“An award-winning highlight of both the Berlin and Toronto International Film Festivals, Matthew Rankin’s acclaimed debut feature is visually striking bizarro biopic that reimagines the formative years of former Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King as a series of abject humiliations. Stylistically indebted to early cinema via its alchemic adoption of antiquated analogue techniques that recall the work of Guy Maddin, The Twentieth Century plays fantastically fast and loose with history as it riotously roasts both its subject and the political legacies of the Great White North.
Exuding both manic ambition and cherubic naiveté, Daniel Beirne is magnificently funny as a young Mackenzie King, who is determined to fulfill the political destiny that was prophesied by his dogmatic mother (played by Maddin regular Louis Negin). But when destiny appears to be deferred by a romantic rebuke and an unexpected rival, the zealous mama’s boy has his spirit shattered. Profoundly depressed and driven to unconventional forms of sexual gratification with ladies’ footwear, Mackenzie King finds both himself and his country at a crossroads — you know, the kind that culminates in the navigation of a perilous ice maze.” -TIFF
Director Matthew Rankin | 2019 | In English | 90 minutes | NR
