Maddin's Hockey

I've read a lot about Canadian avante-garde director Guy Maddin. I finally got around to watching, starting with Cowards Bend the Knee (2003). It was something.

In form, it is a shortish, hour-long film in 10 chapters, in distressed black & white without synched sound (not silent, but near as never mind). Chapter One: The Sperm Players! A gentleman in a lab coat puts a slide into a microscope, and looks in to see: A hockey game! Player Guy Maddin (played by Darcy Fehr) takes a hit to the head and is concussed. He forgets that his mother is in the hospital! He takes his girlfriend to the beauty salon that is an after hours abortion clinic, and leaves her to die on the table while he runs off with the madam's (it's also an after hours brothel) beautiful daughter. She won't let him touch her with any hands, but the blue hands of her dead father (his cheap hair dye caused the blueness, not his death). So he lets the abortionist transplant her father's hands onto his arms! But when Maddin is under the anesthetic, the doctor just paints his hands blue! And then there's the deserted wax museum of hockey greats!

Whew! It's over-the-top old-timey, with broad overacting. The editing is mostly old-timey, too, except there's a touch of hip-hop in the way he repeats a few seconds over and over, like scratching. The girlfriend has a very Mary Pickford look, the madam is Gloria Swanson and her daughter is more Anna May Wong - both von Sternberg dragon ladies.

In conclusion, I now feel I know what Maddin is about and don't feel a strong need to watch much more.