Customer Reviews

Careful [VHS]

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I'll never forget the first time I saw a Guy Maddin film--it was "Tales from Gimli Hospital." When it ended I sat quietly for a few moments and just muttered "Holy Cow" over and over. "Gimli" is an early and very low budget effort. "Careful" shows Guy nearing a peak that hopefully will go on for a few more decades.

Guy somehow (and miraculously) manages to sum up the entire history of cinema in his work. While there's much chatter about his obvious retro style, few have noticed his nods to Godard and more recent filmmakers. He may seem to mimic early films with missing frames and soundtrack problems but these "affectations" are ultimately as expressive as the equivalent jump cuts and soundtrack dropouts in Godard's "Alphaville." They're richer too because of the inevitable multiple associations. His amazing short, "Heart of the World" (one of the best shorts I've ever seen) owes as much to modern MTV editing styles as it does to early Soviet cinema (and creates a bridge and dialogue between two seemingly unrelated creative eras). Guy's not an artsy filmmaker, he's just a "guy" who loves movies passionately and works, unselfconsciously, with film's full lexicon.

"Careful" is a beautiful (often breathtakingly gorgeous), complex, unique, and very funny film. He's made a disturbing comedy about tragic and sensitive issues or maybe a tragedy about comic issues--there's something almost Shakespearean about his output. He also has a knack for getting memorable performances from his actors.

No this film isn't for everyone--right now at least--but I'm convinced we are currently witnessing the appearance of one of film's truly great creative geniuses. His films make one realize how stunningly shallow so many modern movies are, overburdened with flashy technologies like CGI, mandatory pop-cultural references, pretty people, and consumerism. His output is also a challenge to the equally bankrupt "underground" or "counter-culture." By avoiding every modern cliché, trend, anti-trend, technology, anti-technology, and pretense in his work he's giving us, in this film and others, timeless and (a rare thing these days) sublime works that are, even after all this lofty commentary, still pretty damned funny!

When I first saw this film at a special screening at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the host described Guy Maddin as "Winnipeg's answer to David Lynch... that is, if David Lynch were as good as Guy Maddin." The praise might be just: there are lovely dreamlike effects in Maddin's film (especially this, one of his best) which are like nothing David Lynch ever achieved.

CAREFUL is a tribute to the great bergenfilms of the Weimar Republic, and is filmed with the same kinds of filmic effects and film stock as those lovely little hallucinations of the silent era. The film is largely about the joys of repression, and what disasters can be brought about without it. If you think I'm being facetious, you're wrong: in Maddin's deliriously offkilter Expressionist universe, every act of curiosity is sure to kill a cat, and everyone else besides.(the film's prologue, which explains all this, is one of the funniest things I've ever seen: "Careful, don't touch that pot!") Maddin's muse, the very gifted Kyle McCulloch, is on-hand as usual. This film can't be explained, but it also shouldn't be missed.

This was the movie that introduced me to Guy Maddin. Guy Maddin is an acquired taste, like David Lynch or Alejandro Jodorowsky. I feel I have to defend the director from anyone who watches a film of his and can't be it because it is "weird". It is supposed to be that way. He makes movies in a futuristic Victorian way. I don't think he will ever have a large audience because of this. But I love his work, like I love Lynch or Jodorowsky. It's surreal, it's filmed like it's a film from the early 1900's, either in sepia, black and white or colored in sort of color.

Careful, is a pseudo-Victorian tale about, well, being careful, which means being repressed. Maddin takes the modern way of looking at things and adds them into this sort of moral tale. It's well acted, the colors are beautiful, I remember the color in the scene where they are riding across the sky very well done.

I would say if you only like normal films, like action and typical romantic comedies, you should probably steer clear of anything Maddin does. But if you like challenging film, you should watch this at least a few times. LEt it sink in. I feel Guy Maddin is a genius and one of my favorite directors, but I also love Rasputina and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which have the same steampunk sensibilities.

If you love early George Arliss films (EARLY George Arliss films), you'll love Guy Maddin's works. He revels in chemical fades, Vitaphone surface noise and the limits of Orthochrome - even though his films are in a sort-of hand-tinted-postcard-color. His is a dry wit-like nitrate stock turning to powder...

Will wonders never cease? Here is a DVD that I never thought I'd see. Guy Maddin's brilliant and hilarious (particularly for early film buffs) `Careful.' The plot and style of this film have been well explained by other commentaries on this page and elsewhere, so there's no need to go over it again. My favorite comment about it is that it is like a Ricola ad gone horribly, horribly wrong. Suffice it to say that the DVD is an improvement in image quality. While many of the images are intentionally vague, grainy or indistinct by the choice of the filmmakers, I get the impression that these effects are more clearly conveyed in the DVD. In a spoken commentary track with Maddin and screenwriter George Toles (new to this DVD, and obviously not possible on the VHS edition), Maddin admits that he wanted to add an effect through use of the color controls during the digital transfer, but resisted that temptation in order to let this DVD stand as a faithful representation of the film. While the effect he had in mind might have been interesting, I'm still grateful to him for his restraint.

Maddin claims in his commentary that people often obliquely criticize the performances of the actors in this film while, at the same time, telling him how much they like it, placing him in the position of defending those performances. Maddin states that he absolutely stands by the performances in this film, and that the actors gave him precisely what he asked for. This should dispel any doubts among people who see this film about the unusual, stiff delivery of lines, which might lead people who know nothing about the cast to suspect they are amateurs, which they are definitely not. This sort of line reading can be seen in some of the very earliest talkies. The antiquated sound of this film, along with its look, is all of a piece, and completely intentional, right down to the fake patina of noise added to the mono soundtrack. Maddin does regret some of the props and effects which had to be done on the cheap, due to budget restraints. Who knows how much more bizarre and fantastic it might have looked with a larger budget? On the other hand, it might have lost some of its unique charm. As it is, it's a wonderful piece of work that I find unforgettable, and that has remained vivid in my memory years after first seeing it. Copies of this DVD aren't to be found in abundance, and I don't know how long it will stay in print. If you like this film, do get this DVD now, and tell anyone you know who likes unusual films about it.

