Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #39629 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-06-27
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 96 minutes

Synopsis
Set in Winnipeg during the Great Depression, Baroness Lady Port-Huntly sets a challenge to discover the saddest music in the world. Competitors come from far and wide in the hope of winning the grand prize, including a failed Broadway producer and his amnesiac girlfriend... Based on the original screenplay by Kazuo Ishiguro.

Customer Reviews

The music is you
Love, death, beer, dismemberment, and really sad music.

"The Saddest Music" in the world is perhaps Guy Maddin's most accessable movie to date, from a director known for strange, eerie pieces of work. But it's also a brilliantly surreal tragicomedy, with shimmers of German expressionism painted over a story about fumbling for artificial happiness, in the middle of all that sad music.

It's snow-smothered Winnipeg, in the Depression. Failing producer Chester (Mark McKinney) and his amnesiac girlfriend Narcissa (Maria de Medeiros) into a bar, just as beer baroness Lady Helen Port-Huntley (Isabella Rossellini) announces something on the radio: a musical contest for the saddest song in the world, with $25,000 as the prize. Hundreds of musicians arrive to compete, hoping to bag the prize (and get bathed in beer).

She is also an old flame of Chester's, who blames him and his alcoholic father for the loss of her legs -- a loss that his dad Fyodor (David Fox) is trying to remedy, by making her glass prosthetics. And his brother Roderick returns home, paralyzed by grief over his son's death and his wife leaving. But when he discovers his wife -- Narcissa -- is with his brother, he is determined to beat Chester. Who will create the saddest music in the world?

"The Saddest Music In the World" is a really weird movie -- it's full of glass legs, hearts in jars, skating funerals, and an antlered seer who predicts doom for Chester. But the movie is really focused on just one thing: the false happiness that people seek from transient things -- money, prosthetics, booze -- and how these only lead to more heartbreak in the end.

Maddin has a pretty unique style -- neo-expressionist, like an old 1920s German silent film made in twenty-first century Canada. It's grainy and full of rapid cuts (dozens of musicians playing until they bloody their hands), shadows and stark white faces, even against the drifting snow. The only exception is the dream sequences, which are just as blurry but full of vibrant colour.

But he sprinkles it with darkly humorous moments -- Fyodor chugging beer from a glass leg -- and dialogue ranging from zany ("I'm not an American. I'm a nymphomaniac") to weirdly poetic ("... to lay claim to the jewel-studded crown... of frozen tears"). And there are moments of sorrow too, such as Roderick playing his ultimate sad song, for a woman who is only starting to remember him.

McKinney is deliciously despicable as the amoral Chester, Medeiros is sweet as the wide-eyed nympho, and McMillan is heartbreaking as the mournful Roderick, who is haunted by the loss of his family. But Rossellini really rules the movie as the brilliantly cruel, powerful Lady Port-Huntley -- she rules every scene, even when she gets dumped into a bathtub.

"The Saddest Music in the World" is a deliciously bizarre tragicomedy, filmed with Guy Maddin's neo-expressionist flair. Definitely a unique, delightfully dark movie.

Just Beautiful
This film was absolutely amazing. The cinematography is top, with wird camera angles, a basically grainy black and white picture with some moments of really intense expressionist colours. This film is Art. The characters are all in their own way pathetic and sad which creates feelings of melancholy throughout the film but in a weird way you seem to be laughing out loud in many occasions.
It's got this amazing scene where the ex-alcoholic father drinks the beer from the real-size glass legs he made for the Baroness.ASTONISHING!

hAVE TO SEE IT, definitely worth buying.

Poignant but Basically a Comedy
I see that other reviewers have been more affected by this movie than me. Don't get me wrong, I loved it but in my opinion it's basically a visual comedy. The characters are sometimes sad, even pathetic, but they are caricatures rather than fully fleshed people and as such genuine sympathy for them is muted.

The silent movie imagery is typical of Guy Maddin and is brilliantly done.

The glass legs full of beer is an inspired surreal idea and, to me, just plain funny (if a little twisted).

The brothers and their father are really the main characters on which the plot hangs, providing some great visual comedy as well as some over the top pathos, but the female characters often steal the show. Isabella Rossellina as the bar owner and Maria de Medeiros as the girlfriend both provide great performances.

Highly recommended all round.