The Saddest Music in the World is set in Winnipeg in the depths of the Depression, and spins a captivatingly comic tale of lust, love, loss and beer.
When beer baroness, Lady Port-Huntly (Isabella Rossellini) announces a global competition to determine the saddest music in the world, musicians from across the globe pour into Winnipeg to vie for the whopping $25,000 prize. Sobbing Mexican Mariachis, dour Scottish Bagpipers, woeful West African drummers and numerous other grief-stricken ensembles all compete while the world listens on radio.
Against this preposterously droll backdrop, the Kent family confronts the wretched secrets of their past while locked in the competition for this greatest of prizes. Younger brother Chester, the cynical and failed Broadway producer, is ready to mesmerize all with a little Yankee Doodle razzle-dazzle hanky honker. Older brother Roderick (Ross McMillan), a cellist who has returned from post-war Serbia (a country suitably cheerless for him), […]
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The Saddest Music in the World is set in Winnipeg in the depths of the Depression, and spins a captivatingly comic tale of lust, love, loss and beer.
When beer baroness, Lady Port-Huntly (Isabella Rossellini) announces a global competition to determine the saddest music in the world, musicians from across the globe pour into Winnipeg to vie for the whopping $25,000 prize. Sobbing Mexican Mariachis, dour Scottish Bagpipers, woeful West African drummers and numerous other grief-stricken ensembles all compete while the world listens on radio.
Against this preposterously droll backdrop, the Kent family confronts the wretched secrets of their past while locked in the competition for this greatest of prizes. Younger brother Chester, the cynical and failed Broadway producer, is ready to mesmerize all with a little Yankee Doodle razzle-dazzle hanky honker. Older brother Roderick (Ross McMillan), a cellist who has returned from post-war Serbia (a country suitably cheerless for him), is inconsolable over the disappearance of his beloved wife. Their despairing father Fyodor (David Fox) is tormented with guilt over the accidental amputation of the legs (one leg was intentional) of his one truelove, Lady Port-Huntly. To complicate matters further, enter the dark angel Narcissa (Maria de Medeiros), an otherworldly nymphomaniac sleepwalker who has become Chester’s latest companion and muse.
Visually striking and dreadfully funny, THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD will be filmed in the style of the golden age of musical melodramas, under the unique and inimitable direction of Guy Maddin. Maddin co-wrote the screenplay with his long-time collaborator George Toles (Careful, Twilight of the Ice Nymphs). Their work was based on an original screenplay by Kazuo Ishiguro, the Booker Prize winning author of Remains of the Day.
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