Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Charming silent film with rampant editing, dizzy imagery, simultaneous narrator and text frames... basically everything imaginable to test the audience´s endurance to a headache. At times there are about five images in one second, all of them recorded with a shaky camera going in and out of focus. Text frames pop up for a mili second before appearing again for someone to actually read them. The film does an aggresive effort to be as obtuse as it possibly can. It has the appearance of an ancient found-footage film but a severely damaged one, beyond restoration. Text frames add comedy and poetry while the narrator tells the story, but they often do so at the same time, making it an implacable experience.It is charming, though, actors do justice to silent films gestures and overall mystery. At its best, the expressionistic montage does evoke rich emotions and the plot makes Wes Anderson seem unimaginative. It is bold film-making, very creative art-house indeed, but my first experience with Guy Maddin´s work was too demanding and didn´t quite reward my commitment.

Hi Bill--Hope you're enduring the snowstorms! Anyway--last night I watched the Guy Madden film on DVD--BRAND UPON THE BRAIN--I think that's the title. I imagine you've seen it, since it's his most famous film and it's been screened in NYC at festivals, etc. It's now part of the "Criterion Collection"--made in the 2000's. It's feature-length. Maybe I can see why a couple friends of mine out west thought it reminded them of our films.--The black and white and experimental visual techniques. But overall it reminded me more of David Lynch in a lower-budget underground way.It references the techniques and visual style of German Expressionist films and early silent filmmaking. It took me a while to get into it, but I'm glad I did. The story itself is a mixture of psychology, operatic exaggeration and general goofiness. Something about a possessive mother, weird father, sexually frustrated sister. As with David Lynch, I end up wondering if the director really has something to say or is just juxtaposing "cool" images and weird concepts. Well--my reaction anyway.(In the Extra Features, Madden says that the film is 97% accurate to his own childhood--meaning emotionally of course--not realistically!)The experimental film technique in this movie: in the extra feature section they said that they shot scenes with "multiple Super-8 cameras." I wondered if the whole film was shot that way--and where in 2002 they could get Super8 movie cameras --and S8 film! Gave everything a grainy retro look.It's mostly in black and white with a few fleeting color images. But with modern digital editing it could have all been shot in color and then b&w'd in editing. Anyway it was a heavy trip to sit through, but overall seems to have left me with mostly just a feeling of "mood."Also it's a Canadian film, with that whole "Canadian underground-filmmaker-community" vibe. (Remember the Canadian film we saw at Duke that referenced a lot of 1950's B Movies?--something about a guy living in a garage apartment and a pre-teen girl being infatuated with his film obsession--in campy color. Very much a pre-MOONRISE KINGDOM vibe.)Anyway, I'm glad I saw this film, but not sure if it left me with anything.--B

I should have never watched this movie. The style of filming may be considered artsy to some, but it is considered migraine-inducing to me. I think it may have had an interesting plot, but since I couldn't watch it for long stretches at a time I missed a lot. The flickering pictures and stop motion filming branded my brain. I stopped watching mid way through and won't be back for a second try. I suppose if I were home alone in my own lighthouse some dark and stormy evening, this might be just the ticket... PS Not sure if the lighthouse/ film style thing can be considered a spoiler, but I don't want to be blacklisted on my first review ;)

First of all, I have to say: finally! I was almost positive that I was going to have to wait for DVD for this one, and God knows how long that was going to take. Secondly, I have to speak my only criticism of the film up front: the live show experiment might have been something truly awesome. I'll never know. But I do know that the disembodied voice of Isabella Rossellini, which you'll find in the general release, and presumably on the DVD, is extremely distracting. It works once in a while, but I would much prefer Maddin to have had a slightly separate version that was only silent. Unfortunately, several sequences wouldn't be comprehensible without the spoken narration, so I doubt we'll find it gone on the DVD (though I do hope that they might include some of the other narrators they used in the live show). Thankfully, as the film progresses, she pops up less and less. If not for this, I would have had no problem calling this a masterpiece.What to say about Brand Upon the Brain!? It's a Maddin film, and if you've seen his other films, you know pretty much what to expect. Not that his style hasn't varied between films (although all of his films since his first huge success, Heart of the World, have existed in a similar silent film milieu), but he is just so far beyond what anyone else has ever done, his style can be called entirely unique. As are all of the director's films, Brand is a hilarious nightmare. Maddin creates situations that can only ever exist in the subconscious. The plot of this one includes a lighthouse orphanage, a mad scientist and his sexually repressed wife, teenage detectives à la Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys, lesbian erotica, incest and the haunting presence of dead memories. Maddin is sometimes criticized as being little more than a snarky jokester, but the more I watch his films, the more I disagree with that assessment. His films are, of course, comedies. All of his films are meant to be funny. But I can also feel the pain, the yearning and emotional honesty behind his work. If the movies illustrate tapestries of the dreamworld, as I am certain they do, then the moods behind them, though melodramatized to high heaven, contain glimpses of the deeper truth. I think David Lynch is a rather similar director. Only where Lynch seems to look at the nightmares from the inside, Maddin's point of view is from that of a man who has just awoken. Nightmares sure are scary when we're in them, but they sure can seem ridiculous when recalled.