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''Cowards Bend the Knee'' (also known as ''The Blue Hands'') is a 2003 film by Guy Maddin. Maddin directed ''Cowards Bend the Knee'' while in pre-production on ''The Saddest Music in the World'', shooting entirely on Super-8mm film〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Cowards Bend the Knee )〕 with a budget of $30,000.〔Beard, William. ''Into the Past: The Cinema of Guy Maddin''. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2010. Print. ISBN 978-1442610668〕 The feature film was initially developed as a series of ten short films, commissioned as part of an installation art project by Toronto art gallery The Power Plant (curated by Philip Monk).〔Maddin, Guy. ''Cowards Bend the Knee''. Toronto: The Power Plant, 2003. Print. ISBN 1-894212-02-9〕 ''Cowards Bend the Knee'' is the first in Maddin's "autobiographical 'Me Trilogy'" of feature films starring protagonists named "Guy Maddin," the second being ''Brand Upon the Brain!'' (2006) and ''My Winnipeg'' (2007).〔Wershler, Darren. ''Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg''. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2010. Print. ISBN 978-1-44261134-4〕 Maddin based the film's premise loosely on the story ''The Hands of Ida'' and Euripedes's play ''Medea'', although Maddin also claims that the film can be viewed as an autobiography (although the events of his life are not being represented so much as the events of his inner life).〔Maddin, Guy. ''Cowards Bend the Knee''. Toronto: The Power Plant, 2003. 9. Print. ISBN 1-894212-02-9〕 ==Plot== ''Cowards Bend the Knee'' is set in a vague time period that is stated in the published script and on the DVD commentary as the 1930s, although certain of the film's events (e.g., the Winnipeg Maroons winning the Allan Cup) did not occur until the 1960s.〔Beard, William. ''Into the Past: The Cinema of Guy Maddin.'' Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2010. Print. 197. ISBN 978-1442610668〕 Guy Maddin (played by Darcy Fehr), star hockey player for the Winnipeg Maroons, is told by his father Maddin Sr (Victor Cowie), the team's announcer, to visit his mother in the hospital since she is gravely ill. Maddin instead takes his girlfriend Veronica (Amy Stewart) to get an illegal abortion at the home/beauty salon/bordello of Liliom (Tara Birtwistle). During the operation, Guy more or less forgets about Veronica and ends up leaving with Liliom's alluring daughter Meta (Melissa Dionisio). Veronica dies as a result of the botched abortion and perhaps despair at her abandonment. Meta reveals that her father, Chas, was murdered by Liliom with help from the police captain Shaky, who also plays hoceky with Guy. Chas's hands, stained blue from hair dye, were severed during the murder and Meta keeps them with her in a jar. She rejects Guy's sexual advances, saying that she won't be his until he murders Liliom and Shaky to revenge Chas. The abortionist/hockey team's doctor, Dr. Fusi (Louis Negin) agrees to sever Guy's hands and suture Chas's hands in their place. However, while Guy is sedated and Meta is gone, Dr. Fusi just throws the hands away and paints Guy's own hands blue. Believing himself possessed by Chas's murderous hands, Guy sets out to kill Liliom but instead ends up trying to seduce her and eventually "fists" her in the beauty salon. Veronica's ghost has meanwhile risen and takes a job at the beauty salon, as does Guy. Guy becomes infatuated with Veronica's ghost, not recognizing her as the girlfriend he abandoned to die on the operating table (he has forgotten Veronica completely by this point). Tormented, Guy discovers a wax museum that has been hidden and forgotten in the rafters of the Winnipeg hockey arena. The museum features wax sculptures of famous Winnipeg Maroons, including Chas. Meta continues to coerce Guy to carry out her revenge plans. Guy ends up murdering Shaky during a hockey game, and feeling guilty attempts to confess his crime to the policeman Mo, but Mo refuses to arrest Guy and tries to get him to stop confessing. Guy then strangles Mo to death in the middle of the police station but none of the other officers notice. Veronica's ghost has meanwhile begun dating Guy's father, Maddin Sr. after Guy's mother dies, unvisited. Guy is now involved with both Meta and Liliom (who he's promised Meta he will kill) while in love with the ghost of his ex-girlfriend Veronica, whose death he is somewhat responsible for and who is now involved with his own father. The pressure of the situation, in addition to the delusion that he is possessed by the murderous hands of Chas, drives Guy to finally strangle Liliom when she tries to stop Veronica's ghost from having a second abortion of unknown origin (presumably his father's child and thus his sibling, or perhaps his child needing to be aborted a second time). Meta by this time has soured on Guy and demands that Fusi returns her father's hands to her. Dr. Fusi then chloroforms Guy again and amputates his blue-painted hands. Handless, Guy heads to the hockey arena and suits up for the big game, taping his hockey gloves over his fresh stumps. Guy heads to the urinal pre-game, but finds peeing a difficult tasks with no hands. At the urinal, he encounters his father, Maddin Sr., and sees that his father's penis is exceptionally large (much larger than his own). During the game, Maddin Sr. announces while stroking a block of ice carved into the shape of a woman's breast. Veronica's ghost, aroused by this, walks across the catwalk over the arena's ice towards the radio booth. Guy also climbs to the top of the arena and heads into the wax museum, where tarot cards predict "a mysterious apocalypse." Maddin Sr. and Veronica's ghost enter to announce that Guy's old girlfriend will be his new mother. The anguished Guy invokes the wax heroes of hockey old to aid him, and they in fact do awaken, having revealed themselves not to be wax heroes at all but cowards who have chosen immobility as an escape from life. Guy and the hockey immortals pursue Maddin Sr. and Veronica's ghost out of the room and onto the catwalk. Meta sees her father Chas among the wax immortals and rushes to meet him. She attempts to reenact the childhood game that Chas and Meta used to play — she swooned and he caught her — but since Chas no longer has hands, he cannot catch her and she falls to her death. Guy then joins the wax immortals in the museum, in cowardly retreat. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Cowards Bend the Knee」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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