Twilight of the Ice Nymphs (1997)

Director:

Guy Maddin

Writer:

George Toles (writer)

Release Date:

10 April 1998 (UK)

Genre:

Fantasy

Plot Keywords:

Female Nudity | Bizarre | Dream Like | Surrealism | Love

Cast

Pascale Bussières	...	Juliana Kossel (as Pascale Bussiéres)
Shelley Duvall	...	Amelia Glahn
Frank Gorshin	...	Cain Ball
Alice Krige	...	Zephyr Eccles
R.H. Thomson	...	Dr. Issac Solti
Ross McMillan	...	Matthew Eccles / Voice of Peter Glahn
Frank Kowalski	...	Man in Black
Breanne Dowhan	...	Baby

Runtime:

91 min

Country:

Canada

Language:

English

Colour:

Colour

Sound Mix:

Ultra Stereo

Filming Locations:

Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Company:

Marble Island Pictures

Quotes:

Dr. Issac Solti: Someday, she may shock you, as she did me with the tale of her parents. Her father never met her mother - he was hanged before he had the opportunity. A twisted man of science called Heisler collected the sperm that Julianna's proud papa ejaculated on the gallows when his windpipe snapped. And soon after, Heisler artificially inseminated a hardened prostitute named Vilma, who was apparently willing to try anything once.

Movie Connections:

References Olympia 1. Teil - Fest der Völker (1938)

A Midnight-sliced Pomegranate

There's a blood vessel that pumps between the selves we drive through the day and the incubus we nourish, a creative self (perhaps cocreated by a love), relatively unconstrained, who we promise ourselves we will birth some day.

The most sublime art is what we imagine that young, more unfettered mind imagines. Its why we live, a large part of it, I think.

This is the domain Maddin has decided to explore. Its a sort of Joycean commitment, a raw commitment to dreams less shaped than usual by borrowed items and fed by distilled urges in blood. Small surprise that these don't fully resonate; its supposed to be strange, strange in disturbing ways.

I like the fact that this goes on too long. It has to go on long enough to plainly state that you are not a tourist, instead you've unknowingly entered something you can never really leave.

In its general shape, it is "The Tempest" meets the "Sarrogossa Manuscript" visually flavored by Max Parrish.

It has dreams within dreams and as they shift different controlling or dreaming minds move to the foreground, even a statue (us). There are sexual enchantments, shifting from honesty and deceit, knowing and manipulated. There's a Prospero and a Miranda, a Bloom/hunter who dreamhunts.

I think if you are serious about self, then you will be about film and that will lead you to Maddin and eventually to this. It isn't his most virile vision, but you can sure see what's going on. And that's worth something.

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