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Brand Upon The Brain! (2006)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:46
Fresh:42
Rotten:4
Average Rating:7.9/10
Consensus: A bizarre yet compelling spectacle, Brand Upon the Brain! is a unique cinematic experience.
Runtime: 1 hr 39 mins
Genre: Horror/Suspense
US Box Office: $201,013
Synopsis: Guy Maddin (THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD, MY WINNIPEG, CAREFUL) directs this moving silent satire about several families and the secrets they possess. Emotional yet thoughtful and infused with... Guy Maddin (THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD, MY WINNIPEG, CAREFUL) directs this moving silent satire about several families and the secrets they possess. Emotional yet thoughtful and infused with surrealist touches, the film offers an original and somewhat horrific view on the experience--the aching delicateness--of growing up. Through his unconventionally autobiographical, transcendently un-gimmicky methods, Maddin once again cuts to the core of emotional truth. The film exists in several presentations, including its original silent format as well as with several voice-over narrations from such talents as Isabella Rosselini and poet John Ashbury. [More]
Starring: Gretchen Krich, Eric Maahs, Catherine Scharhon, Sullivan Brown
Starring: Gretchen Krich, Eric Maahs, Catherine Scharhon, Sullivan Brown, Todd Jefferson Moore, Maya Lawson
Director: Guy Maddin
Director: Guy Maddin
Screenwriter: Guy Maddin, George Toles
Producer: Amy E. Jacobson, Gregg Lachow
Composer: Jason Staczek
Studio: Vitagraph Films
Reviews for Brand Upon The Brain!
If you are drawn to oddball films like David Lynch's Eraserhead, then you should feel at home here.
It is almost an unintended parody of the excesses of art house filmmaking - like something that would have shown up on Dan Akroyd's old Saturday Night Live vignette "Bad Cinema."
The mythic nuttiness gets under your skin just as these archetypal figures gradually penetrate each other’s subterfuges, skulls, and orifices.
The deliciously unhinged Guy Maddin makes films that are funny, sinister and mysterious at the same time.
You feel like you've stumbled across a lost treasure from some studio's vaults that was meant to be buried forever.
This more-than-surreal feat is swimming in winks and nods to Maddin’s influences. Moments of Bunuel, Hitchcock and Lang are everywhere.
Seeing is believing, and the clever Maddin understands a dimension of his medium that many of his contemporaries won't dare approach: with the right compelling images, anything is possible.
Narrated by Isabella Rossellini and enhanced by Jason Staczek's superb score, this is characteristically intense and, unlike most of Maddin's silent-movie models, frenetically edited.
Imagery, language, and emotion can be pulled apart and put back together any way you like
No matter how much the director disguises the tale in flickery symbolism, the emotions feel painful and personal.
exploring the phenomenon of memory with a transcendence that includes reality and fantasy with equal measure and equal importance. It is dark, it is disturbing, and yet, this is the man's genius, it is also wildly, improbably, blessedly funny
The casual viewer may well reject the experimentalism outright, but for those who seek more unique rewards, they're definitely here.
Brand Upon the Brain! is like no other movie you're likely to see this year -- or any other year. It won't be to everyone's taste. But for those who like their cinema weird, it doesn't get any weirder or more oddly fascinating than this.
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