A $25,000 prize is being offered in Winnipeg for whoever can produce the saddest song in the world. Set in the Great Depression, Winnipeg has been voted for the fourth year running as the “world capital of sorrow” and promises it citizens only one sort of relief from these exponential levels of anguish: copius amounts of beer. From all over the world the bands have come to face off in contests of musical woe, the daily winners sliding with glee into a large tub of lager, one day closer to the grand prize. What the world doesn’t know is that this contest is the advertising conspiracy of the legless matron of a large beer company, and behind the scenes of this conspiracy lurks subterfuge and intrigue. Well, the sort of subterfuge and intrigue one can expect from a Guy Maddin film in which one of the main female interests walks about on glass legs filled with beer.


Boasting a number of fine performances, The Saddest Music in the World is certainly Maddin’s most accessible feature to date. While still steeped in Maddin’s infatuation with the scratched and crackled images of the silent film era, its raucous narrative leanings actual feel quite a bit like a story, something that Maddin generally attempts to avoid in the traditional sense of the term.