Cowards Bend the KneeDesire can drive men and women to justify terrible atrocities, confusing love for lust, and hatred for justice. Cowards Bend the Knee is an experimental drama by Guy Maddin, and is loosely adapted from the Sophocles play, "Electra". It is about a hockey player--also named "Guy Maddin" (Darcy Fehr)--whose wandering eye gets him involved with a femme fatale named Meta (Melissa Dionisio), despite already being in a committed relationship with his pregnant girlfriend, Veronica (Amy Stewart). Meta withholds sexual favors from Guy, claiming that she will not let him touch her until the murder of her father, Chas (Henry Mogatas), is avenged--slain by her mother, Liliom (Tara Birtwhistle) and her lover and Guy's hockey comrade, Shaky (David Stuart Evans).
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Cowards Bend the Knee is a bizarre and surreal cinematic experience, in keeping with much of Maddin's oeuvre. It is presented like an unearthed movie from a hundred years ago (it is also a silent movie), marked and worn by time and neglect. Cowards Bend the Knee is like a fevered dream given celluloid--rapid flashes of grainy imagery partnered with the scratchy sounds of an LP playing the kind of classical music one would expect from a vintage cinematheque. And the title cards will make you want to read them out loud with an awkward chuckle when taken alongside the disquietingly absurd imagery. Images in Cowards Bend the Knee with a strong psychological component are often repeated immediately after they are first shown, as though the film itself was distracted by its own content--a singularly deranged vision of an insane world. Even the frame rate in the film oscillates between frenzied quickness or lingering slowness, reinforcing a soporific element that wends through Cowards Bend the Knee. The movie is so surreal that the audience is on thematic free fall, grasping to apply meaning to seemingly abstract scenes. What kinds of emotions are supposed to be conjured during Guy's lengthy handshake with his father Maddin Sr. (Victor Cowie) while Guy is completely naked in the hockey team's shower room? What kinds of fixations and proclivities are being implied by Meta's obsession with her late father's dismembered hands, colored blue from hair dye in the salon/bordello where he and Liliom once worked together? Cowards Bend the Knee is filled with totems that signify greater desires and uncontrolled passions, like Maddin Sr.'s round block of ice which he erotically rubs as he announces hockey plays--deliberately dubbed the "ice breast".
Like many of Guy Maddin's films, Cowards Bend the Knee explores themes of sexual frustration and confusion, with a strong slant toward the Freudian. Fearing that he would have to give up his passion for hockey, Guy takes Veronica to get an abortion, performed by the sleazy hockey team doctor, Dr. Fusi (Louis Negin). Meta slinks into the operating room situated in the back room of Liliom's salon and begins to seduce Guy during the procedure--an exotic vixen with almond-shaped eyes and a beguiling smirk, licking sugar from her fingertips--making the already uncomfortable scene exponentially more unsettling. In a shocking lack of decorum, Guy takes her up on her advances, and sneaks off with her to lie on a pile of discarded hockey gloves, while Veronica falls victim to Fusi's incompetence (and Guy's rejection) and dies. Veronica returns as a ghost to be the "new girl" in Liliom's establishment, and becomes a lover to Guy's father, while Guy--believing her to be someone else entirely--plots a tryst with her. Despite being dead, Veronica possesses more vivacity as a ghost than she did when she was alive, and is happier with the elder Maddin than the younger. Meta has Guy drugged and tries to convince Fusi to lop off Guy's hands and replace them with her father's blue ones. Instead, Fusi pulls a trick on them both, painting Guy's hands blue and telling him that he has Chas's hands, which the naive Guy believes. And despite the ruse, Guy becomes convinced that he is possessed by Chas's vengeful hands, compelling him to take the vengeance Meta desires. When Guy is preparing to off Liliom, he even dreams of a honeymoon they (Chas and Liliom) shared. This is impossible not just because the hands could not share experiential data even if they were attached to Guy, but in the context of the story, it is doubly so because they never were replaced in the first place. This insinuates that it is by the mere hypnotic suggestion that Guy is able to tap into the murder victim's memories. It is illuminating that the film proposes that hypnosis can conjure forth a higher form of consciousness, since the whole of Cowards Bend the Knee is like a hypnotic fugue.
