The Twentieth Century (2019)

Writer/director Matthew Rankin's work isn't known for its subtlety or its mainstream appeal. So it wasn't too surprising when he put out a film about William Lyon Mackenzie King's rise to prominence as Canada's 10th Prime Minister. It also wasn't a surprise his subject wasn't buzzing on everyone's lips. Rankin's film is a surrealist experiment filmed like something out of Guy Madden's oeuvre. All of this adds up to what could have been a truly audacious project called The Twentieth Century.

In my mind this sort of experiment is an interesting one with plenty of possibility. Canada, being a young country, has a need to reflect on who we are and why we make the assumptions about ourselves that we do. We create certain myths of who we are and exploring why that is would be fascinating. Tearing a lot of that apart and holding an unflattering mirror to us would be a bold statement. Also promising is how King's story is ripe with potential for a fascinating take. His history is rather sordid with all sorts of innuendo and urban legend at our disposal to be exploited.

Which is perhaps why The Twentieth Century is disappointing to me. I felt like the opportunity to explore Canadianness through this lens is mostly missed by this film. There are some tongue in cheek references to being a Canuck and Great White North culture, some cliched jokes, but little in the way of in depth analysis and deconstruction of the Canadian identity mythos. Most of the King story line is farcical without much tie to the real man or even the legends surrounding him. Therefore he's just a device, not a real person or even an idea of a real person on which to build this story.  Instead the film exists in a fantasy Canada bearing little resemblance to the actual one, not enough to really take a look at our real nation while we watch this.

But Rankin's inspiration may not have been to accomplish any of these things. They are just my assumptions based on my own ideas of what a film like this should be. He may just have wanted to tell his absurd tale and enjoyed the idea of King, as rich a figure as he is, as the subject. So I should just examine what is here instead of what I might have wanted a project like this to be. Unfortunately for me there was little here to hold my interest. The story felt more like a series of Wes Anderson style joke scenes without enough of a story or character to keep me invested in it. Yes the film looks amazing, in that we're-trying-to-look-cheap-and-indie way films like this look, and it was enjoyable just for spectacle. There are some truly beautiful visuals here, even overlit and hazy as much of the film is. But all that wears off quickly and even in the rather short run time I lost interest.

So from the perspective of curiosity watching The Twentieth Century was interesting... enough. But as a narrative it didn't hold my attention. It also felt a bit like a missed opportunity as it could have offered us some hole poking in our Canadian identities which we could so badly use.

The Twentieth Century
Starring: Dan Beirne, Sarianne Cormier
Writer/Director: Matthew Rankin