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Saddest Music in the World, The
IFC Films


6.3

based on 33 reviews
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based on 17 votes
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Starring Isabella Rossellini, Mark McKinney, Maria de Medeiros, Ross McMillan, David Fox, Claude Dorge, Darcy Fehr, Erik J. Berg, and Brent Neale

It's 1933 in Winnipeg and the Great Depression is in full bloom. Beer Baroness Lady Port-Huntly (Rossellini) announces a global competition to determine the saddest music in the world, and musicians from across the globe pour into town to vie for the whopping $25,000 prize. Part musical melodrama, part tongue-in-cheek social satire, Guy Maddin's expressionistic film achieves a level of lunacy rarely seen since the Marx Brothers. (IFC Films)

GENRE(S):	Drama \| Fantasy \| Musical \| Romance
WRITTEN BY:	Kazuo Ishiguro Guy Maddin George Toles
DIRECTED BY:	Guy Maddin
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: November 16, 2004 Theatrical: April 30, 2004
RUNNING TIME:	99 minutes, B/W / Color
ORIGIN:	Canada

Film Discovery Jury Award (Best Director), 2004 U.S. Comedy Arts Festival

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

A deliciously weirded-out picture by Guy Maddin, a deliciously weirded-out Canadian filmmaker.

100

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

The best Canadian beer movie since "Strange Brew," and the best 1930s musical of the year, The Saddest Music in the World is the kind of exhaustingly delirious film that only Winnipeg director Guy Maddin could make.

100

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Guy Maddin has reached a new expressive plateau with The Saddest Music in the World.

100

San Francisco Chronicle Carla Meyer

The concept is high, the humor lowbrow and the joy of experimentation evident in every frame of this wonderful picture.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Hard to say who's luckier -- those who have seen the work of Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin before and know what to expect, or those who haven't and for whom The Saddest Music in the World serves as an eye-popping introduction.

LA Weekly John Powers

The weirdest, freest-wheeling, most obsessively inventive motion picture you'll see this year. Parts are confusing, parts are berserk, parts are exasperatingly slow. But in a world of cookie-cutter movies, Maddin's movies are like nobody else's -- funny, Romantic, as deliriously overwrought as a drug lord's wedding.

Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis

It's all terribly tortured, often laugh-out-loud, absurdly funny and, as with all of Maddin's movies, conveyed through images that are as lush and beautifully over the top as the story's emotions.

Newsweek David Ansen

Hilariously odd and prodigiously inventive.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

The movie occasionally continues on too long with certain scenes and may strain the sensibilities of anybody not caught up in its delirious visuals and melodrama, but The Saddest Music in the World nevertheless beckons with a seductive and unforgettable melody.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The effect is strange and delightful; somehow the style lends quasi-credibility to a story that is entirely preposterous.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

The Saddest Music In the World may not be for all tastes, but maybe it should be.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

It's the stuff of soap opera, infused with a nonchalant, David Lynch-like surrealism and a nutball Canadian humor. Beer - because of the baroness, and because this is Canada - flows freely.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Maddin's movies are easy, too. Point your eyes at the screen; the magic follows.

New York Post V.A. Musetto

Meant to evoke filmmaking of a bygone era, but this time the director is more restrained visually, while making use of a more conventionally structured script than usual. And he has a real, honest-to-goodness star in Rossellini.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

If only there were a surefire way to describe Guy Maddin's films without scaring off viewers. The quirky Canadian is a genius who produces haunting, exquisitely droll movies that defy explanation.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Like most great musicals, though, this one slides, with breathtaking ease, from silliness to pathos and freely mixes exquisiteness and absurdity.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Because everything is funny and nothing provides a punchline, audiences may be too shell-shocked to laugh--you know you're in Maddinville when individual cackles detonate at unexpected intervals.

