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The Heart of the World More at IMDbPro »
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| Index | 18 reviews in total |
13 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
Brilliant, distinctive, utterly original!, 11 June 2004
Author:
F Gwynplaine MacIntyre from Minffordd, North Wales
Guy Maddin is the most brilliant film-maker working today! If there's
somebody better, that person must be labouring in obscurity. Maddin is
strongly influenced by the disciplines of silent film, but his vision is
unique, distinctive, and utterly original.
'The Heart of the World' could easily have been a throwaway film, given the
circumstance of its origin. The Toronto Film Festival commissioned Maddin to
make a brief film to fill a gap in their programming schedule. A mere
time-passer. What Maddin gave them was utterly unexpected.
Maddin uses large-grain film stock and Klieg-style lighting techniques to
replicate the look of silent film. Maddin's production design (costumes,
makeup, hairstyling) impeccably recreates the images of that period. It's
easy to believe that 'Heart of the World' is actually compiled from old UFA
out-takes, circa 1925. Only just occasionally does Maddin's grasp on the
1920s show the joins, and then those lapses are probably
intentional.
'The Hearts of the World' depicts the rivalry of two brothers. Nikolai is an
idealist engineer. Osip is playing Jesus Christ in a passion play, and seems
to have developed a genuine messiah complex. Amusingly, Osip does his Jesus
routine whilst toting a cross made from metal girders ... an Art Deco
crucifixion!
The brothers vie for the love of Anna, a beautiful scientist who has built a
device which enables her to gaze into the Earth's core, literally the heart
of the world. Meanwhile, a bloated plutocrat named Akmatov lusts for Anna.
All of this is explained in silent-film titles, in a 1920s typeface that
looks vaguely Cyrillic. The actors employ authentic silent-film acting
techniques while resisting the temptation to 'guy' those methods or
exaggerate them. The only lapse occurs when Anna suddenly vibrates her eyes
back and forth while attempting to choose between the two brothers. This
seems to be Maddin's intentional parody of silent-film acting. For the rest
of the film, his homage to the past is sincere.
I spent a delightful six minutes trying to spot all the references and
influences in this movie. Maddin is clearly influenced by 'Metropolis' (my
favourite film), but I also spotted the influences of 'Aelita', 'Vampyr',
'Potemkin' and 'Haxan' in this frenzied melange. This is not to accuse
Maddin of plagiarism. He displays his influences openly, using them as a
foundation for a vision uniquely his own. It's refreshing to see a
21st-century filmmaker who acknowledges a debt to silent films, in an
industry filled with Tarantino wanna-bes and counterfeit
Hitchcocks.
'The Heart of the World' is one of the most distinctive, exciting and
exhilarating movies I have ever seen. No doubt of it: I rate this movie 10
out of 10, and I look forward to more work by this filmmaker whose work is
at once utterly alien yet enticingly accessible.
13 out of 15 people found the following review useful:
Pumping, 17 July 2006
Author:
tedg (tedg@FilmsFolded.com) from Virginia Beach
There aren't many artists who are also filmmakers. I suppose part of
the problem is that there just aren't that many true artists, never
were. I'm talking about people who know the limits of the world, have
the tools and commitment to go there and gather magical shards, then
come back and use them to cut my tethers.
I'm talking about neither skillful entertainment nor novel decorators
of ordinary ideas.
And there are vastly fewer artists making films. Real artists, real
films. I have three living that I particularly value: Medem, Wong,
Greenaway. But Greenaway is off experimenting in other media at the
moment and may be lost, his two greatest collaborators gone and
interest in the drugs of narrative waning. I may replace him with
Maddin.
It isn't just that the man has an incredible facility with a broader
cinematic vocabulary than others. Its that he is able to connect that
intuitively to deeper adventures in being and the internal stays that
keep our emotional skin from collapsing.
Now to my mind, there's a world of difference between mastering the
short form in film — which this is — and the long form. The long form
is required for soulchange. It just takes that long for our minds to
encircle themselves to strangle the unwanted. But holy cow, what a
short form project this is. Since this, I know only two Maddin
projects: "Saddest" and "Dracula," and each of them are something I
would get my best friend out of bed and travel across the state to see.
