The Saddest Music in the World is a 2003 Canadian film directed by Guy Maddin, starring Isabella Rossellini and Mark McKinney. The film was loosely adapted from an original screenplay by Kazuo Ishiguro, though only the title and the basic conceit were retained. It is the most expensive film of Maddin's career (with a budget of $3.8 million, quite lavish by Canadian standards), and with an All-Star Cast, was his highest-profile film, with his leading lady even doing press to promote it.
Set in Winnipeg during The Great Depression, a legless baroness host a contest for the saddest music in the world, with a grand prize of $25,000. During the assembly of contestants a father and his two sons; one who thinks he's an American, one who is succumbing to madness over the death of his son and his ex-lovers nymphomaniac tendencies and the father a pathetic drunkard who fucks everything up. Their unique dynamics with the beer-baroness and tragedy bring these characters together to express their deep feelings of pain and give in to treachery.
This film marked the beginning of a years-long collaborative partnership between Maddin and Rossellini, who made several more films together.
This film provides examples of:
- An Arm and a Leg: Helen, who lost her legs in a car accident.
- Bookends: The Fortune Teller from the beginning is shown again laughing at Chester's demise in the final scene.
- Chekhov M.I.A.: Roderick asks his father if he has seen his missing wife and sure enough she turns out to be Chester's current lover.
- Combat Commentator: The two commentators at the music contest.
- Convection, Schmonvection: Chester has no problem playing the piano sitting in a room on fire.
- Creator Thumbprint: Winnipeg (Guy Maddin's hometome) as a setting.
- Crystal Ball: In the opening scene the Fortune Teller uses a block of ice as a crystal ball.
- Deliberately Monochrome: The movie was shot on black and white film to made it appear 1920/30-ish.
- Empty Shell: Roderick. He never recovered from having gone through a Despair Event Horizon after his son died and his wife left in the aftermath.
- Evil Laughter: The Fortune Teller laughs this way at Chester in the beginning and the end.
- Glass-Shattering Sound: Roderick creates a high pitched sound with his cello that makes Helen's glass legs break.
- Global Ignorance: One title card announces "Canada versus Africa".
- Green-Eyed Monster: Roderick, seeing his wife with Chester.
- Liquid Courage: Fyodor Kent takes a nip from his flask before sawing off Helen's (wrong) leg.
- Missing Mom: Minor plot point. In a flashback at the Fortune Teller's we learn that Chester's mom died when he was still a child.
- Motifs: Death and intense emotions seem to coincide with the breaking of glass. The jar holding the son's heart breaking, the father breaking through a pane of glass and falling to his death/drowns in beer, the legs breaking, Chester being stabbed by a shard of glass.
- Pardon Me Stewardess, I Speak Iambic Pentameter: The title "The Saddest Music in the World" is an example of iambic tetrameter (four feet, each going from an unstressed syllable to stressed).
- Retraux: The "silent film" look is Guy Maddin's Creator Thumbprint.
- Right Through the Wall: Fyodor and Roderick walk in to hear Chester making loud sex noises while getting it on with Narcissa upstairs.
- Soft Water: Averted. Fyodor dies falling through the glass roof into the beer pool.
- Still Wearing the Old Colors: Fyodor still wears his uniform from the great war.
- Time-Compression Montage: The passage of the music contest is compressed in a couple of key shots juxtaposed with music sheets as Spinning Papers.
- Trash the Set: Fyodor trashes his studio towards the end out of frustration.
