The Goose

He's called the Goose because he wears a jacket with the word Cosmos written on it, he has a funny hairstyle more suited to a child and he doesn't speak. Everyone in the Canadian town where he lives takes him for a simpleton except for his ventriloquist roommate, for whom his disability is basically an advantage. The Goose is an outsider who doesn't communicate verbally and who certainly doesn't fit. He experiences and describes reality differently. He's either a misunderstood artist or he has Asperger's. When he meets the Travel Agent, he decides to get out of his provincial hole. He wants to go to Arizona, where he believes he'll regain his ability to speak through new-age voice therapy. This psychedelic road movie by Mike Maryniuk, a self-taught director from Winnipeg who calls himself a "film folk artist," is a peculiar mixture of performances by local oddballs and funky animations, video-game aesthetics and allusions to silent movie-with plenty of neon lights, leather jackets and karaoke. Postinternet on the big screen.