This probably won't stick because it is so brief. But it is such rush!
Every element in it has either no floor or sits on poles so high you
can't see down. His stories are all similar, but no matter because they
are irrational, overloaded with contradiction, self-destructive and yet
cartoonish. They are — like his images — apparently borrowed from the
past and simply pasted, like a child's assembly of magazine photos.
But nothing is borrowed, really. All his ethers are wholly called from
his own dreams and merely and loosely wear somewhat familiar costumes.
The main deal here is conflict between a man who is a
mortician/military politician (with a penis-cannon) and his brother, an
actor who plays Christ deeply enough to convince himself. The two vie
for sex with the planet — there's an amazing segment you won't forget
where the woman-world in question impregnates herself, and bears...
guess.
Cinema! Usually I comment on how clever the folding in a film is. In
this case, the folding of the Christ-play is a weapon that is used
against the woman in the name of wooing her. Just that one, that one
notion is enough to advise you not to miss this.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.
11 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
The most Intense and disturbing, 3 September 2004
Author:
Rocco P. Basilica from Colchester, Connecticut
6 minutes of my movie viewing life. I was amazed at the emotional impact of this short, the music, editing, visuals and subject matter all combine to make this a masterpiece of cinema...and it is a black and white, silent film at that. Just as satisfying as INTOLERANCE. To some and maybe the casual viewer this may come across as a cheap and quickly thrown together film, but with repeated viewings, you can see the care and time that Maddin lavished on this production, the pace is frantic and actually leaves you gasping for breath...and thinking what did I just see! A highly recommended film and one to include in a library of important and significant works of art cinema.
7 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
Kino-therapy.., 27 February 2007
Author:
nikhil7179 from India
Equal parts German Expressionism and Russian Agit-prop, Heart of the
World is a six minute epic of Biblical proportions.
Maddin's usual idiosyncrasies resurface - Scandinavian Love triangle
Melodrama amidst impending social catastrophe.
Being from the Tarkovskian school of thought, an ASL (average shot
length) of under 2 seconds would normally be scoffed at, but an
exception will have to be made in this case, as the rapid-cutting is
truly elevated to an art form here.
The music is appropriately over-the-top and compliments the film
perfectly.
One of the wittiest, most inventive short films ever.
5 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
Fantastically Furious!!, 30 July 2002
Author:
(ohthree-1) from NY, NY
The first time I saw this movie end, I knew I had to immediately
watch it again. It moves so fast that you only get tantalizing hints of
what actually happens with the first viewing, so you want to watch it
again and again. The cinematography is nothing short of
amazing, with homages to film greats and displaying visionary
originality that earned it a top spot in so many critic's Top 10's.
Everything about this film, from the grainy textures to the the set
and costumes, reflects Maddin's unstoppable freight train of weird
and cool. Strong casting choices also made the movie much more
than your average short, proving that five and a half minutes is
plenty of time to tell an intricate and beautiful story. This will be a
hard one to knock out of MY Top 5. Watch, rinse, repeat.
5 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
Exceptionally well done but not exactly a fun ride, 12 March 2008
Author:
planktonrules from Bradenton, Florida
This film is very well made and I was impressed by much of it. However,
I would assume that at least 95% of the public would hate the film if
they saw it--probably even more! That's because all the bizarre and
surrealistic elements make a lot of sense to a film historian or
someone who loves German or Soviet silent Expressionistic film--so this
makes for a very narrow audience indeed!! THE HEART OF THE WORLD
appears as if it were made in the 1920s and at first I thought it was
made from clips from old movies. However, instead I soon realized that
the film actually was imitating such films as METROPOLIS, THE CABINET
OF CALIGARI, NOSFERATU, ZEMLYA and even THE KING OF KINGS (among
others)--with a very strong emphasis on METROPOLIS. There were also
some amazingly unusual phallic images interspersed throughout the film
that made me laugh. This, combined with an appropriately stirring and
bizarre musical score made for a very skilled picture indeed.
The problem with this film, though, is that even if the work shows
great skill, who is going to watch it? I understood the film and
psychological references and could appreciate it...but I also didn't
particularly enjoy it and would hate a steady diet of this sort of
filming. It's probably only of interest to a small and select few.
