Cowards Bend The Knee, Or The Blue Hands

Winnipeg auteur Guy Maddin created this hysterically overheated silent film as a museum installation to be viewed through a series of 10 consecutive peepholes, all situated below eye level, requiring viewers to bend their knees (much like the cowards of the title) to view the segments of a "10-part penny dreadful." Oddly, once removed from the museum setting and strung together into an hourlong feature, it's Maddin's most cohesive narrative. The setting is a glob of ejaculate, placed under a doctor's microscope; but instead of countless squiggling sperm, the lens reveals the lusty men of the Winnipeg Maroons hockey team and their rover, Guy Maddin (Darcy Fehr). After...