Time Richard Corliss

In a movie age when there's hardly a garde, let alone an avant-garde, Maddin proves there are many languages to cinema, including the dead one of antique film. And in that language, he sings, he soars.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

It's a work for specialized tastes: for audiences who adore old movies, dark jokes and some high camp.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

I am casting no aspersions on the director when I say that The Saddest Music in the World is a work of manic depression. The mania is there in the frenzied editing, the inability to concentrate on a detail for more than a few seconds; and the depression is there in the forcible lowering of spirits. [10 May 2004, p. 107]

Variety David Rooney

Almost as much an art piece as a film, this playful Prohibition-era tale is visually inventive and initially amusing but, at feature length, becomes somewhat wearing in its cacophonous eccentricity.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Maddin films have a higher rate of invention per frame than the majority of his peers can muster.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

This exercise in style and tongue-in-cheek melodrama from Canada's iconoclastic Guy Maddin will be lionized by admirers for its audacity, but will wear thin for many audience members, who will find it tedious and repetitive.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Too much of this fantasy is filled out with artsy folderol, but it's a movie like no other--except, maybe, one by Guy Maddin.

TV Guide Ken Fox

You won't see anything quite like it from any other filmmaker working today.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Any film where a beer baroness's glass leg (filled with beer) shatters when a high note is struck is okay by me.

Dallas Observer Melissa Levine

In short, it's a rich, artful film, slightly overlong but worth the time, money and energy required to get through it. Art? Definitely. Entertainment? Not so much.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

So stuffed with Maddin-ess that it never manages to get past the glorious surfaces. McKinney strides through his role with a knowing wink, and the sheer volume of creative imagery is as distracting as it is entertaining.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

The weirdest movie of the summer. OK, the year.

Empire Anna Smith

There's atmosphere and absurd wit, but the surreal style creates a distance from the characters that's only likely to be appreciated by fans of Maddinís self-conscious artistry.

Film Threat Staff (Not credited)

Insanely inventive and brimming with exceptional performances, The Saddest Music in the World is as audacious as it is entertaining.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

You're left, as with certain vivid dreams, filled with memorable images but not completely able to account for what you just experienced.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

The visual originality of The Saddest Music is deceiving: Narratively and spiritually, the movie is bankrupt, even though it's so packed with stuff (including a set of shapely prosthetic glass legs filled with dazzling, fizzy beer) that you can hardly bring yourself to believe that it all adds up to nothing.

The average user rating for this movie is 6.3 (out of 10) based on 17 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Spongeee K. gave it a9:
Unique film to say the least. Cinematography was crafty and the dark comedy and social satire were just right. I think you either get this film or you dont. Sorry for those who didnt get it...youre missing out on a classic.

Chad S. gave it a9:
"The Saddest Music in the World" just might be the most quotable comedy since "This is Spinal Tap". You won't get any spoilers from me. See this film and enjoy them firsthand. Director Guy Maddin is a visual genius, but then again, maybe he just seems so because there's nobody else replicating the thirties-era films we ignore on Turner Classic Movies to compare him with. Serbia, in a modern context, isn't a funny country to poke fun at, but this film is set in the early-thirties, so the sight of the entire world collaborating with America against a sad cello-playing Serb is hillarious because he's so deliciously pathetic in his black mourning clothes. Because the film is absurdist, it's okay to laugh at his pickled dead son's heart in a jar of self-shedded tears, and yet it still manages a level of poignancy. That same aggregate of comedy and tragedy also applies to the relationship between Lady Port-Hurtly(Isabella Rossellini) and Chester's father, whose invention is so boombastic, it would make a pimp want to cut off his own legs. "The Saddest Music in the World" will take your breath away. Maddin makes Tarrantino seem conventional.

MC Jones gave it a0:
Possibly one of the worst movies we've ever suffered through. Big yuck.

Filazafer X gave it a2:
Rarely do I quit watching a movie, but I could not make it through this one. I think it has some value, but I am not sure what it is. I felt like I was watching a student film in college. It that context it may be a masterpiece, but I just thought it sucked.

Kevin E. gave it a9:
I don't know what this was, but I couldn't take my eyes off of it. It was so thouroughly saturated with.. something.. I can't quite put my beer-filled glass finger on it.. This was my first Guy Maddin film and though it may not have been very good (how would I even know?) I can't stop thinking about it. More please!

Rico gave it an 8:
This is final proof that Guy Maddin is insane. I loved it as I do many of his other films. Mark McKinney is perfect.

Kitty M. gave it an 8:
Wonderfully shot, great satire and off beat.

Saddest Music in the World, The IFC Films

Saddest Music in the World, The
IFC Films