7 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
6 fast minutes, 28 January 2004
Author:
anthrakas
This movie tells more in 6 minutes than a feature film.
The fast action and the style, the music, the narrative stays in your
mind,
it accompanies you for days! You wonder if you can stop blinking for the
duration of the film in case you manage to take in more and
more!
I am about to go and watch it again, yes! and I can't wait!
I'll write no more, don't want to spoil it for you...
KINO KINO KINO
3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Amazing; one of the most radical and imaginative short films that I've ever seen, 26 June 2008
Author:
Graham Greene from United Kingdom
Pure fantasia, a race to save the world from a fatal heart attack,
juxtaposed against a love rivalry between two brothers - a mortician
and an actor playing Christ - for the heart of a scientist studying the
earth's core. Whether or not there's any kind of deeper interpretation
is hard to tell, with the film racing along in an almost
stream-of-consciousness approach, as expressionist cinema conventions
are cast against elements of Soviet propaganda films in Maddin's
typically exciting and an anachronistic style. Although vague and
enigmatic, there is a definite story here; one that is relatively easy
to follow if we pay close attention to the incredibly quick cuts and
barrage of on-screen information, as references to Metropolis (1927)
and Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864) are combined with the
director's intuitive sense of visual abstraction, humour and satire,
whilst also featuring an almost heartfelt approach to its characters,
even in such an exceedingly short-form.
At this point in time, I'm still something of novice to the films of
Guy Maddin, though I have seen the vast majority of his short films and
would rate them from good to excellent. Like the rest, The Heart of the
World (2000) is worth watching more than once in order to pick up all
of the information being offered to us in the continual bombardment of
overwhelming and fascinating imagery and fragments of captivating
narrative, whilst also standing as a simply astounding piece of
film-making in the most basic sense. A masterful combination of wit,
imagination, style, content and pure cinematic ability, in which the
saviour of the world turns out to be none other than cinema itself.
3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Amazing short film, 2 December 2000
Author:
North-3 from Canada
Fans of Guy Maddin should check out this new short film. If you thought
his
previous short film Odilon Redon was an excellent film, The Heart Of The
World tops it.
The pacing is frantic, the storyline is the classic love triangle that Guy
loves working with, the setting is heavily influenced by Soviet imagery.
Even the editing style is very similar to that of Eisenstein.
What also makes this film work very well is the accompanying Soviet music
entitled Time, Forward.
Whereas Guy's recent longer narratives have failed (The Hands of Ida, and
Twilight Of The Ice Nymphs), his shorts films just keep getting better and
better.
2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
Astonishing, fascinating short film from Guy Maddin, 11 February 2009
Author:
ametaphysicalshark from prejudicemadeplausible.wordpress.com
As with all of Guy Maddin's films, "The Heart of the World" left me, well, speechless. I'm rarely insightful, usually articulate, but I can never write well about a Guy Maddin film. That Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote a whole essay on this film is not surprising, but it does leave me in awe. A wacky narrative featuring the usual Maddin love triangle, this is six and a half minutes of pure joy. The genius of "The Heart of the World" isn't its wackiness or the technical and stylistic qualities of the film, it's that it's not a bit of showboating, but a fascinating experimental success- what Maddin has done is made a whole feature in six minutes. Most short films are short because that's how they were written, that's how much material the filmmakers had and wanted to make. "The Heart of the World" could have easily been a feature. In fact, it has a more interesting 'plot' than a couple of Maddin's actual features (especially "Brand Upon the Brain!" for me). Rosenbaum suggests this might be the world's first 'subliminal melodrama'. That's a better description than I could come up with. I watched the movie twice in a row but I have a feeling I'll be watching it many, many more times. I absolutely loved this film, but not enough to eclipse "Elimination Dance" as my favorite Canadian short, though "The Heart of the World" is almost unquestionably the greater accomplishment. I prefer Maddin's features "My Winnipeg" and "Careful" to this, but again, it's the staggering accomplishment of this film that makes it so worthy of awe. How many filmmakers have done montage better?
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