliant use of the heart-shaped face of Maria de Madeiros, which he makes look as if it really has just heard the saddest music ever..
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.
Saddest Music basically plays like a rather pretentious student film that should be about 20 minutes long.
Isabella Rossellini demonstrates one thing: she actually looks sort of like her better-looking mom, and that she chooses vehicles like the tiresome movies made by her dad, which today I find painful to watch.The DVD contains three shorts that are much more amusing than the film they accompany (especially "Sissy Boy Slap Fest"), and the two "about the film" features have a "look-at-me-I'm-wonderful" air about them, narrated by some idiot who obviously would like to do a one-man "evening with Vincent Price" show in a bathhouse.Gee: did I like this movie?
It's about how if you throw enough money and bring in some solid actors and a good cinematographer -- and make sure it's based on the work of writer with talent so there's an actual story there -- even somebody who has proven he can't make a good feature to save his life if left to his own devices, can end up with a mediocre quirky feature.Having said all that, I actually can recommend Guy Maddin's shorts, believe it or not.
In 1933, in Winnipeg during the American Great Depression, the legless baroness of beer industry, Lady Helen Port-Huntley (Isabella Rossellini), promotes a contest to choose the saddest music in the world and find where the real drinkers are.
People come from all parts of the world, including her former lover Chester Kent (Marc McKinney) representing USA with the nymphomaniac amnesic Narcissa (Maria de Medeiros); his brother, who misses his dead son and his vanishing wife, Roderick Kent / Gravillo the Great (Ross McMillan), representing Serbia; and his father and the man who sever her legs in a car accident, Fyodor Kent (David Fox).
During the competition, Roderick finds his missing wife."The Saddest Music in the World" is certainly one, if not the most, of the weirdest movie I have ever seen.
I thought this was a visually stunning movie, with a lot of stylized sets and the "look" was very 30's.Unfortunately, not so much attention was paid to the script...not only was it all over the map, it was self-referential and self conscious...(Honestly, who in the Depression Era would use the term "Depression Era Dollars?" The plot wandered off, wandered further off, and finally went into the forest and died of hypothermia.Most of the music that was supposed to be sad wasn't even, which was disappointing, and a bunch of terrific actors were wandering around lost in the wilderness as well, uttering lines that didn't make any sense at all.On the other hand, it was completely original...but so is a shoe sandwich...and not a lot of people eat those..I'd recommend turning the sound all the way down and playing some genuinely sad music and just watching..since the cinematography is the really interesting part of this movie..
Sad, really sad.I think that this director has a distorted world view and that people who like the film have the same problem.
It is set during the depression in Winnipeg with the premise being a contest to entrants from all different countries to find the saddest music in the world, with the prize being a then princely $25,000.
I really liked this film because it explores black and white visual techniques that I hadn't seen before and the plot and character relationships were tight as a Shakespeare tragicomedy and represented through both psychology and physical attributes.
In the standard Guy Maddin style (go Winnipeg go :) the black-and-white imagery is very visually interesting, particularly if you are familiar with the old black and white films.
In general the plot was sublimely ridiculous, as the winner of each heat are rewarded for their sadness with a slide into a vat of beer, and when Isabella Rossellini performs a dance on glass legs filled with beer, but this silliness is acceptable in the alternative reality created by the style, era and effects of the film.
The story, based on an original screenplay by Kazuo Ishiguro (perhaps they should have stuck to the original), felt like it was concocted by different people trying to outdo each other with silly ideas (tapeworms, beer-filled glass legs, sleeping in the snow, a character based on Gavrilo Princip - you quickly stopped asking why) - but that wasn't the problem either.The film might have been a collaboration between David Lynch, Orson Welles, Eisenstein, and the Brothers Quay - each of them disagreeing what the film should be about.
I quickly got used to the extremely smudgy effect - as if the lens had been smothered in vaseline - and I appreciated Isabella Rosselini (looking and sounding like her mother) and the big-eyed Maria de Madeiros.The backdrop was a music contest between international contestants to find the world's saddest music.
