Cowards Bend the Knee unfolds in a hazy, time-blurred setting that the film and its materials describe as the 1930s, even though some events echo later decades (for example, the Winnipeg Maroons’ Allan Cup win sits in the 1960s). In this obscure hockey-drama, Guy Maddin, the Winnipeg Maroons’ star, is pressured by his father, Maddin Sr, the team’s announcer, to visit his gravely ill mother in the hospital. Instead, he takes his girlfriend, Veronica, to the home/beauty salon/bordello run by Liliom. During the operation, Guy mostly forgets Veronica and leaves with Meta, the alluring daughter of Liliom. Veronica dies from the botched abortion and perhaps from despair at being abandoned.
Meta reveals that her father, Chas, was murdered by Liliom with help from the police captain Shaky, who also plays hockey with Guy. Chas’ blue-stained hands were severed during the murder and kept in a jar by Meta. She refuses Guy’s advances, insisting that he won’t be hers until he murders Liliom and Shaky to avenge Chas. The team doctor, Dr. Fusi, agrees to sever Guy’s hands and graft Chas’ hands in their place.
Yet, while Guy is sedated and Meta is gone, Dr. Fusi discards the grafts, painting Guy’s own hands blue instead. Believing he is possessed by Chas’ murderous hands, Guy sets out to kill Liliom but ends up trying to seduce her and, in a disturbing turn, assaults her inside the beauty salon. Veronica’s ghost has meanwhile risen and takes a job at the salon as well, and Guy finds himself drawn to the ghostly Veronica, not recognizing the living Veronica whom he abandoned.
Tormented, Guy discovers a forgotten wax museum hidden in the Winnipeg arena’s rafters, featuring wax likenesses of the Maroons’ heroes, including Chas. Meta presses on with her vendetta, and Guy finally murders Shaky during a hockey game. Wracked with guilt, he tries to confess to the policeman Mo Mott, but Mo resists arrest and urges him to stop speaking. The confession spirals into tragedy as Guy strangles Mo in the police station, with no one else noticing.
Veronica’s ghost begins dating Guy’s father after his mother’s death, while Guy becomes entangled with both Meta and Liliom, all the while loving the ghost of his former girlfriend who now haunts the living world alongside his father. The weight of these relationships and the delusion that he is possessed by Chas’ hands push him toward a desperate act: he strangles Liliom as she tries to stop Veronica’s ghost from pursuing a second abortion of unclear origin.
Meta grows weary of Guy and demands that Dr. Fusi return her father’s hands. Fusi chloroforms Guy again and amputates his blue-painted hands. Hands free of use, Guy heads to the arena for the big game, taping his gloves over his stumps and making his way toward the urinal. There, he encounters his father and sees the elder Maddin’s unusually large endowment, a moment the film treats with surreal bluntness. During the game, Maddin Sr. announces himself from the bench, stroking a block of ice carved into the shape of a woman’s breast, while Veronica’s ghost, stirred by the moment, glides along the arena’s catwalk toward the radio booth.
Guy climbs to the arena’s roof and enters the hidden wax museum again, where tarot cards predict “a mysterious apocalypse.” The pair of Maddins—father and ghost—arrive to reveal that Guy’s old girlfriend will become his new mother. The wax heroes awaken, but they are revealed not as valiant figures ready to intervene but as cowards choosing inactivity as an escape from life.
In the ensuing chase, Guy and the hockey immortals pursue Maddin Sr. and Veronica’s ghost out of the wax room and onto the catwalk. Meta spots Chas among the wax figures and runs to meet him; she attempts the childhood game they used to play, but with Chas now lacking hands, he cannot catch her, and she plummets to her death. The film ends with Guy joining the wax immortals in the museum, retreating from the world in a final, poignant act of cowardice.
