100
Christian Science Monitor by David Sterritt
There's a new visual idea every second, each teeming with energy, pitch-dark comedy, and inspired cinematic lunacy.
Cowards Bend the Knee
Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
- Canada
- 2003
- · 64m
Director
Guy Maddin
Cast
Darcy Fehr,
Melissa Dionisio,
Tara Birtwhistle,
Louis Negin
Genre
Drama,
Romance
Guy takes his girlfriend Madea to a makeshift abortion clinic operating from the back of a bordello run by a woman named Lilliom. Guy soon forgets his girlfriend, falling in love with Lilliom’s daughter Meta. However, Meta won’t let Guy touch her until he murders those responsible for the death of her father.
Stream Cowards Bend the Knee
What are critics saying?
100
New York Daily News by Jami Bernard
It's said to be an autobiography, but that pertains only in the loosest sense. It's a comedy. It's a 1920s silent movie. It is practically indescribable. And it is pure genius.
100
Village Voice by J. Hoberman
What's truly extraordinary about this movie--which strikes me on two viewings as Maddin's masterpiece--is that it not only plays like a dream but feels like one.
80
The New York Times by Manohla Dargis
There is also something rather splendid about this extended-play peep show, as if Mr. Maddin had stumbled across a hitherto lost archive of cinema's less-than-innocent past. What makes all this nostalgia for a movie history that never happened is that, as is always the case with Mr. Maddin's work, it's executed with more love than irony and not a whit of derision.
80
Variety
Ultimately, psychotically inventive pic is a formidable addition to the ever-evolving Maddin oeuvre.
80
The A.V. Club by Scott Tobias
Abortion, incest, infidelity, revenge, and hockey collide at a fever pitch, juxtaposed with such frantic energy that they're pushed to the level of high comedy, funniest at its most dramatic.
80
Variety by Ronnie Scheib
Ultimately, psychotically inventive pic is a formidable addition to the ever-evolving Maddin oeuvre.
70
The Hollywood Reporter by Frank Scheck
The results are always visually arresting, while the narrative, even by Maddin standards, is completely out in the ozone.
70
TV Guide Magazine by Ken Fox
Oddly, once removed from the museum setting and strung together into an hourlong feature, it's Maddin's most cohesive narrative.
67
Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Paula Nechak
If you're a fan of Maddin's expressionist style, you'll find the humor within. Everyone else will be scratching their heads, despite Maddin's extraordinary visual imagination.
60
Chicago Reader by Jonathan Rosenbaum
The overall feel is phantasmagoric--pitched, like most of Maddin's work, in the style of a half-remembered late silent feature or early talkie.
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