The 100-year-old man
Pseudo-documentary is informative, visually remarkable
Ryan Simmons Volunteer Staff
My Dad is 100 Years Old is the latest short film directed by Winnipeg filmmaker Guy Maddin. Written by actress Isabella Rossellini and filmed at the mothballed Metropolitan Theatre, it’s a psuedo-documentary or, as Maddin defines it, a “a docu-fantasia” focusing on actress Isabella Rossellini’s (Blue Velvet) unresolved relationship with her late father, Italian neo-realist director Roberto Rossellini.
The film made its Winnipeg debut on March 2 as part of the NSI Film Exchange festival, with Maddin in attendance for a question and answer session.
Roberto Rossellini was a director who intended his movies to incite social change. His films were meant to be as grounded in reality as possible, which meant he avoided many of the flashy trappings of more escapist and commercially motivated cinema. To Hollywood his style was too slow, his subjects too depressing, and the vocally opinionated and obstinate director became disenfranchised. His most famous work, 1945’s Rome, Open City, is an un-flinching depiction of the Italian resistance against the Nazi occupation. It is featured in My Dad is 100 Years Old.
Born in 1906, the director passed away from a heart attack in 1977; Isabella had Maddin direct this film in celebration of her father’s centennial after she worked with Maddin on his last feature, The Saddest Music in the World.
To Maddin the movie was “kind of an assignment” and had him feeling “kind of scared I would get my Guy Maddin all over her Roberto Rossellini.” There is no mistaking his dream-like style, however, as it’s on full display, and My Dad is 100 Years Old stands as one of his greatest accomplishments to date.
The short is not solely a film about Roberto; it is just as much — more so, really — about Isabella’s feelings about him. When she’s playing herself she’s consumed with questions about him — what his views were, what he felt about how he was treated as a filmmaker, and his relationship with her mother.
Every word spoken is by Isabella. She plays every character in a cast that includes herself, Alfred Hitchcock (shot in his familiar silhouetted profile, of course), the wildly indulgent Italian director Frederico Fellini (her dialogue is out of sync with her lips when she plays him, as Italian films of his era were filmed as silent movies with the sound added later, often without much attention to detail), Charlie Chaplin (with his words displayed in inter-titles), David O. Selznik, the renowned Hollywood producer, and her mother, the iconic actress Ingrid Bergman.
She provides her father’s voice as well, but he’s visually represented by a beer gut of notable size. Her fondest memories of him involve this distinct body part, and we are given copious close-ups (and we hear deep rumbling as Isabella narrates in translation) as it argues with his aforementioned contemporaries about what cinema should strive for. Maddin noted that casting this part wasn’t terribly difficult in Winnipeg.
It’s a spectacular piece of work: visually astounding, emotionally resonant and informative at the same time.
You can catch My Dad is 100 Years Old along with Roberto Rossellini’s Rome, Open City at Cinematheque on March 30. Guy Maddin will be providing an introduction.
