The Forbidden Room

Name: The Forbidden Room
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Comedy, Romance
Released: October 7, 2015
Duration: 130 min
Rating: 83

2015

METASCORE

Universal acclaim based on 17 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 12 Ratings

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7.4

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7.4	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 12 Ratings

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The Forbidden Room

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Movie Details & Credits

Kino Lorber | Release Date: October 7, 2015 | Not Rated

Summary: A submarine crew, a feared pack of forest bandits, a famous surgeon, and a battalion of child soldiers all get more than they bargained for as they wend their way toward progressive ideas on life and love.

Director: Evan Johnson and Guy Maddin

Genre(s): Drama, Mystery, Comedy, Romance

Rating: Not Rated

Runtime: 130 min

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Critic Reviews

100

The Telegraph Tim Robey

Dec 17, 2015

In emulating the two-strip Technicolor process, it creates a look that’s scratchy and primitive, but also, through the peculiar alchemy of Maddin’s craft, eerily rich and dreamlike, with the depth of an oceanic abyss. Read full review

Mike D'Angelo

Oct 6, 2015

For those attuned to Maddin’s goofy sense of humor, it’s easily the funniest movie he’s ever made—a series of several dozen comic shorts strung together on a ludicrous clothesline. The only downside is that the experience, at just shy of two hours, can be a trifle exhausting. Read full review

Sheri Linden

Feb 18, 2016

This exercise in beauty, derangement and memory can be contemplative or silly. Often it's both, in just the right proportions. Read full review

Todd McCarthy

Sep 19, 2015

With no through-story or strong continuity to hold it together, the film does go on a bit and becomes repetitive; it's hard to remain stimulated by the same techniques, however imaginative, at such length without some connective dramatic tissue.... Still, for cinephiles and aficionados of the singular, The Forbidden Room represents a very particular kind of feast. Read full review

Empire David Parkinson

Dec 7, 2015

Exquisitely designed, this cornucopia of melodramatic fragments and movie pastiches will enchant Guy Maddin fans. Read full review

David Ehrlich

Oct 8, 2015

For all of its innumerable pleasures, however, The Forbidden Room can feel like too much of a good thing—premiering at Sundance, Maddin’s latest plays like a robust film festival unto itself. Read full review

Dennis Harvey

Oct 1, 2015

Delightful and ingenious as much of this is on a moment-to-moment basis, it becomes somewhat wearying over the long haul. Read full review

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User Reviews

JohnWhisler

Feb 24, 2016

A crazy quilt of interwoven stories, dreams, asides, and bizarre segues, The Forbidden Room is a visual and narrative homage to lost films and strange, psychic searchings.

Immediately, The Forbidden Room is beautiful – a genuine work of art. A good portion of this aesthetic appeal is dueA crazy quilt of interwoven stories, dreams, asides, and bizarre segues, The Forbidden Room is a visual and narrative homage to lost films and strange, psychic searchings.

Immediately, The Forbidden Room is beautiful – a genuine work of art. A good portion of this aesthetic appeal is due to Guy Maddin’s co-director and former student, Evan Johnson. The degree of post-production work that went into this digital feature must have been daunting to take on and is just as daunting for the viewer to take in. The apparent film bubbles and morphs in an astonishing kaleidoscope of imagery that appears to be literally degrading while being projected. Various film stocks are imitated and a veritable film history flickers before our wondering eyes as the stark black and white compositions of the German Expressionist style give way to a heavily saturated color palate that recalls the 1970s, and so on. Likewise, the fervent sound design moves us viscerally through our mesmeric journey.

If an audience member walked into the theater unaware of what was to come, the disorienting trip they embark upon might not be a much different experience than that of the viewer who knows going in that they are to witness a collection of re-imagined stories that were culled from a list of lost films. And what a wild re-imagination! After the initial introduction on How To Take A Bath (originally produced by exploitation pioneer Dwain Esper!), we go down the drain into a submarine hell of psychological space, submerged, and suffocating. Indeed, the crew aboard the submarine are running out of air and, breathless, they count down their time and suck oxygen from the air bubbles inside their flapjacks. But where is their Captain in all of this? Should they disturb him? Should they look for him? A woodsman named Cesare (after the somnambulist in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari?) is discovered to have somehow found his way on board and proceeds to tell his story of a search of his own, for Margot, who has been captured by a wolf cult. On we meander through stories interrupted by dreams, tangents, and on and on, deeper and deeper we go, occasionally resurfacing a bit for a breath of air.

In this way we travel the surreal and silly world of Guy Maddin. But Maddin’s world is not without its psychological gravitas. His stock archetypes reprise their roles: the amnesiac and the dead father. Genuinely bewildered, the amnesiac asks, “Who am I?” This is the central question of the mystic, and of the mythic, and is a fitting theme here. In the case of lost films one can only wonder what was, what might have been, and what form they may have taken. It’s in the imagining that life is given. In another scene a young woman is manipulated by a train psychiatrist. She bares her soul to reveal her inner child. Her reaction to being confronted with her inner child is one of the more shocking moments in cinema. The dead father returns via the dream of a moustache. His young son struggles with his lonely role, and ersatz moustache, for the sake of his mother.

As we work back and forth through the stories, we work our way through the rooms of the submarine until we come to the Forbidden Room. We find the Captain in a stuporous state, suds on his face, soaking in a tub. Who is he? We’re nearly back where we started, with our search climaxing, breathing, coming up for air, re-emerging from Maddin’s inky deep.… Expand

3 of 4 users found this helpful31

EpicLadySponge

Mar 10, 2016

Whatever the Forbidden Room did to most of us, the Forbidden Room shall be forbidden by haters of a true film like this. You'll love it exactly as I did.

1 of 1 users found this helpful10

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