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Cowards Bend the Knee is a canadien film of genre Drama directed by Guy Maddin released in USA on 1 january 2003 with Darcy Fehr
Cowards Bend the Knee (2003)
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Add to a movie listCowards Bend the Knee (also known as The Blue Hands) is a 2003 film by Guy Maddin. Maddin directed Cowards Bend the Knee while in pre-production on The Saddest Music in the World, shooting entirely on Super-8mm film with a budget of $30,000.
The feature film was initially developed as a series of ten short films, commissioned as part of an installation art project by Toronto art gallery The Power Plant (curated by Philip Monk). Cowards Bend the Knee is the first in Maddin's "autobiographical 'Me Trilogy'" of feature films starring protagonists named "Guy Maddin," the second being Brand Upon the Brain! (2006) and My Winnipeg (2007).
Maddin based the film's premise loosely on the story The Hands of Ida and Euripedes's play Medea, although Maddin also claims that the film can be viewed as an autobiography (although the events of his life are not being represented so much as the events of his inner life).
Synopsis
Cowards Bend the Knee is set in a vague time period that is stated in the published script and on the DVD commentary as the 1930s, although certain of the film's events (e.g., the Winnipeg Maroons winning the Allan Cup) did not occur until the 1960s. Guy Maddin (played by Darcy Fehr), star hockey player for the Winnipeg Maroons, is told by his father Maddin Sr (Victor Cowie), the team's announcer, to visit his mother in the hospital since she is gravely ill. Maddin instead takes his girlfriend Veronica (Amy Stewart) to get an illegal abortion at the home/beauty salon/bordello of Liliom (Tara Birtwistle). During the operation, Guy more or less forgets about Veronica and ends up leaving with Liliom's alluring daughter Meta (Melissa Dionisio). Veronica dies as a result of the botched abortion and perhaps despair at her abandonment.Actors
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Suggestions of similar film to Cowards Bend the Knee
There are 6 films with the same actors, 14 films with the same director, 71616 with the same cinematographic genres (including 578 with exactly the same 3 genres than Cowards Bend the Knee), to have finally 70 suggestions of similar films.If you liked Cowards Bend the Knee, you will probably like those similar films :
My Winnipeg (2008)
, 1h20Directed by Guy Maddin
Origin Canada
Genres Drama, Comedy, Documentary, Fantasy, Historical
Actors Guy Maddin, Darcy Fehr, Ann Savage
Rating74%
Although ostensibly a documentary, My Winnipeg contains a series of fictional episodes and an overall story trajectory concerning the author-narrator-character "Guy Maddin" and his desire to produce the film as a way to finally leave/escape the city of Winnipeg. "Guy Maddin" is played by Darcy Fehr but voiced by Maddin himself (in narration): Fehr appears groggily trying to rouse himself from sleep aboard a jostling train as Maddin wonders aloud "What if?" What if he were able to actually rouse from the sleepy life he lives in Winnipeg and escape? Maddin decides that the only possible escape would be to "film my way out," thus motivating the creation of the "docu-fantasia" already underway.
The Heart of the World (2000)
, 6minutesDirected by Guy Maddin
Origin Canada
Genres Drama, Science fiction, Comedy, Fantasy, Romance
Rating75%
The plot of The Heart of the World concerns two brothers, Osip and Nikolai, who compete for the love of the same woman: Anna, a state scientist studying the Earth's core. Anna discovers that the heart of the world is in danger of a fatal heart attack (which would mean the end of the world), and the brothers compete amongst the public panic. Nikolai is a mortician and tries to impress Anna with assembly-line embalming, while Osip is an actor playing Christ in the Passion Play and tries to impress Anna through his suffering. Anna is instead seduced by an evil capitalist, but has a change of heart and strangles the plutocrat, then slides down into the heart of the world, where she manages to save the world from destruction by transforming into cinema itself, the world's "new and better heart — Kino!"
Night Mayor (2009)
, 14minutesDirected by Guy Maddin
Origin Canada
Genres Science fiction
Actors Michael Bell, Darcy Fehr
Rating67%
Twilight of the Ice Nymphs (1997)
, 1h31Directed by Guy Maddin
Origin Canada
Genres Drama, Fantastic, Comedy, Fantasy, Romance
Actors Pascale Bussières, Nigel Whitmey, Shelley Duvall, Frank Gorshin, Alice Krige, R.H. Thomson
Rating58%
A newly released prisoner, Peter Glahn, returns home to the land of Mandragora, where the sun never sets. Aboard the ship, Glahn has a romantic encounter with Juliana Kossel, then proceeds to the family ostrich farm, which is run by his sister Amelia. Amelia is in love with Dr. Isaac Solti, a manipulative gentleman scientist/mesmerist. Cain Ball, Amelia's hired hand, quarrels with her about her promise to sell him the ostrich farm. Peter heads into the forest to go hunting and meets the pregnant Zephyr, who despite her fisherman husband falls for Peter. Zephyr prays to a stone statue of the goddess Venus that stands in the forest that Peter will be hers, and gives the statue her wedding ring as a gift. Zephyr meets Peter again and Venus appears to have worked her magic, since the two embrace, although Peter notes that he is in love with Juliana and Zephyr notes her marriage.
