Brand Upon the Brain (2007)

I think its fair to say that no director working today is more obsessed with Soviet style silent expressionism then Guy Maddin. This was true with his Canadian father, son and a beer heries film The Sadist Music in the World, and it is true of Brand Upon the Brain. Mostly silent save sound effects, a brief song, and narration by Isabella Rossellini, this is the odd tale of a house painter who returns to the island where he was raised by his disturbed parents in the company of his older sister and the denizens of the family run orphanage. Ironically the orphans seem tangential to the story which instead dwells on disturbed love and odd relationships, with gender and mother issues abounding. Told as a remembrance in 12 chapters it actually made a kind of sense up until mid-way through chapter 9 where I just could no longer travel down the same path as the movie in my sympathies. I appreciate some of this but it was like A Clockwork Orange with its stylization and boobies, but missing the good acting and point of Kubricks work. I don’t approve.