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10 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
Brilliant, distinctive, utterly original!, 11 June 2004
10/10
Author: F Gwynplaine MacIntyre (Borroloola@earthlink.net) from Minffordd, North Wales

Guy Maddin is the most brilliant film-maker working today! If there's somebody better, that person must be labouring in obscurity. Maddin is strongly influenced by the disciplines of silent film, but his vision is unique, distinctive, and utterly original.

'The Heart of the World' could easily have been a throwaway film, given the circumstance of its origin. The Toronto Film Festival commissioned Maddin to make a brief film to fill a gap in their programming schedule. A mere time-passer. What Maddin gave them was utterly unexpected.

Maddin uses large-grain film stock and Klieg-style lighting techniques to replicate the look of silent film. Maddin's production design (costumes, makeup, hairstyling) impeccably recreates the images of that period. It's easy to believe that 'Heart of the World' is actually compiled from old UFA out-takes, circa 1925. Only just occasionally does Maddin's grasp on the 1920s show the joins, and then those lapses are probably intentional.

'The Hearts of the World' depicts the rivalry of two brothers. Nikolai is an idealist engineer. Osip is playing Jesus Christ in a passion play, and seems to have developed a genuine messiah complex. Amusingly, Osip does his Jesus routine whilst toting a cross made from metal girders ... an Art Deco crucifixion!

The brothers vie for the love of Anna, a beautiful scientist who has built a device which enables her to gaze into the Earth's core, literally the heart of the world. Meanwhile, a bloated plutocrat named Akmatov lusts for Anna. All of this is explained in silent-film titles, in a 1920s typeface that looks vaguely Cyrillic. The actors employ authentic silent-film acting techniques while resisting the temptation to 'guy' those methods or exaggerate them. The only lapse occurs when Anna suddenly vibrates her eyes back and forth while attempting to choose between the two brothers. This seems to be Maddin's intentional parody of silent-film acting. For the rest of the film, his homage to the past is sincere.

I spent a delightful six minutes trying to spot all the references and influences in this movie. Maddin is clearly influenced by 'Metropolis' (my favourite film), but I also spotted the influences of 'Aelita', 'Vampyr', 'Potemkin' and 'Haxan' in this frenzied melange. This is not to accuse Maddin of plagiarism. He displays his influences openly, using them as a foundation for a vision uniquely his own. It's refreshing to see a 21st-century filmmaker who acknowledges a debt to silent films, in an industry filled with Tarantino wanna-bes and counterfeit Hitchcocks.

'The Heart of the World' is one of the most distinctive, exciting and exhilarating movies I have ever seen. No doubt of it: I rate this movie 10 out of 10, and I look forward to more work by this filmmaker whose work is at once utterly alien yet enticingly accessible.

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8 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
The most Intense and disturbing, 3 September 2004
10/10
Author: Rocco P. Basilica from Colchester, Connecticut

6 minutes of my movie viewing life. I was amazed at the emotional impact of this short, the music, editing, visuals and subject matter all combine to make this a masterpiece of cinema...and it is a black and white, silent film at that. Just as satisfying as INTOLERANCE. To some and maybe the casual viewer this may come across as a cheap and quickly thrown together film, but with repeated viewings, you can see the care and time that Maddin lavished on this production, the pace is frantic and actually leaves you gasping for breath...and thinking what did I just see! A highly recommended film and one to include in a library of important and significant works of art cinema.

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9 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
Pumping, 17 July 2006
Author: tedg (tedg@FilmsFolded.com) from Virginia Beach

There aren't many artists who are also filmmakers. I suppose part of the problem is that there just aren't that many true artists, never were. I'm talking about people who know the limits of the world, have the tools and commitment to go there and gather magical shards, then come back and use them to cut my tethers.

I'm talking about neither skillful entertainment nor novel decorators of ordinary ideas.

And there are vastly fewer artists making films. Real artists, real films. I have three living that I particularly value: Medem, Wong, Greenaway. But Greenaway is off experimenting in other media at the moment and may be lost, his two greatest collaborators gone and interest in the drugs of narrative waning. I may replace him with Maddin.

