CAREFUL Movie Review
In a mythical Alpine valley, ominously surrounded by steep, ice-covered mountains, lives a population of bizarrely dysfunctional, pathologically repressed villagers who speak only in hushed of tones due to their constant fear of causing a catastrophic avalanche. With this mass anxiety at the core of their daily existence, the villagers logically but disastrously evolve into a society that exists for the sole purpose of taking no risks. It's a funny idea, but avant-garde Winnipeg director Guy Maddin does a great deal more with it than simply going for cheap laughs. Careful is an ingenious, absurd, visionary work of filmmaking that will enthrall as many people as it will exasperate. Maddin's hallucinatory/stoned/ expressionist style is inspired by lots of sources: the German “mountain” films of the early 1930s, Fritz Lang, Georges Melies, Ed Wood. Yet these influences don't begin to suggest the essence of Maddin's true originality; he's come as close as any other filmmaker to putting dreams on screen, and those—when seen while awake—can be alternately hilarious, breathtaking, silly and terrifying. Maddin's refusal to conform to filmmaking norms or audience expectations seems all the more startling in the context of the movie's theme—Careful is anything but. It could be the nightmare of someone who ate too much bratwurst and beer during some grotesque, unending Oktoberfest, and who then fell asleep on the couch while watching television public service announcements for safe sex. The visual artificiality, the scratchy, flat soundtrack, the wildly exaggerated acting all breeze past any hint of “camp” in the first few minutes, and then drop us squarely into an unexplored, satirical, dangerous realm of the cinematic unconscious.
NEXT STOP … Tales from the Gimli Hospital, Archangel, The Tenant
1994 100m/C Kyle McCulloch, Gosia Dobrowolska, Jackie Burroughs, Sarah Neville, Brent Neale, Paul Cox, Victor Cowie, Michael O'Sullivan, Vince Rimmer, Katya Gardner; D: Guy Maddin; W: Guy Maddin, George Toles; C: Guy Maddin; M: John McCulloch. VHS KIV