the problem with glass
by Douglas Messerli
George
Toles and Guy Maddin (writers, based on a story by Kazuo Ishiguro), Guy Maddin
(director) The Saddest Music in the
World / 2003, USA 2004
The
point is, I have come to fear falling (I recently fell again, turning my cheek
into a good resemblance of the Batman’s “The Jocker”—terrifying given it
happened on the same day when James Holmes, identifying himself as The Joker,
murdered 12 people in a Colorado movie theater) —and, more importantly, I am
now terrified by the effects of glass.*
Back in February of 2012, accordingly, I wrote a poem titled “The
Problem with Glass,” which I’ve reprinted below:
The Problem with
Glass
The problem with
glass
—it breaks
it striates a wrist, the back
shattering
shards
sever almost
everything in sight.
The heart is
made up of tissue
the brain corrugated
mass.
Glass is
recomposed sand.
People who live
in stones
should not
throw ice.

To
say that is not to declare the director's work is unoriginal, however one
defines that. For there is perhaps no movie quite like The Saddest Music in the World, no film ever made that whole
heartedly embraces the serious musical, camp humor, melodramatic, sexual, and
just plain comic tropes that this work does.
For the fourth year a row, Winnipeg has been named by The London Times as "the world
capital of sorrow," and Lady Helen Port-Huntley (Isabella Rossellini), the
wealthy beer heiress, is determined to raise prohibition-free Winnipeg's beer
sales by sponsoring an international contest, with a $25,000 dollar prize, to
determine which country has the saddest music in the world.

He
and Port-Huntley, we gradually discover, have once had a relationship or,
perhaps I should say, a series of unfortunate encounters, beginning with Chester's father Fyodor (David Fox), who,
after the death of his wife, fell in love with the young Port-Huntley.
Cuckolded by his son, the former doctor grows alcoholic and—one night while the
son is driving with Port-Huntley performing fellatio and temporarily obscuring
his view—crashes into their car, pinning one of girl's legs under the
overturned vehicle. Before Chester can prevent him, the drunken Fyodor
amputates the leg in order save her; however, he saws off the wrong one, and
before the evening is over Port-Huntley is legless. Despite that horrific
event, however, the bitter Port-Huntley has still harbored deep love for
Chester, and permits him to be the US representative. Fydor, still eager to
mend his relationship with Port-Huntley, begs her to be Canada's
representative.
In a
twist of the plot, Serbia's representative, the morose and hypochondriac
cellist, Gravillo the Great, is actually, so it soon revealed, Chester's brother,
Roderick, whose son has died and whose wife has disappeared. This unholy
trinity duke it out in a series of contests between Mexican, Thai, Spanish,
Cameroon, Indian, Scottish and other world entries, each proclaiming their
music to be the saddest. Overseeing this absurd sequence of musical numbers are
two commentators who glibly speak of the various national types in a manner
that Fred Willard perfected in Guest's film about the National Dog Show:
"No one can beat the Siamese when it comes to dignity, cats, or
twins."
Underlying all these hilarious shenanigans is a darker tale of a world
encased in glass. A short listing of events concerning glass might even
summarize the final outcome of the story. The Winnipeg Maddin has whipped up is covered
with ice; in the streets hockey players spin out of control as perpetual
skaters glide by. One of the central slogans of Port-Huntley's beer copy
repeats the refrain "have another glass," and throughout the film
drinkers raise their glasses as they down the brew. Knowing that Port-Huntley
is allergic to both leather and metal, Fyodor has carefully created a pair of
glass legs for her—filled with beer! The Baroness is delighted with her
new bright and glittering legs but still rejects her former suitor, and the depressed Fydor
quickly consumes the beer from earlier incarnations of the glass legs and, in a
stupor, falls through a glass ceiling over the contest arena to his death.
Encountering Narcissa once again, Roderick drops the glass bottle containing
his dead son's heart, which, as it shatters, implants a shard into the heart
itself. In the midst of the final performances between Roderick and Chester,
the soulful chords of Roderick's playing shatter Port-Huntley's new legs at the
very moment she herself has gone on stage in Chester's grand retelling of an
Eskimo kayak tragedy. In revenge for his thoughtless behavior, she stabs
Chester in the stomach with a shard of the glass legs.
So,
in the end, you see, my little poem seems appropriately participatory in a work
that has employed so many thousands of collaborating images.
Los
Angeles, July 22, 2012
Nice Article! I hope this will be informative to all.
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