Matthew Rankin’s Comedy is the Kind for Film Festivals
The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has wrapped up and I hope some of you were able to take some time out of your busy schedules to check out a film or at least walk along King Street just to take it all in. One of the most talked about Canadian films that premiered at the festival was “The Twentieth Century” and I had a chance to see it.
The Twentieth Century is absolutely wild. Written and directed by Matthew Rankin, the film is a dark comedic reimagining of the life of William Lyon Mackenzie King, the tenth Prime Minister of Canada and an Osgoode alumnus. The film is divided into ten chapters and begins with Mackenzie King, hilariously portrayed by Dan Beirne, speaking to a young girl who is dying of tuberculosis. As he’s speaking, a beautiful woman (played by Catherine St-Laurent) playing the harp appears through the ceiling. As Mackenzie King stares at this woman, the young girl begins to cough up a significant amount of blood. Because he is so transfixed by this beautiful woman playing her harp, he doesn’t realize that the young child is beside him choking to death. This opening scene sets the tone for the rest of the film.
The viewer is taken on a very strange yet incredibly entertaining journey about the man who will eventually become Prime Minister of Canada and cue the silliness! Instead of voting, the men who are vying to be Prime Minister compete in competitions such as churning butter and wood identification via smell test. And instead of real-life sets, the characters are in an imagined, dystopian space of walkways and rivers. Hopefully, no one from Winnipeg gets offended by the way the city is portrayed!
While there are a number of things going on, the main issue that Mackenzie King needs to sort out is his foot fetish. It is unimaginable that a scandalous person can become the Prime Minister of Canada. To avoid the risk of a public scandal, he gets professional help to deal with the problem that is seemingly getting out of control. Prior to the screening, one of the TIFF organizers introduced the film along with director Matthew Rankin and actor Dan Beirne. They described the film as horny and I will tell you, it is exactly not. Horny is not the word I would use to describe scenes where someone is masturbating while smelling a shoe. As is the theme of this film, it’s just really weird.
As Mackenzie King sorts out this depraved activity, he struggles with the pitfalls of love, duty, and familial expectations. The way the director chose to deal with these topics was very dark at times, and at others, straight-up hilarious. What’s wonderful, however, is that in spite of the heightened silliness of the situations these characters find themselves in, Rankin uses those moments to confront Canada’s contradictions. There is a scene where Mackenzie King makes his way to Montreal, and he is led to Disappointment Square. At another time, Mackenzie King speaks with the Governor General, who is portrayed as a Mussolini type, and the Governor General tells him that his weakness and ability to be controlled will make him a fine Prime Minister. We also see Rankin’s commitment to gender non-conformity portrayed by various characters, which made me think about what he wanted the audience to take from those choices when and where it happened. In all of the madness, Rankin had a lot to say about Canada and its early and present values.
What I loved the most about The Twentieth Century is that it is a festival film; it is a really weird, interesting art project and the kind of thing I want to see at TIFF. But truly, what a wild ride.