Absolutely Fantastic

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

It's the kind of film that art house film students dream of. In fact visually it looks very much like an art house film students dream! There's text all over the screen, bits of narration and a truly bizarre story. It's pretty original, it's funny (I think intentionally) and it's nuts. Totally nuts!! Sadly a bit too nuts, good but not great. It sometimes feels like a silent film, with words appearing to help the narrative... but with sound. Some of it struggles and needs some patience, but by enlarge it's fantastic, in every sense of the word. The screen pulses and throbs with energy, it's beautifully crafted. Stories intermingle, twist, plots within plots, within dreams. My one criticism is it's too long, not by a lot, but it would benefit from losing a good 20 minutes. A minor quibble.

Despite having seen him mentioned a number of times,I've never found a good "entry point" to start with looking at the work of film maker Guy Maddin.Getting the wonderful chance to host an event on IMDb's Film Festival board,I was intrigued to find that a Maddin title had been nominated for viewing,which led to me stepping into the forbidden room.The outline of the movie:The film is based around short unrelated sketches that merge into each other with barely any connection. One of the stories involves a submarine crew eating flapjacks in order to get extra air from the air holes,who are left breathless,when a mysterious woodsmen is found in a dock,who has no idea how he got there.View on the film:Based on "lost" films which Maddin believed would only be seen if he made re-made them himself,Maddin and editor John Gurdebeke work closely together to unleash a rupturing nightmare atmosphere. Washing the screen in volcanic reds,Maddin & Gurdebeke blend the titles in a rugged manner,where the acid reds screech between each changing "dream/nightmare." Inspired by reviews of films which are believed lost,the screenplay by Maddin/Evan Johnson/ Robert Kotyk/John Ashbery and Kim Morgan aim for a dream-logic anthology,spanning disconnected stories which fade in/out at regular intervals. Despite this approach keeping the films focus constantly changing,it also causes the flick to get stuck in a surprisingly sluggish dead-end,due to there being no attempt to give any character the vaguest impression,and the writers giving the recurring stories no feeling of purpose over there return,in a forbidden room that should remain locked.

I was completely blown away by all of it. From the dazzling aesthetics, to how bizarre it was, and strangely of all, to just how hilarious it was. "The Forbidden Room" is simply a groundbreaking piece of work that unfortunately a lot of people will lose patience with - perhaps due to its two hour + running time, its non-linear narrative or maybe people wont find its sense of humour funny.Nonetheless, I found myself entranced by the whole thing. Part silent film, full surreal film, it's definitely made me want to check out Guy Maddin's previous work, and this could just be the best comedy film of the decade so far - putting it above my favourites: "The Lobster", "Submarine" & "Moonrise Kingdom".All in all, if you like art-house or unconventional films and have a bit of patience, I'm sure you'll love this one.

Canadian director Guy Maddin may be one of cinema's foremost practitioners of arty-fartiness, but he's certainly attracted some big names to appear in 'The Forbidden Room': Louis Negin (a Maddin regular), Roy Dupuis, Charlotte Rampling, Mathieu Amalric, Geraldine Chaplin, Udo Kier... I wonder how many of them understood the film? I certainly didn't, but then, I'm not sure Maddin is terribly bothered what the audience think.The plot, such as it is, features a crew on a doomed submarine who are suddenly joined by a lumberjack. The question of how the lumberjack got on the submarine is never answered; instead he begins telling his story, which starts with a beautiful woman being kidnapped by a finger-snappin', bladder-beatin' tribe of cavemen and grows, in incomprehensible fashion, to include a man who murders his butler to cover up his own failure to remember his wife's birthday; an aviatrix who finds herself accused of squidnapping, and two animated models that are meant to represent talking bananas but which wouldn't look out of place in those smutty 'Flesh Gordon' films.Substance, though, is not important to Maddin: it's all about style. And my word, does that style make this film a tough watch. Maddin has apparently gone for a 1940s movie serial look and while that implies a certain period charm (indeed, the underwater shots of the submarine have a pleasingly cheap and retro look), we also get bleached colour, flickering images and scratchy sound that, coupled with the fact most shots last no longer than 3-4 seconds and even then the bloody camera doesn't stay still, make it difficult for the eye to focus on anything.To sum up, the loose and at times humorous storyline does make this an interesting watch. But the production values mean I wouldn't want to put myself through it again!