You won't be disappointed!

Sadly Over-hyped

Purely Joyful Movie!

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

I stopped the DVD after an hour when it became repetitive. Before that, it was an interesting but weird movie. It's filmed as a silent movie with the characters dressed in the robes and hair styles of the early 1900's. Nobody talks but you do have a narrator who told you what is happening and words written in white on a black background that let you know other things. It's made in black and white with grainy images and I actually had to check the date of he movie o make sure it wasn't 70 years old. It was interesting but slow for about 40 minutes, until the story stopped moving. I debated whether to stop for about another 15 minutes then fast forward for another five then finally stopped it. I don't mind movies made today in black and white(I'm a big fan of film noir), and I like movies that are different. What I don't tolerate are movies that are boring and waste my time.

Here's the problem: Maddin is an impressive filmmaker. He is important and has made at least two films that are important to me. But he is not a very interesting person. So when he applies his mastery to making a personal film - a film essentially about his dreams and demons, it turns into something of a tragedy for the opportunity misspent. This really is a wonderful film in the way it is put together. The whole team seems be closely attuned, with a central role played by the editor. The sound effects are astonishing - and this is a silent film. The references, duly abstracted, from past masterworks are copious and respectful. The narrative structure is suitably complex with manifold overlapping metaphors. The problem is that what we actually get directly from him is boring. Sex and mothers matter; dreams are real; nothing recedes. But we knew that better and more deeply than he shows. Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

Nice to have to films recently that really connected with me.This one seems to have found a bypass straight to my subconscious in parts. Perhaps due to the flickering quality, of the retro silent shooting? The black and white hip and hypnagogic approach. I really did find myself on that threshold of awareness and dream.At the outset, I thought Maddin was making a film through found footage, so good was the choppiness of the scenes and the sea. It must have been amazing to see this with a live narrator and better yet a team of foley fiends. But seeing it alone, that also helped with the films resonance.The story as such is a strange slurry, as others have denoted. Twisted personal archetypes (the male protagonist sharing the filmmaker's name and likely a largesse of his angst). After seeing this, I'm hard-pressed on how to put it all together. It's like a 3D puzzle that I now find flattened in my hands.And I'm not film student, just a fan, but I suspect this is rife with opportunity for many a thesis. Nosferatu shadows. Lighthouse introspection. Sexual innuendo and overdoses. Owning the video is certainly an option, with its multiple narrated versions (including Crispin Glover and Laurie Anderson), and its surfeit of cinematic sensation. The soundtrack as jagged as the isolated island's coastline, competes well with the aforementioned foley fun.Fans of outre film, like the Ann Arbor Film Fest can look inward in many ways with this.I find myself drifting closer to the Maddin crowd.9/10

It's easy to make a film that is extremely personal to a filmmaker, or has some real level of autobiography going on. And, as a result, there's a crop of personal films out there that just are not very good, because a filmmaker will confuse their factual lives and interesting cinema as one and the same when he former may not be or is too conventional or improperly melodramatic for its own good. A strong personal story or tale of a troubled or just odd childhood is good but not enough; there needs to be ideas, some imagination even, to keep things worthwhile as compelling cinema. Brand Upon the Brain, under these conditions, is one of the most compelling things this decade as far as personal film-making goes. And, if for nothing else, it's for the virtuosity of the person(s) behind the lens.I'm sure it's mostly Candadian Guy Maddin's doing how the film looks and how it moves in such a splintered way as to come about as close to how memory works (I'm sure the excruciatingly talented editor and DP helped immensely, as no other film I've ever seen has this particular grainy but subtle and coarse and light look with the subliminal cuts all the way), which makes it all the more a directorial 100 meter dash with full-speed. Even if the story or the characters flat out sucked, which thankfully they don't at all, I would still be enthralled by the quality and experimentation in everything technical about the picture: how it's meant to be silent, and probably is in layman's terms, but also features narration (the track I had was from Isabella Rossellini, who does a fabulous job as part narrator and part character absorber), sound effects, the occasional scream or song sung, and how it's meant to be in black and white but every so often one may see color slip in a few frames or few seconds. That it was meant to be screened as a silent film, with full orchestra and actual Foley artists and chorus and possible narrator, makes it all the more wild - it wavers between real primitive film-making and pure fantasy.Which is just as well: all of the emotions here are laid for bare, and so much so for Maddin that the protagonist- a 30-something house painter who returns to his island home- is named Guy Maddin, it includes people like his actual mother and father and sister (not the actual people, the actors playing them), and many anecdotes are taken from his real life or from those closest to him (I started listening to Maddin talk about how the burial of Father in the movie is based on his actual grandfather's burial, but decided to stop to not let too many spoilers come through: it's actually a lot more fun and fascinating to figure out what's totally real or just slightly twisted). This works completely because of two reasons: 1) the autobiographical bits *are* interesting and captivating enough for cinema, this torn and weird relationship between siblings and parents, and 2) because it's wrapped up in a made-up plot by co-writer George Toles about an orphanage and crazy experiments done for rewinding aging on top of the already amazing surrealism on display with the film-making.In short, it's not only allowable, it's required for Maddin's passion to spark through. If for nothing else, even if you hate the movie (which I can understand, it's a like it or not enterprise, like with a piece baroque period music in several consistent parts), it's passionate film-making and storytelling, and it brings forth a number of unknown actors into a quantity like this. And Maddin picks well, since the actors save for Rossellini or whomever on narration have to have striking faces and be able to act completely and honestly in physical form. They also submit incredibly to any of Maddin's whims (even the gaggle of would-be Lords of the Flies orphans), which include dazed/feverish sleepwalking, insatiable lusting for the same/opposite sex, brain manipulation for the "nectar", and other mad things. It's also a great structure Maddin uses (taken from Godard's Vivre sa vie mayhap) as we go along like in some book that grows weirder and darker as it goes along... but also sadder and more touching and with moments that come as delightful almost in spite of the gloom and eerie sets and lighting and smoke and so on.Brand Upon the Brain won't be for everyone, but then how could it in the 21st century? Maddin has crafted something out dreams and recollections and visions and nightmare and hallucinations and ruminations and (of course) his libido and whatever else he could out of a love for movies and a love of his family (love enough to imbue them on screen as eccentric figures out of a dark fairy tale or science fiction opera), and it's something for the film fans out there who crave something out of the past to be represented with life and urgency and twists on what's expected - and at the same time, for all self-indulgent purposes, keeping true to what is solid about the emotional filmgoing experience. A+