Keyhole

There's one thing for sure--no one makes films that look like Guy Maddin's. The Canadian filmmaker's latest was Keyhole, released in 2011. It is a trippy, sumptuously black and white Odyssey (initial cap intended) through a haunted house, and like all of his films, has that over-saturated nitrate look of silent films.

I've seen a few of Maddin's films, and while they aren't exactly transparent in plot, they are hard to look away from. This one probably makes more sense that most of his work, but it's still open to myriad interpretations. What I do know is this--a gangster (Jason Patric) has his gang shoot their way into his house. The dead are still upright (a character called Big Ed asks the dead to stand facing the wall, and then are told they will be helped to the morgue by the police). The place is lousy with ghosts, with the main one being Patric's father in law (Louis Nagin), an old guy wearing no clothes and chained to his daughter's bed.

She's Isabella Rossellini, and I was never quite sure if she was dead or not, because dead characters didn't act much differently than live ones. In fact, when Patric arrives he has a young woman (Brooke Palsson) in tow, and she's drowned, but can still walk and talk (she just can't see). Later, Patric's men will try to stage a coup and strap Patric to a bicycle-powered electric chair, but it doesn't work on him because he says he's been electrocuted once already.

The Odyssey connection comes with Patric's name (Ulysses), as well as Nagin's name, which is Calypso. Patric makes his way through the house, one room at a time, trying to get to Rossellini, who is in the attic with her father. Along the way there are memories of Patric's dead children, plus his sole remaining live one, who has been kidnapped by the gang. He is in love with Palsson, and recalls when she went off laughing for a midnight swim.

I have no idea what any of this means, but it sure his lovely to look at. I think it would take several viewings to come up with a theory, at least it would be for me, but I think it can be summed up by Nagin's line when he says that when a person leaves a house, the happiness goes with him, but the sorrow remains.