Keyhole (film)
| Keyhole | |
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| Directed by | Guy Maddin |
| Produced by | Jean du Toit Lindsay Hamel Phyllis Laing Guy Maddin Jody Shapiro |
| Written by | Guy Maddin George Toles |
| Starring |
Jason Patric Isabella Rossellini Udo Kier Kevin McDonald Brooke Palsson |
| Music by | Jason Staczek |
| Cinematography | Benjamin Kasulke |
| Edited by | John Gurdebeke |
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| Distributed by | monterey media inc. (US) |
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Release date
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Running time
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93 min |
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
Keyhole is a 2011 Canadian film directed by Guy Maddin, starring Jason Patric, Isabella Rossellini, Udo Kier and Kevin McDonald. A surreal combination of gangster film and haunted house film, which draws on Homer's Odyssey as well,Keyhole tells the story of a Ulysses Pick (Patric), who returns to his home and embarks on an odyssey through the house, one room at a time. Filming began in Winnipeg on July 6, 2010. Maddin shot Keyhole digitally rather than his usual method of shooting on 16mm or Super-8mm.
The gang of Ulysses Pick (Jason Patric) shoots its way into his former home, which the police have surrounded, with a hostage and a stuffed wolverine (named "Crispy") in tow. Big Ed, the gang's second-in-command, then evicts the dead gangsters (who seem otherwise alive), after asking them to identify themselves: "Those of you who have been killed, stand facing the wall." They leave reluctantly, and the gang waits for Ulysses. The film's narrator, the ghost of Ulysses's father-in-law Calypso/Camille (Louis Negin), reveals that the house is haunted (and not only by him) because although a house's happiness is able to vacate the premises after its inhabitants have left, its sorrow is doomed to remain inside forever. This house had once belonged to Ulysses and his four children with his wife Hyacinth (Isabella Rossellini).
Ulysses himself arrives, carrying a drowned young woman named Denny. After entering the house, Denny is able to stand under her own strength, and seems alive although injured and blind. She reveals that she can hear the thoughts of Ulysses as he wanders through the house, examining the objects that he had previously left behind. Calypso reveals that Hyacinth remains in Ulysses's former bedroom at the top of the house, where she has chained him (her father's ghost). Ulysses and Denny join the gang, who are confused about their plan (and don't understand why the police haven't shot their way into the house). Ulysses deflects questions about the plan and claims that the police won't enter the house while the storm is still in force. Big Ed, annoyed at being kept in the dark, criticizes Ulysses for adopting Heatly after he killed one of Ulysses's sons, and is thrashed.
Calypso reveals that although he is chained to Hyacinth's bed, his chains stretch to unknown lengths, and torments Ed further through supernatural flogging. Ulysses collects the gang's guns and throws them into the ducts to be destroyed in the house's furnace. The gangster Ogilbe (Kevin McDonald) thinks he hears a noise and goes to investigate, exiting with a Scream-esque "I'll be right back." He is immediately killed when he tries to have sex with one of the ghosts even though Ulysses just warned him not to bother the ghosts (upon contact with a washerwoman ghost, he's electrocuted—his ghost shortly completes the sex act). The bullets from the guns that had been thrown into the furnace begin to fire throughout the house (the laughing face of Calypso suggests that this is somehow the ghost's doing) and a stray bullet kills Heatly. As he dies, Ulysses reveals that he had at first adopted Heatly to torture him and himself as revenge for the death of his son but grew to love Heatly more than any of his sons. (Ulysses is unaware, as he says this, that the hostage who watches/hears is his only living son, Manners, having forgotten and failed to recognize him.)
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