The Saddest Music In The World, if nothing else, answers the question, "what would a David Lynch movie have been like if he had worked in the 1930s?" This is not a film that I would recommend to any but the most hard-core art-house buffs, but having said as much Canadian director Guy Maddin has fashioned an interesting pastiche of thinly-veiled anti-American propaganda and visually dizzying imagery from the past.

The Saddest Music In The World is presented in grainy/glossy black and white (except during funeral sequences where color is used) which accentuates it's mesmerizing Metropolis meets Busby Berkely art design. Both lead actresses Isabella Rossellini and Maria de Madeiros possess features common to actresses in the silent film era and interestingly comedian Mark McKinney looks the part as a Preston Sturgess-esque Broadway producer returning to his native Winnepeg in order to cash-in on his ex-girlfriend's good fortune.

The story has been resurrected by Maddin and Greg Toles from an old screenplay by Remains of the Day scribe Kazuo Ishiguro, is set in depression-era Winnepeg and revolves around a "Saddest Music in the World" contest cooked up by a Canadian beer baroness Lady Helen Port-Huntley (Rossellini) in hopes of capitalizing on the end of prohibition. By inviting the world to her brewery under the auspices of this competition, she contrives to get a keg-up on the competition when prohibition is abolished. Underscoring this is the personal story of Port-Huntley's romantic past that includes losing both of her legs in a botched amputation. At the time of her amputation she was in a relationship with (war-veteran turned physician - David Fox) who is the father of McKinney's character (also present at the car accident that trapped Rosselllini under her car.) The alcoholic doctor, crashes the car and then insists on performing the amputation so intoxicated that he cuts off the wrong leg first, before severing the leg that held her trapped under the vehicle. Since the accident Fox has pined for the affection of his lost love, spending his hours inventing prosthetic legs to woo her back.

Not only is there a love triangle between Rosselllini, Fox and McKinney, but when we meet McKinney he is in a relationship with his brother's missing wife (Maria de Madeiros). The other brother is the favored son - a world-class cellist who escaped his troubled family by immigrating to Serbia - and his return is met with jubilation by the father but cold skepticism by McKinney. All of this is played with the most farcical touch imaginable. The family home looks like a storage unit for an antique store and the cellist/brother (Ross McMillan) is a piece of work who now goes by the title of "Gavrillo the Great," a hypochondriacal nut who must wear veils to protect his rare skin condition and who is beyond morose as the cuckolded husband of a wife gone missing after the death of their son. For McKinney's part he steals his father's latest attempt to win back the affection of Rosselllini - a pair of glass legs filled with beer.

The film is a study in satire, parody and the absolute absurd which holds the viewer by virtue of it's stunning visuals and political metaphor. McKinney's representation of America as an opportunist rube, who contrives to win the contest by appropriating the sadness of the rest of the world into an ostentatious show where bombast passes for sorrow and power (even false power) trumps all, is the chief point the director is trying to get across. I certainly wouldn't profess to understand everything that Maddin is attempting to do with this film, but it's creepy tone and compelling visuals are enough to recommend it to hard-core indie film lovers looking for a challenge.