Hands in Cowards Bend the Knee represent the merging of sex and violence, and are central to any event concerning either. Meta has an Electra complex, insinuated by the giddy enthusiasm she experiences at her memories of her father, not to mention that she keeps his preserved hands after his demise. She won't let any other man (like Guy) put their hands on her until her father is avenged--that she insists on him replacing Guy's hands with her father's adds even more creepy implications. After Guy believes that his hands have been replaced, he is torn between arousal and anger at Liliom, who looks barely older than her daughter. Alone with Liliom in the salon one night, he combines the two acts of sex and violence and uses his fist to satisfy her urges. While Guy strangles Shaky on the rink, Meta looks on with baited breath from the stands and slowly raises her hand into the air--an effect symbolizing arousal, like an erection. After the inconstant Meta loses her outlet for her undying rage, she redirects it onto Guy, and has Fusi cut off Guy's hands, believing they are actually her father's. Now rejected by Meta and Veronica, Guy shambles about in the "wax museum" of legendary hockey players--humorously called "All-Time Maroons"--and fumbles through his set of hockey trading cards with his bandaged stumps. This mutilation is a metaphorical castration--Guy is now less of a "guy", emasculated by Meta and Veronica, and no longer capable of doing anything of value. Rather than live in a world where he feels impotent, Guy "bends the knee" and joins the ranks of other men turned into exhibits, forgotten in a museum no one visits.
Recommended for: Fans of a metaphor-driven, darkly comic experimental film that combines silent movie-era aesthetics with a surreal plot and setting. Cowards Bend the Knee is sometimes shockingly graphic with its nudity, but more often explores its themes of sexuality and violence through implication and insinuation rather than overt depictions.
Like many of Guy Maddin's films, Cowards Bend the Knee explores themes of sexual frustration and confusion, with a strong slant toward the Freudian. Fearing that he would have to give up his passion for hockey, Guy takes Veronica to get an abortion, performed by the sleazy hockey team doctor, Dr. Fusi (Louis Negin). Meta slinks into the operating room situated in the back room of Liliom's salon and begins to seduce Guy during the procedure--an exotic vixen with almond-shaped eyes and a beguiling smirk, licking sugar from her fingertips--making the already uncomfortable scene exponentially more unsettling. In a shocking lack of decorum, Guy takes her up on her advances, and sneaks off with her to lie on a pile of discarded hockey gloves, while Veronica falls victim to Fusi's incompetence (and Guy's rejection) and dies. Veronica returns as a ghost to be the "new girl" in Liliom's establishment, and becomes a lover to Guy's father, while Guy--believing her to be someone else entirely--plots a tryst with her. Despite being dead, Veronica possesses more vivacity as a ghost than she did when she was alive, and is happier with the elder Maddin than the younger. Meta has Guy drugged and tries to convince Fusi to lop off Guy's hands and replace them with her father's blue ones. Instead, Fusi pulls a trick on them both, painting Guy's hands blue and telling him that he has Chas's hands, which the naive Guy believes. And despite the ruse, Guy becomes convinced that he is possessed by Chas's vengeful hands, compelling him to take the vengeance Meta desires. When Guy is preparing to off Liliom, he even dreams of a honeymoon they (Chas and Liliom) shared. This is impossible not just because the hands could not share experiential data even if they were attached to Guy, but in the context of the story, it is doubly so because they never were replaced in the first place. This insinuates that it is by the mere hypnotic suggestion that Guy is able to tap into the murder victim's memories. It is illuminating that the film proposes that hypnosis can conjure forth a higher form of consciousness, since the whole of Cowards Bend the Knee is like a hypnotic fugue.
Hands in Cowards Bend the Knee represent the merging of sex and violence, and are central to any event concerning either. Meta has an Electra complex, insinuated by the giddy enthusiasm she experiences at her memories of her father, not to mention that she keeps his preserved hands after his demise. She won't let any other man (like Guy) put their hands on her until her father is avenged--that she insists on him replacing Guy's hands with her father's adds even more creepy implications. After Guy believes that his hands have been replaced, he is torn between arousal and anger at Liliom, who looks barely older than her daughter. Alone with Liliom in the salon one night, he combines the two acts of sex and violence and uses his fist to satisfy her urges. While Guy strangles Shaky on the rink, Meta looks on with baited breath from the stands and slowly raises her hand into the air--an effect symbolizing arousal, like an erection. After the inconstant Meta loses her outlet for her undying rage, she redirects it onto Guy, and has Fusi cut off Guy's hands, believing they are actually her father's. Now rejected by Meta and Veronica, Guy shambles about in the "wax museum" of legendary hockey players--humorously called "All-Time Maroons"--and fumbles through his set of hockey trading cards with his bandaged stumps. This mutilation is a metaphorical castration--Guy is now less of a "guy", emasculated by Meta and Veronica, and no longer capable of doing anything of value. Rather than live in a world where he feels impotent, Guy "bends the knee" and joins the ranks of other men turned into exhibits, forgotten in a museum no one visits.
Recommended for: Fans of a metaphor-driven, darkly comic experimental film that combines silent movie-era aesthetics with a surreal plot and setting. Cowards Bend the Knee is sometimes shockingly graphic with its nudity, but more often explores its themes of sexuality and violence through implication and insinuation rather than overt depictions.