Lögberg-Heimskringla - 13.02.2004, Blaðsíða 7

Lögberg-Heimskringla • 13 febrúar 2004 • page 7
Book Reviews • Ritdómar
From the Atelier Tovar: Selected Writings
by Guy Maddin (Coach House Books, 2003, 235 pp., with
photographs and a couple of story boards $24.95)
B; Review by
Betty Jane
Be warned: You are going
to get a biased, rave
review for this book. I have
been fascinated by Guy
Maddin ever since I saw his
first film, Tales from the Gimli
Hospital. Indeed, I was hooked
before I ever saw it for the title
alone, with the magic word
GIMLI in it. But be warned
again: it’s not your average
commercial adventure or love
story. In fact, the movie is
almost like a history of black
and white film in microcosm.
Don’t come to it with anything
but the expectation of surprise.
That goes for all of Maddin’s
film work, up to and including
his most recent prize-winning
television film of the Dracula
story, shot with the Royal
Winnipeg Ballet, and his
acclaimed entry in the 2003
Toronto Film Festival, The
Saddest Music in the World,
starring Isabella Rossellini.
Apart from being a film
aficionado, I am also a con-
noisseur of diaries. (My book,
Reading Between the Lines:
The Diaries of Women is a
favourite among my own
books.) I really have leamed to
read between the lines and I
learned a lot about Guy
Maddin reading his diary
excerpts, which comprise
more than half of the book.
The other segments are
reprints of some of his journal-
istic efforts, mainly to do with
film: reviews, commentary,
insights, sword play and quite
a lot of purple prose; film
treatments include one with a
separate copyright belonging
to George Toles as well as to
Guy Maddin, for a film,
Careful, an “opera without
singing,” as yet unproduced.
The most remarkable of
these film exercises is The
Child Without Qualities, an
autobiographical account of
Maddin’s own life, told in
glowing colour with moving
panache. In it he manages to
deal with his relationship with
his father, who was mariager of
the Winnipeg Maroons hockey
team who won the Allan Cup
in 1953 (the Winnipeg Arena
was a “magic place” to Guy as
a child); his father’s death
from cancer and his aunt’s
(over whose beauty salon the
family lived; and his older
brother’s suicide, following
the death of his girl friend in a
car crash — nice, normal fam-
ily events!
Maddin doesn’t revert to
shorthand or obliquities in his
diaries, nevertheless, they
don’t tell the whole truth.
Diaries never do. I remember
one diarist (the sculptor Kathe
Kollwitz) who commented that
her diary covering one of the
happiest periods of her life
reads like a mournful com-
plaint. Maddin admits, “I am
really only sad on the days I
have time to write in here.”
Diarists tend to do that: to
take for granted the good times
and when they pause to dwell
on their insecurities and self-
castigation. Maddin could be
Anne Frank resolving to work
harder, do better, improve him-
self. He worries about money
and his debts; he fusses about
his health and weight and
reports his fluctuating physical
activity and liquor intake. He
reports movies he watches
.(constantly) and I marvel not
only at his broad range of
tastes but also at his ability to
find them, especially based as
he is in Winnipeg, not the
movie capital of the world.
Like every good diarist
Maddin makes lists, among
other things of projects he
wants to undertake, lessons
learned, ways to improve, pos-
sible sources of money, and
movies he wants to see. His
taste in movies, by the way, is
impeccable and his knowledge
awesome. He is an autodidact,
never went to film school, but
he is acknowledged as an inno-
vative and experimental film-
maker unlike any other and
now teaches film at the
University of Manitoba. Even
his casual comments in his
diaries about films he has seen
are often, to me, not only pen-
etrating but devastating. He
doesn’t take anything for
granted, which a lot of direc-
tors do and most film critics.
Maddin’s best list, though,
is his Gatsby List, and his
response to it, all to do with
self-improvement and ways to
achieve it, including reading
more, paying his income tax
on time and taking out an
RRSR In a list of eighteen
imperatives the last ones read
as follows:
“15 & 16. Write more. 18.
Be better.” (He skipped 17.)
Like many artists, Guy
Maddin is a combination of
cringing self-doubt and mind-
boggling confidence, to the
point of outright arrogance. He
writes, in The Cliild Without
Qualities, “Among us are
geniuses who never forget the
black and mystical manifestos
of our secret years.”
It’s a privilege to get a
glimpse of Guy Maddin’s
secret years.
Iceland’s Bell, by Halldór Laxness
(Vintage International, Random House, 2003)
BReview by
Betty Jane
Aren’t you tired of the
adjective Dickensian? 1
actually looked it up and it
means “like Dickens,” which
is no help at all, especially if
you haven’t read anything by
Dickens since you left high
school. (Did you read A Tale
ofTwo Cities or Oliver Twistl)
So I don’t trust a book jacket
that tells me that Laxness has
created a “Dickensian can-
vas.” I suspect it’s a euphe-
mism for long.
The last time I was in
Iceland my cousin Lorna
pointed out the church in
Þingvellir where Iceland’s bell
was supposed to have hung
and that Laxness wrote about
HALLDÓR LAXNESS
MtXMNMIIf 6f IKDlHBOtK! HQM
ICELAND'S
BELL
ttltÐOeCTIM kl mu MSIHI
in his novel of the same name.
I had been trying to find it - in
translation, of course, because
I am an illiterate Western
Icelander.
How pleased and thrilled I
am and you should be, too, to
learn that Vintage Internatio-
nal (Random House) has come
up with a spanking new
(October, 2003) excellent
translation of this wonderful
novel.
It’s deceptive, and so is
Laxness. The book seems to
be an historical novel, set in
the 17th century when Iceland
was suffering under Danish
rule, bled dry with taxes and
literally dying of starvation,
famine and plague. The so-
called hero, Jón
Hreggviðsson, is flogged for
stealing a bit of cord to fish
with and is required to help
take down Iceland’s bell for it
to be melted down for the
Danish coffers. He gets drunk
with the hangman who
whipped him and has no mem-
ory of the passing night after
which the hangman is found
dead and Hreggviðsson riding
the man’s horse and wearing
his hat. And thereby hangs a
long, long tale, but it’s not
Dickensian.
After a travesty of legal
proceedings and a tragicome-
dy of errors, the wretch
endures the most horrendous
hardships and punishments,
always just escaping execu-
tion. (The blow-by-blow
description of the flogging is
about as graphic and unbear-
able as anything I’ve read.) He
winds up in Denmark, serving
in the army, playing a contra-
puntal role in a surprising
romance.
Please see Iceland’s Bell, by
Halldór Laxness on page 10
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