The Twentieth Century
(Matthew Rankin)
I indulge in Guy Maddin’s filmography in fits and spurts, careful not to overwhelm my senses with his audiovisual brand upon the brain. I’ve frequently found his films difficult to adore, if not impossible to dislodge from my memory. Which is to say that there’s usually a lot to admire, though the trip through his membrane tends to be less than pleasant. It’s only My Winnipeg that I hold dearly, where I found his sensibility to align with something nostalgic, if not sweet. In that film, he’s remarking on his past, and he does so in way where his maximalist tendencies not only seem suitable but necessary.
Matthew Rankin, a Maddin acolyte, utilizes his mentor’s stylistic proclivities: the Russian propaganda montages, the absurdist lighting, the German expressionist production design, etc. If you’re at all familiar with Maddin’s aesthetic you know what you’re coming in for with The Twentieth Century. But Rankin’s film is rooted, at least passingly, with Canadian history, detailing the rise of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King (Dan Beirne). It’s something of a superfluous detail, really, as so much of the film’s visual and narrative temperament is rooted in a modernist comic sensibility. Which is to say that despite The Twentieth Century purported setting and historical figures, its application within Rankin’s production is uniquely his own.
The novelistic qualities of the film (it’s divided into ten distinct chapters) and the “formal” dialogue give the whole effort a classical cadence. Along with the traditional aspects of the film’s narrative – despite its psychosexual, queer absurdity, this is fundamentally a coming-of-age story, so to speak – I couldn’t help but think of some of Thomas Hardy’s melodramas like Jude the Obscure or The Mayor of Casterbridge. Which is to say that this story of a shoe-sniffing bureaucrat with a particular knack for seal clubbing, is simultaneously new and familiar. Much like the best of Guy Maddin.