The Forbidden Room (2015)
, 1h59Directed by Guy Maddin
Origin Canada
Genres Drama, Fantastic, Comedy, Adventure, Romance
Actors Roy Dupuis, Udo Kier, Gregory Hlady, Mathieu Amalric, Geraldine Chaplin, Karine Vanasse
Rating60%
A submarine crew, a feared pack of forest bandits, a famous surgeon, and a battalion of child soldiers all get more than they bargained for as they wend their way toward progressive ideas on life and love.
Keyhole (2011)
, 1h33Directed by Guy Maddin
Origin Canada
Genres Drama, Thriller, Fantasy, Action, Horror, Crime
Actors Jason Patric, Isabella Rossellini, Udo Kier, Kevin McDonald, Brooke Palsson, Darcy Fehr
Rating54%
The gang of Ulysses Pick (Jason Patric) shoots its way into his former home, which the police have surrounded, with a hostage and a stuffed wolverine (named "Crispy") in tow. Big Ed, the gang's second-in-command, then evicts the dead gangsters (who seem otherwise alive), after asking them to identify themselves: "Those of you who have been killed, stand facing the wall." They leave reluctantly, and the gang waits for Ulysses. The film's narrator, the ghost of Ulysses's father-in-law Calypso/Camille (Louis Negin), reveals that the house is haunted (and not only by him) because although a house's happiness is able to vacate the premises after its inhabitants have left, its sorrow is doomed to remain inside forever. This house had once belonged to Ulysses and his four children with his wife Hyacinth (Isabella Rossellini).
, 1h40Directed by Guy Maddin
Origin Canada
Genres Drama, Comedy, Comedy-drama, Fantasy, Musical
Themes Mafia films, Musical films, Gangster films
Actors Isabella Rossellini, Mark McKinney, Maria de Medeiros, David Fox, Darcy Fehr
Rating69%
During the Great depression in 1933 in Winnipeg, Canada, baroness Helen Port-Huntley (Isabella Rossellini) announces a competition to find the saddest music in the world, as a publicity stunt to promote her company, Muskeg Beer, as Prohibition is about to end in the United States. The prize is $25,000 "Depression-era dollars" and musicians from all over the world pour into Winnipeg to compete. Chester Kent (Mark McKinney), a failing Broadway producer, decides to enter the contest representing America, even though he is Canadian and originally from Winnipeg. An old fortune teller predicts his doom, but Chester mocks this prediction by having his nymphomaniac amnesiac girlfriend Narcissa (Maria de Medeiros) masturbate him. Also entering the contest are Chester's father Fyodor (David Fox), representing Canada, and his brother Roderick (Ross McMillan), representing Serbia as "Gavrilo the Great" (even though he is also Canadian).
Archangel (1990)
, 1h50Directed by Guy Maddin, Jon Jones
Origin Canada
Genres Drama, War, Comedy, Romance
Themes Politique, Political films
Actors Kyle McCulloch, Renji Panicker
Rating62%
Archangel is set in 1919 in the northern Russian area of Archangel, during a brief historical moment of Canadian intervention in the Bolshevik Revolution following the end of World War I. One-legged Canadian soldier Lt. John Boles sighs on the rail of a steamship over the ashes of his dead lover Iris. An officer mistakes Iris' urn for a bottle of liquor and throws it overboard into the sea. A narrator then delivers a sermon on the glories of Love and the horrors of Self-Love/Pride and how it forms the roots of War. (Maddin's daughter Jilian makes a cameo here as a young Cossack girl who orders the execution of a young boy.
Careful (1992)
, 1h40Directed by Guy Maddin
Origin Canada
Genres Drama, Comedy, Fantasy, Horror
Actors Kyle McCulloch, Gosia Dobrowolska, Paul Cox, Jackie Burroughs
Rating69%
Careful is set in Tolzbad, a fictional mountain town under constant threat of devastating avalanches that can be triggered by any loud noise or even a too-large expression of emotion. The people of Tolzbad suppress their emotions as much as possible, living in constant vigilance against losing self-control. An opening lecture cautions common advice ("Think twice!", "Don't stand so close to the walnut tree!").
Brand Upon the Brain! (2008)
, 1h35Directed by Guy Maddin
Origin Canada
Genres Drama, Fantastic, Comedy, Fantasy, Horror
Actors Isabella Rossellini
Rating72%
Guy Maddin (played by Erik Steffen Maahs as an adult, and Sullivan Brown as a child), returns to Black Notch, a deserted island on which stands a lighthouse that was his family home, an orphanage run by his parents, to slap a fresh coat of paint on the lighthouse. The film is divided into twelve chapters, each of which is a flashback that Guy's ancestral house-painting has brought to the fore of his memory.