The truth about head.

2003 13m p/d Dale Heslip, sc Dale Heslip, Andrew Manson, ph Andre Pienaar, ed Bruce Copeman; with Katherine Ashby, Joshua Buckle, Quancetia Hamilton, Bruce Hunter.

From the "cowards, bullies and clowns" (as critic Robert Fothergill famously described them), to the benumbed figures trapped in the technological murk of the 1980s, to the amnesiac masculine mists of Guy Maddin and Robert Lepage, the Canadian cinematic male has always been somehow incomplete or deficient, if not downright gravely wounded. Well, gentlemen, you've met your match. Please welcome Toronto filmmaker Dale Heslip's Ed to the sad fraternity. Ed, you see, is just a head, a man without a body. But he's got gumption. The operator of a shabby freak show, Ed travels the countryside with his Felliniesque crew trying to raise money to obtain a body. In Heslip's imaginative and capable hands, The Truth about Head (a prize winner at the 42nd Critics' Week in Cannes 2003) is an unsentimental tale of one man's peculiar search for acceptance. Its impressive, often striking visual design and broad, bawdy humour could best be described as an offbeat combination of Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam and Wayne and Shuster. While not entirely successful--the film occasionally pushes its idiosyncracy too far--The Truth about Head's dark sensibility and salty partial protagonist make it a memorable addition to Canadian cinema's twisted portrait gallery of maladroit males.