Cycle index

Twilight of the Ice Nymphs

dir. Guy Maddin / Canada 1997 / 92’

subtitles: Polish and English

retrospective: Guy Maddin A Trip to the Orphanage, Archangel, Berlin, Brand Upon the Brain!, Careful, Collage Party, Cowards Bend the Knee, Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary, Footsteps, Glorious, Hospital Fragments, It's a Wonderful Life, It’s My Mother’s Birthday Today, My Dad Is 100 Years Old, My Winnipeg, Nude Caboose, Odilon Redon or The Eye Like a Strange Baloon Mounts Towards Infinity, Odin's Shield Maiden, Send Me to the ‘Lectric Chair, Sissy-Boy-Slap-Party, Sombra dolorosa, Spanky: To the Pier and Back, Tales from the Gimli Hospital, The Dead Father, The Heart of the World, The Saddest Music in the World, Twilight of the Ice Nymphs, Workbooks Section index

Cast

Pascale Bussiėres, Shelley Duvall, Frank Gorshin, Alice Krige, R.H. Thomson, Ross McMillian, Frank Kowalski, Breanne Dowhan, Nigel Whitmay

Film description

Twilight of the Ice Nymphswas visually inspired by the works of Gustave Moreau (1826-1898), one of the leading symbolists and the screenplay was based on Prosper Mérimée and Knut Hamsun's works about Pan, as well as on motifs of William Shakespeare's Tempest.

This is probably the most controversial among Maddin's films and some critics declared that this time the director had gone too far. Without criticising the film's visual beauty and poetic atmosphere, they claimed the stylisation was exaggerated and above all - purposeless. Maddin himself was not sure about the effects of his work either: about the experiment with the 35 mm tape (instead of the usual 16 mm), working with professional actors and using dialogues.

Although the way this film was made was exceptional in Maddin's work, we can find here his typical obsessions: prostheses, stuffed animals, sleepwalkers, hypnosis, the story about an argument and hatred between two sisters. Twilight is doubtlessly beautiful and seducing and maybe its power comes from the imperfections, too.

Agata Rosochacka