From the diary of Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King a fictional drama of the political rise, love affairs and private drama. Matthew Rankin present his wonderful and prize worth first feature film at Berlinale 70.
The Twentieth Century is Matthew Rankin's first feature film, the film written and directed by Rankin is comic-drama. The film is a fictionalized portrait of the rise to power of former Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King as Dan Beirne.
The Canadian story is here transformed and re-proposed, mixing real elements with fictitious facts, in an adventurous journey that the protagonist Mackenzie King has to face. The sets and sets are deliberately unrealistically influenced by German expressionism, 1940s melodrama and war propaganda films. It has an almost Orwellian aesthetic and is also reminiscent of Guy Maddin's films.
Although most of the film's main characters are at least vaguely based on real protagonists of Canadian history, not all their careers are actually coexisted.
Mattew Rankin says that everything in the film is taken and reworked from Mackenzie King's diary. The story is described in the film as a nightmare that Mackenzie may have had in 1899. The film could also be seen as a satire of the overly serious way in which Canadian history is often presented in films and on television.
In addition, the film uses a cross-gender representation, with three significant characters (King's mother, J. Israël Tarte and Lady Violet). These are performances with a playful, school-like approach where anyone can play someone without necessarily linking the actor to their ethnic or gender profile.
Director and Screenplay: Matthew Rankin
Starring: Dan Beine, Catherine St-Laurent, Brent Skagford, Louis Negin
Country: Canada
Year: 2019
Duration: 90 min
ITA --->
The Twentieth Century è il primo lungometraggio di Matthew Rankin, il film scritto e diretto da Rankin è di genere comico-drammatico. La pellicola rappresenta in modo tutto artificioso un ritratto romanzato dell'ascesa al potere dell'ex primo ministro canadese William Lyon Mackenzie King nel ruolo di Dan Beirne.
La storia canadese viene qui trasformata e riproposta, mescolando elementi reali a fatti del tutto fittizzi, in un percorso avventuroso che il protagonista Mackenzie King deve affrontare. Le scenografie e i set sono deliberatamente irrealistici influenzati dall'espressionismo tedesco, dal melodramma degli anni '40 e dai film di propaganda bellica. Ha un estetica quasi Orwelliana e ricorda anche i film di Guy Maddin.
Anche se gran parte dei personaggi principali del film si basano almeno vagamente su veri e propri protagonisti della storia canadese, non tutte le loro carriere sono effettivamente coesistite.
Mattew Rankin afferma che tutto nel film è tratto e rielaborato dal diario di Mackenzie King. La vicenda viene nel film descritta come un incubo che Mackenzie potrebbe aver avuto nel 1899. Il film potrebbe essere viato anche come una satira sul modo eccessivamente serio in cui la storia canadese viene spesso presentata al cinema e alla televisione.
Inoltre il film si avvale di una rappresentazione cross-gender, con tre personaggi significativi (la madre di King's mother, J. Israël Tarte e Lady Violet). Si tratta d'interpretazioni con un approccio giocoso di tipo scolastico dove chiunque può interpretare qualcuno senza per forza collegare l’attore al suo profilo etnico o di genere.
Regia e Sceneggiatura: Matthew Rankin
Interpreti: Dan Beine, Catherine St-Laurent, Brent Skagford, Louis Negin
Paese: Canada
Anno: 2019
Durata: 90 min
If Guy Maddin’s films and the Monty Python movies had a child — which would be physically impossible, but who doesn’t love stretching a metaphor — it would be Matthew Rankin’s THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (2019, Criterion through month’s end). A fantasia on the diaries of Canada’s longest-serving prime minister, Mackenzie King (no, Stephen Harper’s reign just felt like the longest), the film is a mish mosh of Canadian history, making political rivals and colleagues of people who never competed or served together. At the urging of his mother (Louis Negin), King (Dan Beine) enters the contest to become prime minister. After excelling in events like ribbon cutting and baby-seal whacking, he comes in second, throwing his dreams into the ash bin, at least for the moment. Rankin stages the film on stylized sets, casts against race and gender and posits the unmarried King as a compulsive masturbator with a shoe fetish, while Conservative rival Arthur Meighan (Brent Skagford) comes on to him. It’s all a gleeful jumble of history, designed to prick the more reverent approaches to Canadiana fostered by costume dramas and the “Heritage Minutes” while also tweaking the nation’s inferiority complex (Have they looked across their southern border?) with jokes about the flag as “The National Disappointment” and advice to “Do more than is your duty. Expect less than is your right.” Beine plays King with wide-eyed innocence, even as he’s stealing shoes to sniff, while Negin, a Guy Maddin regular, turns his mother into the Lady Bracknell of your dreams. There’s also a very deft performance by Sean Cullen as the Governor-General, here depicted as a quasi-Fascist dictator. There is one joke, however, with which I must take exception. Cullen’s eldest daughter, Lady Violet (Emmanuel Schwartz), describes the nation as “just one failed orgasm after another.” I can assure you, that has not been my experience.
