This piece was originally commissioned by Iskusstvo Kino (Искусство кино) to be translated in Russian for an issue on international film debuts that has been delayed due to COVID-19. Update: the issue has at last been published and can be found here.
What do you think you know about Canada? Well, The Twentieth Century is both an ideal and yet completely made up history lesson that pays backhanded tribute to “The Great White North” and playfully pokes holes into the fabric of the nation’s identity. Framed as an epic told in 10 chapters and playing out as an absurdist satire, the film follows the plight of William Lyon Mackenzie King as he sets out to fulfill what he perceives to be his destiny: to become the Prime Minister of Canada. Indeed, King was the tenth Prime Minister and the country’s dominant leader in the 1920s and 30s. The film surrounds him with other real life figures from Canada’s political past—but that’s about as far as the truth goes in this irreverent faux-bio-pic that chronicles the would-be formative years of the long-serving leader.
The film claims to be informed by King’s real personal diaries but one is unlikely to find in those pages such details as Mr. King’s boot fetish, an ejaculating cactus, and competitive seal clubbing—and these are but a sampling of the film’s eccentric embellishments. Instead, The Twentieth Century presents an alternate mythology of Canadiana that illuminates the very nature of constructing national identities and historic continuities. It’s a way of taking how a country imagines itself and turning it inside out, revealing both the absurdities and lies that already permeate a nation’s own self-projection. The film calls into question Canada’s conspicuously precious self-image. In its own mischievous myth-making, The Twentieth Century skewers the formation and perpetuation of national narratives.
The ambitious first feature is written and directed by Matthew Rankin, known for his prolific output of short films over the past decade, most notably Mynarski Death Plummet (2014) and The Tesla World Light (2017) which premiered at Cannes, both of which blend live action with animation and also bring real historical figures to life in unreal ways. Rankin shares several qualities with fellow Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin, who too hails from Winnipeg, a city whose blistering blizzards seem to breed a particular brand of mad genius when it comes to experimental cinema. They both have a certain penchant for pastiche and the perverse. Like Maddin, Rankin utilizes retro techniques and aesthetics to give his work an anachronistic sense of material but his formal language is much cleaner and precise. Shot gorgeously on 16mm, the style of the film is clear and sophisticated, mixing Classical Hollywood melodrama with visual storytelling reminiscent of silent cinema and German Expressionism in particular. Rankin relishes in his constructed world of Caligari-esque artificial studio sets that echo the very artificiality that underlies Canada’s own identity.
Set precisely at the turn of the century, we find the young politician as a passive do-gooder (played with perfect banality by Dan Beirne) whose conviction for becoming Prime Minister is handed down from his domineering, bed-ridden mother (played by Maddin regular Louis Negin in but one of the film’s acts of gender-reversal) who is hellbent on her son becoming something important. The Freudian relationship between King and his mother, who he keeps behind a door with multiple locks to keep his effeminate and infantile father from entering, is anything but subtle. Supposedly a “Good Christian”, King spends his spare time keeping a young girl with tuberculosis company in the “Hospital for Defective Children” but as we will find out throughout the film, his priorities easily shift in Machiavellian fashion whenever the opportunity presents itself. So much for the notion of polite, well-meaning Canadians. At every turn, The Twentieth Century points to immoral aspects of the Canadian character, however buried beneath feigned kindness they may be.
The road to becoming Prime Minister isn’t easy, however, and King finds stiff competition in the burly, moustached Arthur Meighen and the nubile innocence of Bert Harper. They faceoff in a series of challenges to determine who will run as a candidate in the forthcoming election. Among these measures of merit are a test of ribbon-cutting, butter churning, and passive aggressive line-waiting (a Canadian specialty). The aforementioned “election” which serves as the film’s climax is not your typical democratic process but rather a deadly race on ice skates in a mirrored labyrinth that pays homage to Orson Welles’ The Lady From Shanghai. As the journey to that decisive event proves more and more difficult, King regresses further and further into a perverted weakling.
Meanwhile, the role of Prime Minister is made out to look like an arbitrary figurehead beholden to the Governor General, here a fictional “Lord Muto” (Sean Cullen) who takes direct orders from the Queen of England. Canada is portrayed as a mere colony just as impotent as any of its citizens—the flag is even described to symbolize a shared national disappointment which is seen as the key existential element of Canadian life. Rankin, who studied history at McGill University and Université Laval, uses his understanding of Canada against itself, betraying facts and subversively riffing on stereotypes and misconceptions. The core political tension that emerges in the film is one familiar to Canadians in the real world: that of the conflict between Québec and English-speaking Canada. In Rankin’s rendering of the Francophone-Anglophone rivalry, he creates an unusually gentle portrayal of the oppressed Québecois and a searing, fascistic framing of bloodthirsty Ontarians.
While international audiences should have little problem understanding the broad strokes of Canadian politics and history, the dense level of details, references, and inside jokes may be more alienating. For example, the brief but hilarious scenes in Vancouver and Winnipeg in which both cities are represented in playfully stereotypical ways (the former as a green, mountainous paradise paved through by human activity and the latter as a debaucherous ghetto inhabited by freaks and lowlives). But for all the film’s specificities, The Twentieth Century is a marvellously inventive comedy full of formal beauty, creativity and all the ingredients of a singular cult favourite. It will also ensure you never look at Canadians the same way again. And it will leave you impatient for another film from Matthew Rankin.