Mise en Scène
2012 · 7m · Canada
Directed by Chelsea McMullan
Genres: comedy, experimental, musical
Tones: surreal, theatrical, whimsical
Director and composer Des McAnuff is honoured in a tongue-in-cheek musical tribute that builds from a solo performance of The Wind and the Rain to a grand Shakespearean finale.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A tongue-in-cheek musical tribute sounds like the safest, most self-congratulatory premise imaginable—and yet McMullan somehow makes the escalation from intimate solo to Shakespearean spectacle feel genuinely unhinged, which is either very clever or very lucky.
McMullan situates this biographical musical within a self-aware theatrical lineage that nods to both vaudeville tribute and experimental cinema, using formal escalation as its structuring principle—a considered architecture that rewards the viewer's attention to how whimsy becomes spectacle.
The decision to let a single Shakespeare passage expand organically into full production number, rather than cutting between parallel narratives, creates an almost architectural momentum that transforms a 7-minute format constraint into the film's strongest formal choice.