Maybe Maddin should have cast the goose

It was a few minutes before 10 on Saturday night, and we were on our way to the Granville Cinemas when we saw the goose. But that’s not what was strange. In Vancouver, British Columbia, the street life can feature everything from impromptu ballet and spirited preaching to veggie hot dogs and the ubiquitous panhandlers. The goose, though, was special: It was dressed in blue baby clothes.

But even that wasn’t the strangest thing. Guy Maddin ’s “The Saddest Music in the World” won that prize, eh? That’s the movie that we were hurrying to see, and for good reason. Maddin directed the 2000 short “The Heart of the World,” one of the funniest and film-savvy movies that I have ever seen. Bob Glatzer, programmer for the Spokane Northwest International Film Festival , liked it so much that he booked it for his 2002 festival.

But “The Heart of the World” was six minutes long. “The Saddest Music in the World,” in contrast, is 93 minutes longer than that. And humor that plays well as a short doesn’t always translate well when stretched to feature length. Both films are shot in the same, herky-jerky, fuzzy black and white that makes them seem like something out of the silent era, which some viewers don’t get. One guy who saw Maddin’s film when it played in September at the Toronto Film Festival said, “As a Canadian I am ashamed that this movie could represent my movie abroad.”

Yeow. Someone needs to lighten up. “The Saddest Movie in the World” is weird, sure. But it’s funny. Really funny. Mark McKinney , Maria de Medeiros and Isabella Rossellini are name actors (something new for Maddin), and they blend well into Maddin’s exceedingly bizarre world. Besides, if the guy from Toronto wanted to something truly strange, he should have seen that goose.