|
THE FORBIDDEN ROOM Send This Review to a Friend
Canadian directors Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson have come up with the sort of wild film ideas that Luis Buñel and Salvador Dali were exploring nearly 100 years ago with greater intellect. “The Forbidden Room,” which was showcased as part of the 2015 New York Film Festival, is a hodgepodge of sequences, some funny, some adventurous, but taken as a whole an exercise in tedium despite all the visual and editing flash.
The filmmakers purport to be imagining lost silent masterpieces to create their vision of cinema. Yes, there are some amusing moments, as when odd-looking Louis Negin lectures on the art of taking a bath.
Imagination is certainly there, for example, with men trapped in a submarine and trying to figure out how to get air, or a volcano that must be appeased by a human sacrifice.
Maddin in particular has a reputation for creativity among followers, which no doubt enabled him and his collaborator to get such stalwarts as Charlotte Rampling and Mathieu Almalric to accept roles in the enterprise.
Screenplay duties were shared by Maddin, Johnson and Robert Kotyk, and the elaborate cinematography was accomplished by Ben Kasulke and Stephanie Weber–Biron. Clearly loads of work has gone into the film.
But unless you are a devotee, you may find the experience very hard going. A Kino Lorber release. Reviewed October 9, 2015.
|