Near the end of the film, which hints at a continuation of the story, Maddin says that he may make that sequel some day. I don't know if he was serious about it or not, but I'd sure love to see it.

Easily one of the most distinctive and remarkable talents of the past two decades is the criminally little known Guy Maddin, a man obsessed with silent movies, early talkies, black and white images, twisted early memories and much more. He's made a string of utterly original films, ranging from operatic shorts that use Russian silent cinema as a touchstone to pseudo-documentaries about his own childhood. You simply can't go wrong with this guy if you're any sort of film buff. The Guy Maddin Collection ($34.99; Zeitgeist) contains two films -- Twilight of the Ice Nymphs and Archangel -- and that brilliant short, The Heart Of The World.) His most recent film My Winnipeg (2008) reenacts supposed scenes from his childhood like a fever dream. Dracula: Pages From A Virgin's Diary ($29.99; Zeitgeist) takes the Royal Winnipeg Ballet's production of the classic horror novel down the rabbit hole. I haven't mentioned several gems but perhaps the best introduction is Careful ($29.99; Zeitgeist) a "remastered and repressed" new edition of this movie about a village in the mountains in the 1800s. Everyone -- men, women, children and even creatures -- have to be utterly quiet for fear of starting an avalanche. With this absurd premise, Maddin revels in silent film techniques, beautiful tinting and sexual frenzy barely tamped down by society. It's devilishly clever and absorbing and comes with loads of extras like a new commentary by Maddin, a 1997 documentary about his career narrated by Tom Waits, a short film and more. Essential viewing.

When Maddin showed this homage to kitschy, proto-Nazi German "mountain films" (if you have no idea what I'm talking about, see Susan Sontag's essay "Fascinating Fascism) to their one-time star and later Nazi propogandist filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, she proclaimed it brilliant--high praise coming from a demented genius. Maddin is also a demented genius, though not of the same ilk as Reifenstahl. Maddin and regular screenwriting collaborator George Toles, the cerebral bad boys of Canadian cinema, are at their naughtiest and cheekiest here, paying tribute to racist kitsch, promoting repression, and playing with Freud's concept of family romance. Although after you see this movie you may need to re-think the concept of "bad boys"...

The film's homage to German expressionism has been widely noted, but Maddin and Toles, no typical film students, are also deeply versed in studio-era Hollywood melodrama (if you don't believe me, see Toles's book of film criticism, "A House Made of Light"), and there's an intriguing family melodrama here underneath the multiple layers of stylization, allusions to the history of cinema, and Maddin's quirky obsessions--with ritual, for example. In other words, it's not all a postmodern in-joke, so if you like your nihilism old-fashioned, based in the self-destructive human psyche--get it here.

This is Maddin's best feature film, in my opinion, because it has an hilarious and lucid premise from which the absurdist tragedy logically unfolds, which is also a brilliant psychological trope: in the isolated mountain village of Tolsbad (a metaphor for Canada, duh) the citizens must be careful not to raise their voices above a whisper or cause any other kind of disturbance for fear of causing an avalanche. After watching this film, if you have children or small siblings you may become disturbingly aware of how many times per hour in how many contexts you use the word "Careful!" Should be seen as a double-bill with Cronenberg's "Dead Ringers" for anyone who wants to understand the Canadian psyche--but then again, believe me, you don't.

I didn't know what to expect when I saw this film for the first time at an obsure Indy Film night at a small movie house. Upon first glance I thought it was quirky...but a little slow. For some reason I wasn't able to pull myself away. I was mezmerized as if in a quiet trance...my eyes glued to the screen, my heart racing with each disturbing scene as they unfolded to paint one of the most beautifully bizarre films I've seen.

I'm reluctant to recommend this film to too many people...not for the weak stomached...definately for the fan of the obscure.

If you ever want to own a work of art that has motion pictures this is the picture. Guy Madden, one of the most talented directors to come out of North America (that usually means Canada), pulls together a stilted, carefully directed plot of slightly insane characters who live in the most ungodly place on earth. The floor of their lives are literally about to drop out any moment during the film and your own mind and soul are only moments behind it during the entire narrative.

It's expensive but save your pennies as I don't think it could come any more highly recommended by someone who has seen a few too many films attempting to come close to this work.

Anyone not already acquainted with Guy Maddin's work can't possibly know what to expect when viewing this film for the first time. I had never heard of Maddin before, but I first saw it screened at a small art house, and I found it both fascinating and hilarious. Anyone with an affinity for old (ca. 1920s and 1930s) German expressionist films like Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari should like the cinematography. It beautifully replicates the cramped, claustrophobic, deeply-shadowed, artificial-looking, distorted and surreal settings of expressionist films (in color, yet). The soundtrack even has a fake layer of noise added, to bolster the illusion of an old film. It is also inspired by the so-called "mountain films" from Germany (see Riefensthal's "Blue Light," for example). The acting is also purposely stilted, artificial and stylized, to hilarious effect. The plot is a quagmire of tortuous, pseudo-Freudian hang-ups that seem to doom everyone to a tragic end. This may sound grim, but it's not meant to be taken seriously. This is definitely something different, if that's what you're looking for, and as I've said, anyone who likes expressionist films should love this, as familiarity with the old films makes this one even more funny. I do wish the tape would come down in price though. More people could then get to know this rare treat. While a DVD would be wonderful, I suppose it's unlikely.