It isn't just that the man has an incredible facility with a broader cinematic vocabulary than others. Its that he is able to connect that intuitively to deeper adventures in being and the internal stays that keep our emotional skin from collapsing.

Now to my mind, there's a world of difference between mastering the short form in film — which this is — and the long form. The long form is required for soulchange. It just takes that long for our minds to encircle themselves to strangle the unwanted. But holy cow, what a short form project this is. Since this, I know only two Maddin projects: "Saddest" and "Dracula," and each of them are something I would get my best friend out of bed and travel across the state to see.

This probably won't stick because it is so brief. But it is such rush! Every element in it has either no floor or sits on poles so high you can't see down. His stories are all similar, but no matter because they are irrational, overloaded with contradiction, self-destructive and yet cartoonish. They are — like his images — apparently borrowed from the past and simply pasted, like a child's assembly of magazine photos.

But nothing is borrowed, really. All his ethers are wholly called from his own dreams and merely and loosely wear somewhat familiar costumes.

The main deal here is conflict between a man who is a mortician/military politician (with a penis-cannon) and his brother, an actor who plays Christ deeply enough to convince himself. The two vie for sex with the planet — there's an amazing segment you won't forget where the woman-world in question impregnates herself, and bears... guess.

Cinema! Usually I comment on how clever the folding in a film is. In this case, the folding of the Christ-play is a weapon that is used against the woman in the name of wooing her. Just that one, that one notion is enough to advise you not to miss this.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

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7 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
6 fast minutes, 28 January 2004
9/10
Author: anthrakas

This movie tells more in 6 minutes than a feature film. The fast action and the style, the music, the narrative stays in your mind, it accompanies you for days! You wonder if you can stop blinking for the duration of the film in case you manage to take in more and more!

I am about to go and watch it again, yes! and I can't wait!

I'll write no more, don't want to spoil it for you...

KINO KINO KINO

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3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Exceptionally well done but not exactly a fun ride, 12 March 2008
7/10
Author: planktonrules from Bradenton, Florida

This film is very well made and I was impressed by much of it. However, I would assume that at least 95% of the public would hate the film if they saw it--probably even more! That's because all the bizarre and surrealistic elements make a lot of sense to a film historian or someone who loves German or Soviet silent Expressionistic film--so this makes for a very narrow audience indeed!! THE HEART OF THE WORLD appears as if it were made in the 1920s and at first I thought it was made from clips from old movies. However, instead I soon realized that the film actually was imitating such films as METROPOLIS, THE CABINET OF CALIGARI, NOSFERATU, ZEMLYA and even THE KING OF KINGS (among others)--with a very strong emphasis on METROPOLIS. There were also some amazingly unusual phallic images interspersed throughout the film that made me laugh. This, combined with an appropriately stirring and bizarre musical score made for a very skilled picture indeed.

The problem with this film, though, is that even if the work shows great skill, who is going to watch it? I understood the film and psychological references and could appreciate it...but I also didn't particularly enjoy it and would hate a steady diet of this sort of filming. It's probably only of interest to a small and select few.

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3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Fantastically Furious!!, 30 July 2002
10/10
Author: (ohthree-1) from NY, NY

The first time I saw this movie end, I knew I had to immediately watch it again. It moves so fast that you only get tantalizing hints of what actually happens with the first viewing, so you want to watch it again and again. The cinematography is nothing short of amazing, with homages to film greats and displaying visionary originality that earned it a top spot in so many critic's Top 10's.

Everything about this film, from the grainy textures to the the set and costumes, reflects Maddin's unstoppable freight train of weird and cool. Strong casting choices also made the movie much more than your average short, proving that five and a half minutes is plenty of time to tell an intricate and beautiful story. This will be a hard one to knock out of MY Top 5. Watch, rinse, repeat.

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4 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
Kino-therapy.., 27 February 2007
9/10
Author: nikhil7179 from India

Equal parts German Expressionism and Russian Agit-prop, Heart of the World is a six minute epic of Biblical proportions.

Maddin's usual idiosyncrasies resurface - Scandinavian Love triangle Melodrama amidst impending social catastrophe.

Being from the Tarkovskian school of thought, an ASL (average shot length) of under 2 seconds would normally be scoffed at, but an exception will have to be made in this case, as the rapid-cutting is truly elevated to an art form here.

