MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Careful’ a Carefree Pastiche of Early Cinema

Guy Maddin, the Wunderkind of Winnipeg, responsible for those weirdies “Tales From the Gimli Hospital” and “Archangel,” is back with “Careful” (at the Nuart).

Another of his fanciful, absurdist celebrations of early cinema, it’s set in the 19th Century in the Alpine village of Tolzbad, where silence is truly golden: The slightest sound can trigger a lethal avalanche. Helpfully, there are here and there “acoustical shelters,” natural pockets in the mountains where the villagers can lead more or less normal lives.

Actually, it’s less rather than more because they seem a repressed lot, being sticklers in the extreme for propriety. They seem in fact to be suffering from terminal quaintness, but all this changes when the young blond Johann (Brent Neale), who has just become engaged to the demure Klara (Sarah Neville), has a dream in which he imagines himself seducing his sleeping mother (Gosia Dobrowolska). Even though we eventually learn that the dream is actually a manifestation of the longings of his dead father, it’s enough to trigger an avalanche of emotions, revealing all kinds of kinky shenanigans going on behind Tolzbad’s Hansel and Gretel facade.

There’s no questioning Maddin’s unique vision and his talent in expressing it. He’s a maestro of pastiche, of phantasmagoria, of all that’s charming and whimsical in the oldest movies. Low budgets are a plus rather than a minus for him, for they spur Maddin, who is also his own cinematographer, production designer and editor, to seemingly endless resourcefulness in creating wondrous fairy-tale images out of very little means.

For all this accomplishment “Careful” has a key problem, and that is that deliberate preciousness and camp, no matter how amusing and inspired, becomes wearying if it’s allowed to go on too long; there’s just no way a modern filmmaker can recapture the innocence that has kept so much of vintage cinema vital and engaging. At 100 minutes “Careful” (Times-rated Mature for adult themes, some sex) begins to bore, whereas at half that running time it might well have been unalloyed fun.

‘Careful’

Kyle McCulloch: Grigorss

Gosia Dobrowolska: Zenalda

Sarah Neville: Klara

Brent Neale: Johann

A Cinephile release of a Greg Klymkiw-Tracy Traeger production. Director-cinematographer-editor Guy Maddin. Executive producer Andre Bennett. Screenplay Maddin, George Toles, from a story by Toles. Costumes Donna Szoke. Music John McCulloch. Art director Jeff Solyo. Set designers Craig Walls, Dean Smallwood. Sound Daniel Pellerin. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.

Times-rated Mature (adult themes, some sex).