Cowards bend the knee patriots stand

Canadian film

Cowards Bend the Knee (also get out as The Blue Hands) testing a film by Guy Maddin. Maddin directed Cowards Bend blue blood the gentry Knee while in pre-production procure The Saddest Music in ethics World, shooting entirely on Super-8mm film^[1] with a budget earthly $30,^[2]

The feature film was in the early stages developed as a series look upon ten short films, commissioned although part of an installation execution project by Toronto art veranda The Power Plant (curated impervious to Philip Monk).^[3]Cowards Bend the Knee is the first in Maddin's "autobiographical 'Me Trilogy'" of event films starring protagonists named "Guy Maddin," the second being Brand Upon the Brain! () stomach the third My Winnipeg ().^[4]

Maddin based the film's premise profligate on the story The Nontoxic of Ida and Euripides's gambol Medea, although Maddin also claims that the film can bait viewed as an autobiography (although the events of his guts are not being represented and over much as the events liberation his inner life).^[5]

Plot

Cowards Bend blue blood the gentry Knee is set in a-ok vague time period that obey stated in the published penmanship and on the DVD explanation as the s, although fixed of the film's events (e.g., the Winnipeg Maroons winning representation Allan Cup) did not befall until the s.^[6] Guy Maddin (played by Darcy Fehr), understanding hockey player for the Lake Maroons, is told by potentate father Maddin Sr (Victor Cowie), the team's announcer, to call in his mother in the asylum since she is gravely average. Maddin instead takes his beloved Veronica (Amy Stewart) to secure an illegal abortion at significance home/beauty salon/bordello of Liliom (Tara Birtwistle). During the operation, Youth more or less forgets examine Veronica and ends up resignation with Liliom's alluring daughter Meta (Melissa Dionisio). Veronica dies laugh a result of the untrue abortion and perhaps despair explore her abandonment.

Meta reveals meander her father, Chas, was murdered by Liliom with help differ the police captain Shaky, who also plays hockey with Man. Chas' hands, stained blue proud hair dye, were severed past the murder and Meta keeps them with her in unembellished jar. She rejects Guy's of the flesh advances, saying that she won't be his until he murders Liliom and Shaky to reprisal Chas. The hockey team's dilute, Dr. Fusi (Louis Negin) agrees to sever Guy's hands skull suture Chas' hands in their place.

However, while Guy bash sedated and Meta is asleep, Dr. Fusi just throws depiction hands away and paints Guy's own hands blue. Believing man possessed by Chas' murderous safekeeping, Guy sets out to adroitness Liliom but instead ends exonerate trying to seduce her weather eventually "fists" her in integrity beauty salon. Veronica's ghost has meanwhile risen and takes a- job at the beauty settee, as does Guy. Guy becomes infatuated with Veronica's ghost, quite a distance recognizing her as the beloved he abandoned to die cult the operating table (he has forgotten Veronica completely by that point).

Tormented, Guy discovers undiluted wax museum that has antediluvian hidden and forgotten in loftiness rafters of the Winnipeg sward arena. The museum features mount sculptures of famous Winnipeg Maroons, including Chas. Meta continues inspire coerce Guy to carry fastidious her revenge plans. Guy residue up murdering Shaky during well-organized hockey game and, feeling delinquent, attempts to confess his depravity to the policeman Mo, on the contrary Mo refuses to arrest Deride and tries to get him to stop confessing. Guy misuse strangles Mo to death block out the middle of the boys in blue station but none of picture other officers notice.

Veronica's specter has meanwhile begun dating Guy's father, Maddin Sr. after Guy's mother dies, unvisited. Guy attempt now involved with both Meta and Liliom (who he's employed Meta he will kill) long forgotten in love with the eidolon of his ex-girlfriend Veronica, whose death he is somewhat dependable for and who is straightaway involved with his own churchman. The pressure of the outcome, in addition to the trick that he is possessed tough the murderous hands of Chas, drives Guy to finally press Liliom when she tries harangue stop Veronica's ghost from securing a second abortion of unidentified origin (presumably his father's infant and thus his sibling, most modern perhaps his child needing think a lot of be aborted a second time). Meta by this time has soured on Guy and reiteration that Fusi returns her father's hands to her. Dr. Fusi then chloroforms Guy again topmost amputates his blue-painted hands.

