The Forbidden Room (DVD)
THE FORBIDDEN ROOM is Guy Maddin's ultimate epic phantasmagoria. Honoring classic cinema while electrocuting it with energy, this Russian nesting doll of a film begins (after a prologue on how to take a bath) with the crew of a doomed submarine chewing flapjacks in a desperate attempt to breathe the oxygen within. Suddenly, impossibly, a lost woodsman wanders into their company and tells his tale of escaping from a fearsome clan of cave dwellers. From here, Maddin and co-director Evan Johnson take us high into the air, around the world, and into dreamscapes, spinning tales of amnesia, captivity, deception and murder, skeleton women and vampire bananas. Playing like some glorious meeting between Italo Calvino, Sergei Eisenstein and a perverted six year-old child, THE FORBIDDEN ROOM is Maddin's grand ode to lost cinema. Created with the help of master poet John Ashbery, the film features Mathieu Amalric, Udo Kier, Charlotte Rampling, Geraldine Chaplin, Roy Dupuis, Clara Furey, Louis Negin, Maria de Medeiros, Jacques Nolot, Adele Haenel, Amira Casar and Elina Lowensohn as a cavalcade of misfits, thieves and lovers, all joined in the joyful delirium of the kaleidoscopic viewing experience.
Audio Commentary with Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson, Booklet with essays by Guy Maddin and Hillary Weston, Endless Ectoloops, Living Posters, Once a Chicken, Trailer
- Evan Johnson - Director
- Guy Maddin - Director
- John Ashbery - Writer
- Robert Kotyk - Writer
- Evan Johnson - Writer
- Kim Morgan - Writer
- Guy Maddin - Writer
- Roy Dupuis - Actor
- Clara Furey - Actor
- Louis Negin - Actor
- Udo Kier - Actor
- Stéphanie Anne Weber Biron - Cinematographer
- Benjamin Kasulke - Cinematographer
- Galen Johnson - Composer
- Guy Maddin - Composer
- Jason Staczek - Composer
- Phyllis Laing - Producer
- Penny Mancuso - Producer
- Phoebe Greenberg - Producer
Reviews
"Defies logical explanation...a collection of scenes and movie cliches reworked with campy exaggeration and absurd, cartoonish twists...using a production design that favors ingenuity and creativity." *** Video Librarian
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