First things first: don’t let the title deceive you. This
may be a movie about melancholia, but it’s also an absolute
riot; hugely inventive and utterly bizarre. Filmed in grainy
black and white, it’s a nostalgiasoaked homage to the
screwball comedies and melodramas of early cinema, but with a
wicked wit and manic energy entirely its own – the sort of
film the Marx brothers might have made if they’d been on
speed. This still doesn’t do justice to the sheer insanity of
the whole enterprise though. It centres around a doubleamputee
called Lady Port-Huntley (Isabella Rossellini) who, in the 1930s,
organises a competition to find the world’s saddest music. The winners of each round are rewarded by getting to slide
down a shoot into an enormous vat of beer to celebrate. Lady
Port-Huntley gets fitted a pair of false glass legs filled with
beer to replace her lost real ones. Oh and there’s also a
telepathic tapeworm thrown in for good measure, as well as a
nymphomaniac amnesiac and a photosensitive Serbian cellist. Sure, this may not sound like your average bundle of laughs
but it’s exactly this refreshing randomness to the humour
which, almost, manages to carry the film. Best of all are the
competition’s two ultra-camp and brilliantly irrelevant
commentators (their response to a sombre entry from Siam –
“ah, the Siamese, no one can beat them when it comes to
dignity, cats or twins”). There’s also more pointed
satire in the way the crooked American representative buys the
help of all the poorer defeated nations to put on a horribly
kitsch Broadway-style extravaganza. But ultimately the movie feels like a joke that overstays its
welcome just that little too long. The humour dries up towards
the end, leaving us characters too ridiculous to care about. If
only it could have lived up to that initial flair, it might just
have been a comic gem. Now that really issad.ARCHIVE: 4th week TT 2004
The Saddest Music in the World