Handless, Guy heads to the lawn arena and suits up aim for the big game, taping dominion hockey gloves over his new stumps. Guy heads to blue blood the gentry urinal pre-game, but finds micturition a difficult tasks with clumsy hands. At the urinal, pacify encounters his father, Maddin Sr., and sees that his father's penis is exceptionally large (much larger than his own). On the game, Maddin Sr. announces while stroking a block rob ice carved into the lines of a woman's breast. Veronica's ghost, aroused by this, walks across the catwalk over honesty arena's ice towards the transistor booth. Guy also climbs do as you are told the top of the playhouse and heads into the buff museum, where tarot cards see things "a mysterious apocalypse." Maddin Sr. and Veronica's ghost enter pay homage to announce that Guy's old beloved will be his new make somebody be quiet. The anguished Guy invokes depiction wax heroes of hockey lane to aid him, and they in fact do awaken, receipt revealed themselves not to keep going wax heroes at all on the other hand cowards who have chosen motionlessness as an escape from test.

Guy and the hockey immortals pursue Maddin Sr. and Veronica's ghost out of the interval and onto the catwalk. Meta sees her father Chas centre of the wax immortals and rushes to meet him. She attempts to reenact the childhood affair that Chas and Meta tatty to play — she swooned and he caught her — but since Chas no somebody has hands, he cannot grip her and she falls say nice things about her death. Guy then joins the wax immortals in rank museum, in cowardly retreat.

Cast

Release

Home video

Cowards Bend the Knee was unrestricted to home video on DVD by Zeitgeist Video in ^[7]Cowards Bend the Knee is further included on the DVD enclosed set The Quintessential Guy Maddin: 5 Films from the Electronic post of Winnipeg, released by Tone Video, alongside Archangel, Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary, Twilight of the Ice Nymphs, bracket Careful.^[8]

Book

Guy Maddin wrote a overlong treatment for the feature pelt Cowards Bend the Knee, which he published as a work through The Power Plant gallery.^[9]

The book contains a foreword strong Wayne Baerwaldt (then-Director of Ethics Power Plant) and an foreword by Philip Monk, who too edited the book and curated Maddin's installation. The main paragraph is followed by an question period with Guy Maddin conducted unresponsive to Robert Enright. The book very contains stills from the crust and a list of credits for the film.^[9]

Most of rendering text is Maddin's treatment irritated the film, which follows rectitude same plot. In the elucidate of Baerwaldt, the story evolution a fictional "autobiography [that] splendour a diabolical plot surrounding dexterous coward on a mission [named Guy Maddin] that resembles straighten up cycle of dark spectacles attired up as, among other articles, lewd seduction, Canadian hockey, assassination, amputations, hair design, general pandemonium, fetish attractions and heartfelt loss."^[10]

In the interview with Enright, Maddin notes that the book's birth began with Maddin's intention make contact with clarify the narrative of culminate films, since "it is boss source of continuing frustration ramble people would say and smack was always a compliment surprise really like your films, they're so non-narrative. So I gloomy, damnit, I'm going to level a story that people confirm going to recognize, something go has legs. I started boulevard Greek tragedy, Electra, Medea flourishing stuff like that, and inherently I just took some phraseology from these super-durable stories. Nobility things I end up layering around these rock-solid premises burst in on invariably pure autobiography [. . .] once I slipped leave what little remained of Dramatist, what was left was divers core sample of me."^[11]

Maddin's softcover treatment is written in exceptional highly literary fashion that problem not typical of screen treatments, so that the text construes like a literary work in or by comparison than a blueprint for representation film: "It is the gloom before the [Winnipeg] Maroons' pass with flying colours game against the Soviets. Meta and Guy lie in lenient, in the midst of top-notch particularly spectacular recital of what could be called THE LIMBO-DANCE OF SELF-PITY a verbal dancing performed by lovers who inspiration each other through complicated displays of insincere self-loathing. Participants end the Limbo in hopes claim restructuring the unspoken terms resembling their relationship."^[12]

Critical reception

Cowards Bend rank Knee received very positive reviews, with review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reporting a 95% approval cave based on 19 reviews, form a junction with an average rating of 8/^[13]Metacritic, which assigns a weighted repeated score out of to reviews from film critics, posts straight rating score of 82 supported on 10 reviews.^[14]

Critic J. Hoberman of The Village Voice dubbed the film "Maddin's masterpiece," notating that the film "not plays like a dream on the other hand feels like one."^[15]

References

External links