The Saddest Music in the World 4/5This is the latest film by celebrated Winnipeg director Guy Maddin, but it's not for everyone.The film is deliberately grainy black and white, with some of the outer edges of the frame out of focus.
Like a dream where things are unrealistic, this film intertwines the five main characters in a most surreal way, but it isn't incredibly interesting.
The film manages to be funny, sad, and sexy while never straying too far from, or into, the absurd, to lose its narrative coherency.Watching a string of stereotypically costumed performers from around the globe trek to Winnipeg, to perform in a tournament-style music competition is something I'll not soon forget.
Guy Maddin is a true cinephile who employs a retro visual style consisting of grainy mostly black and white images in this film.
That may sound really artsy and high-falutin', and certainly the film acquits itself well at that level, but at the same time there is a wonderfully absurd, anarchic humour that evokes great TV parody comedy like SCTV, Saturday Night Live (during its occasional moments of excellence), Kids In The Hall (whose Mark McKinney stars in this is perfect), Codco (another Canadian Patric TV show from the 90's that was truly brilliant), etc.
If you like those films, there's an excellent chance you'll also find "Saddest Music" very satisfying and very funny..
I don't think this movie had a lot of meaning, but I was never bored, and that is the best thing.My favorite things: the mood (it out-Lynches David Lynch), Isabella Rosellini (she was superb), the guy who played Rodderick (who is he?!), the bubbly legs, seeing Mark McKinney play an absolute cad, the sad music, and the set up of the contest (wacky!
Still, this isn't as sensual as his Dracula film, which I think is largely because it's too cold to be sensual in Winnipeg.The plot wackiness (how much is Ishiguro's and how much is Maddin's is hard to guess) is generally amusing,  but the gags don't add up to much - even the timely satire of American imperialism is mid-level South Park at best.
I think the problem here is that Maddin doesn't love songs like he does movies (but what do expect from someone who adores the silents?).
There is a beer baroness who organized a contest to find the saddest music in the world with a contest prize of @25,000 and there were many groups who competed in this crazy contest.Despite the fact that this film is depicting the Depression Days, there is some dark comedy and a musical melodrama by the famous director, Guy Maddin.
I haven't laughed so hard or enjoyed a movie quite so much as this very bizarre pastiche flick by Canadian Guy Maddin, (notably and unmistakably produced by Atom Egoyan) "The Saddest Music in the World".
In this case, beer baroness Lady Helen Port-Huntley (Isabella Rossellini) wants to find out who can play the saddest music possible - offering a $25,000 prize - so people from all over the world come to take part.Sound like a strange idea?
The Saddest Music In The World, is a great looking film.
Story is suppose to take place during the Depression in 1933 where in Winnipeg a legless beer baroness named Lady Port-Huntley (Isabella Rossellini) has created a contest where contestants from each country will try and win $25,000 by playing the saddest music in the world.
The contest ends with brother against brother, Serbia versus America!This film is directed by the incredibly imaginative Guy Maddin who makes films like you have never seen before and this is another visually interesting effort.
Add to this Maddin's typical self-deprecating love of his country (Canada) and city (Winnipeg) and a plot involving a contest to find "the saddest music in the world" and you've got the makings of something that only this demented director could dare to dream.The mutilated woman happens to be beer baroness Lady Helen Port-Huntley (Isabella Rossellini, channeling Jean Harlow and perhaps a bit of Marlene Dietrich), and her would-be-lovers are Canadian WWI veteran Fyodor Kent (David Fox) and his estranged son Chester Kent (Mark McKinney) whose name is taken from the character played by James Cagney in the 1933 Berkeley-choreographed Footlight Parade and who also has dreams of Broadway grandeur.
So although I wasn't really sure where the story was going until well into the film, I was pretty much not surprised by who would win the contest in the end.Kazuo Ishiguro co-wrote the screenplay with Guy Maddin.
So, it is no surprise that his hundred minute long 2004 film The Saddest Music In The World is not good, not bad, simply weird.