DVD Pick: Brand Upon the Brain! (Criterion Collection)

In Brand Upon the Brain! (2006), filmmaker Guy Maddin takes a mesmerizing autobiographical look at himself at age 12. The protagonist of the movie is named Guy Maddin and is played by a child actor, but in a supporting role there's an adult actor portraying a 40-something Maddin musing over his boyhood. The filmmaker isn't interested in depicting things as perceived by rational adults; instead, he is concerned with communicating the boy's worldview to us.

The movie is a dreamlike fantasy about an unhappy kid living on an isolated island where his parents operate a mom-and-pop orphanage. His overbearing mother tracks his movements using a searchlight and a telescope, and she yells at him through a fanciful device called an aerophone. His aloof father is always seen working in a lab, and he is shown "harvesting nectar" from the orphans. Young Guy reads novels about a teenage detective named Wendy Hale, and she comes to life in the film and gets into a lesbian relationship with his sister.

Much of Brand Upon the Brain! centers on young Guy's ambivalence toward his mother, but another important aspect is how the boy struggles to come to terms with gender and sexuality. The movie also deals with his feeling that adults have a vampiric relationship with children. If you have even a passing interest in psychology and mythology, this is a film you will not want to miss.

Brand Upon the Brain! is a silent film in the sense that the actors speak dialogue, but the audience doesn't hear them, and the movie has intertitles. However, the DVD provides a rich soundtrack. For one thing, there are plenty of sound effects, such as footsteps, water splashing, doors slamming, etc. Also, there's an excellent musical score from a small orchestra (strings, piano, French horns, percussion) and, on occasion, vocalists. Most notably, the film is accompanied by voice-over narration. The DVD comes with a choice of eight different renditions of the narration, with the default narrator being Isabella Rossellini.

When Brand Upon the Brain! was first released theatrically and playing festivals and big cities, the sound portion of the presentation was sometimes done live. The film would be projected as a silent while three foley artists would provide the sound effects, a dozen musicians would play the score and someone like Laurie Anderson or Crispin Glover would deliver the voice-over narration.

The best extra on the DVD is the 51-minute documentary "97 Percent True," in which filmmaker Guy Maddin talks about making Brand Upon the Brain!, and we also hear from the co-writer, editor, cinematographer and composer. Maddin makes the extravagant claim that the movie is almost entirely autobiographically true, but he isn't speaking literally. According to him, it is "emotionally and melodramatically true, psychologically true, poetically true."

"It's My Mother's Birthday Today" is essentially a goofy music video where we hear old-time music hall great Arthur Tracy croon the title song while we watch a man named Dov Houle prepare an egg sandwich and then interact with children. Houle is characterized on the DVD as "the castrato known as the Manitoba Meadowlark."

Also on the DVD is the mildly interesting nine-minute "Footsteps," which shows the foley artists creating sound effects. In addition, there's a tedious six-minute deleted scene in which Guy's sister dresses as a boy and ends up facing a "firing squad" made up of children holding sticks. Packaged with the DVD is a booklet containing a well-written seven-page essay by Dennis Lim that traces Maddin's body of work up through his 2007 film My Winnipeg.

Picture and sound of the feature film are of high quality, but visually the movie was intentionally made to look like an old silent. Below I have listed all the details for the Brand Upon the Brain! Criterion Collection DVD.

Release Date: August 12, 2008
Feature Film Runtime: 1 hour 38 minutes
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Widescreen (1.85:1), Black and White (With Occasional Color)
English Stereo
Eight Renditions of Voice-Over Narration
It's My Mother's Birthday Today (5 1/2 min.)
Footsteps (9 min.)
97 Percent True (51 min.)
Deleted Scene (6 min.)
Original Theatrical Trailer
16-Page Booklet Containing Essay by Dennis Lim