The Movie: The Twentieth Century
The Director: Matthew Rankin
The Cast: Dan Beirne, Sarianne Cormier, Catherine St-Laurent , Mikhaïl Ahooja, Brent Skagford, Seán Cullen, Louis Nigen, Trevor Anderson, Kee Chan
The Story: Determined to become the leader of the Dominion of Canada, a young W.L. Mackenzie King rises to power.
The Review:
This is such a strange film filled with outlandish scenarios, off the rails artistry, gender bending characters and, most oddly enough is based on a true story. Before watching this movie, I had no idea who former Canadian prime minister Mackenzie King was so I'm not sure how any of the movie follows his life and/or political career. It seems to be a non stop express train through fantastical farce and political parody.
While the first half of the movie is wildly entertaining and endlessly comical, I think that without an understanding of the realities that are being poked at, skewed, and made fun of, the story loses a lot of steam. I'm honestly not quite sure what this movie is trying to accomplish although it does a fine job at showing off the perversities and outright corruption of politics and politicians. Unfortunately, I think we may have already had out fill of that in real life to have any appetite for it in a film like this.
I will give director Matthew Rankin a lot of credit for holding nothing back when it came to his vision of what he wanted to create. From a filmmaking perspective, the movie is a very interesting and somewhat entertaining achievement thanks to the seemingly endless supply of creativity that went into it.
No comments :
Post a Comment