What to Stream: Isabella Rossellini Hears 'The Saddest Music in the World'
The Saddest Music in the World (2003) Amazon Instant, iTunes
The Basics: A dark musical comedy set in the Prohibition era, starring Isabella Rossellini and Kids in the Hall's Mark McKinney; directed by Guy Maddin
If You Liked: The Artist and The Grand Budapest Hotel
The Nugget: A Canadian beer heiress hosts an international song contest to find the saddest music in the world in this otherworldly period film with an old-time cinematic look.
If you haven’t yet experienced the strange, incomparable universe of Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin, his 2003 musical comedy is an excellent entry point. It’s 1933, in the depths of the Great Depression, and Winnipeg has just been named “the world capital of sorrow” for the fourth year in a row by the London Times. A local beer heiress (Isabella Rossellini) seizes the moment and announces a radio contest to find the saddest music in the world — a publicity stunt to promote her Muskeg Beer just as Prohibition is ending in the U.S. (“If you’re sad and you like beer, I’m your lady.”) Among the contestants to take up her woeful challenge: a failed Broadway producer (McKinney) who’s pathologically unable to experience sadness, and his dour, cello-playing brother who very much is. Part melodrama, part sly critique of entertainment itself, Saddest Music unfolds in a hazy black-and-white like something distantly remembered but still alive with weird and woolly emotions.
Photo credit: @Everett Collection
