After several acclaimed short films, Canadian filmmaker Matthew Rankin makes his feature-length debut with “The Twentieth Century.” The film’s release comes after a massively successful festival run that began with its premiere in the midnight madness section of the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival.
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Rankin won the prestigious Award for Best Canadian First Feature Film at TIFF, and the movie’s critical acclaim hasn’t stopped there. ‘Twentieth Century’ received eight Canadian Screen Awards nominations and won three, received Best Film at the 2019 Los Cabos International Film Festival, and even captured the FIBRESCI Prize at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival. That’s not a bad haul for a first feature film.
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Here’s the official synopsis:
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Toronto, 1899. Aspiring young politician Mackenzie King (Dan Beirne) dreams of becoming the Prime Minister of Canada. But his romantic vacillation between a British soldier and a French nurse, exacerbated by a fetishistic obsession, may well bring about his downfall. In his quest for power, King must gratify his imperious Mother’s expectations, the hawkish fantasies of a war-mongering Governor-General, and the utopian idealism of a Québécois mystic before facing one, final test of leadership. Culminating in an epic battle between good and evil, King learns that disappointment may be the twentieth century’s defining characteristic!
Much of the film’s success on the festival circuit stems from its vibrant and anachronistic style. ‘Twentieth Century’ takes inspiration from German expressionist cinema, 1940s melodrama, and wartime propaganda films for its visuals. It’s a wild and colorful concoction, with staging and set-pieces thick with an almost surrealist sensibility.
The film’s visual flair also calls to mind another idiosyncratic Canadian auteur and Winnipeg, Manitoba native, Guy Maddin, who mines film history for antiquated aesthetics and filmmaking techniques to use in his movies. Rankin looks to be up to something similar here, with an array of period styles on display that would have been commonplace during the lifetime of the biopic’s subject.
If the awards are any indication, Matthew Rankin has written and directed an aesthetically formidable film with ‘Twentieth Century.’ Is it as epic as its title suggests? Audiences find out on November 20, when the film opens from Oscilloscope Laboratories.