Brand Upon the Brain

Guy Maddinís Brand Upon the Brain! takes place in an orphanage where tiny tots earn their keep by the sweat of their brows and adults exact a savage price on their tender souls. A baroque entertainment with one foot in silent cinema and the other gingerly toeing the sound waves, the film centers on a man who, in visiting the now-emptied foundling home, journeys deep into his childhood. There, amid secrets and lies, open wounds and monstrous parental narcissism, he discovers what made him tick and why, and how between his motherís terrifying love and his father's sadism he learned all the cruel tricks of desire. Mr. Maddinís adoration for early cinema - in particular, its delicate charms and now-exotic flourishes - hasn't made him a slave to that love, which is why the delirious, ingenious, often very funny and strangely touching film Brand Upon the Brain! is as much deconstruction as a tribute. Manohla Dargis, The New York Times