Heart of the World, The
Entry updated 3 May 2024. Tagged: Film.
Canadian short film (2000). Produced by Niv Fichman and Jody Shapiro for the Toronto International Film Festival. Written and directed by Guy Maddin. Cast includes Leslie Bais, Shaun Balbar, Greg Klymkiw and Caelum Vatnsdal. 6 minutes. Black and white.
Anna (Bais), a Russian state scientist studying the living heart of the world, loves and is loved by two brothers, mortician Nikolai (Balbar) and actor Osip (Vatnsdal), who is playing Christ in a Passion Play. Anna discovers that the Earth's heart is dying, which will lead to the End of the World, causing widespread public panic. The brothers compete to help Anna save the world, but she is seduced by the capitalist Akmatov (Klymkiw). On their honeymoon she has a change of heart, killing Akmatov and sliding down a chute to become the new heart of the world herself. It revealed that she has been transformed into Cinema itself and "Kino" is the world's saviour.
Several of Canadian director Maddin's films take the form of homages to silent cinema, and this is a pitch-perfect pastiche of Soviet propaganda films of the 1920s. The speed and dexterity of the editing gives it a momentum to match its subject – set to the rousing score by Georgy Sviridov from the film Vremya, vperyod! ["Time, Forward!"] (1965) – the actors are ideally cast according to physical type, and there is some innuendo-laden imagery to add to the comic effect. The affectionate tribute to the naivety of the science in early silent cinema is equally endearing. [CWa]
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