That’s why you cast me, wasn’t it?” says Cate Blanchett, addressing the Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin. He’d just relayed his mission statement: “I want my work to be both beautiful and stupid at the same time.”
Maddin is the quiet king of dreamlike fantasias that make David Lynch look sedate. In films such as My Winnipeg, The Forbidden Room and The Saddest Music in the World, he’s made a mockumentary about himself, riffed languorously on the memories of a moustache, and given Isabella Rossellini prosthetic legs filled with beer.