The music is appropriately over-the-top and compliments the film perfectly.

One of the wittiest, most inventive short films ever.

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2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
Amazing; one of the most radical and imaginative short films that I've ever seen, 26 June 2008
Author: Graham Greene from United Kingdom

Pure fantasia, a race to save the world from a fatal heart attack, juxtaposed against a love rivalry between two brothers - a mortician and an actor playing Christ - for the heart of a scientist studying the earth's core. Whether or not there's any kind of deeper interpretation is hard to tell, with the film racing along in an almost stream-of-consciousness approach, as expressionist cinema conventions are cast against elements of Soviet propaganda films in Maddin's typically exciting and an anachronistic style. Although vague and enigmatic, there is a definite story here; one that is relatively easy to follow if we pay close attention to the incredibly quick cuts and barrage of on-screen information, as references to Metropolis (1927) and Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864) are combined with the director's intuitive sense of visual abstraction, humour and satire, whilst also featuring an almost heartfelt approach to its characters, even in such an exceedingly short-form.

At this point in time, I'm still something of novice to the films of Guy Maddin, though I have seen the vast majority of his short films and would rate them from good to excellent. Like the rest, The Heart of the World (2000) is worth watching more than once in order to pick up all of the information being offered to us in the continual bombardment of overwhelming and fascinating imagery and fragments of captivating narrative, whilst also standing as a simply astounding piece of film-making in the most basic sense. A masterful combination of wit, imagination, style, content and pure cinematic ability, in which the saviour of the world turns out to be none other than cinema itself.

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3 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
Fascinating, poetic and extremely intense art.....!!!!, 19 April 2001
9/10
Author: Herr Nosferatu from Canada

I saw this film on TV, and perhaps it wasn't the best medium to do so...

But, nonetheless, I was shocked and thrilled about this film...

The tone reminded me of Fritz Lang's opus, Metropolis.

The speeding music hits the viewers like a freight train... Rigorously brought on screen with the strong visual sequences..

This is truly what art stands for...

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1 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
Guy Maddin: Genius, Auteur, Artist, 21 November 2009
10/10
Author: Matt McGraw (Team_Laurent) from Tallahassee, Florida, United States

A film that was not even supposed to be. A six minute short commissioned by the Toronto International Film Festival to kill time in between screenings of bigger, longer, more 'important' films. Against all possible odds, Canadian auteur Guy Maddin crafted a masterpiece that is at once moving, tragic, and hilarious. Maddin modeled the film after 1920s silent film. The time period is so painstakingly recreated that one could easily believe this is an actual film from the mid-'20s. From the hairstyles to the large-grain film stock, every last detail perfectly replicates the distinct style of the 1920s.

The film moves at a rapid pace, with an average of two shots per second. The pacing is intensified all the more by the background music, Georgy Sviridov's Time, Forward!. It tells the story of a female scientist, Anna, who studies the earth's core, the very heart of the world. Anna is torn between two lovers, the rival brothers Nikolai, a mortician, and Osip, an actor portraying Christ in a Passion play. Nikolai is something of an intellectual, an idealist. Osip takes his role so seriously that he has literally developed a Messiah Complex. Anna learns that the world is in danger, and that she must choose one of the brothers. Distraught by this, Anna opts for a dark horse, the gluttonous industrialist Akmatov. Anna is drawn to Akmatov because of his wealth, and because of the fact that choosing him prevents her from having to decide between the two brothers. As a result, the world suffers a massive heart attack. This is brilliantly realized with Maddin's skill for lightning-fast pacing and sincere devotion to authentic 1920s film styles. Anna realizes the fatal mistake she has made. She murders Akmatov and ventures down into the earth's core. Anna decides to replace the failed heart with her own. What happens next, which I will not spoil, is truly remarkable.

Maddin is one of the strongest, most distinctive voices in contemporary cinema. Here is a 21st century filmmaker, making films in the style of the 1920s. He stands out radically as a true visionary in a cinematic period filled with so many remakes, clichés, and stupid blockbusters. Guy Maddin is clearly has an unrivaled passion for the art of film.

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