My Winnipeg

2007 "docu-fantasia"

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Canadian director Guy Maddin revisits his sleepy hometown while at the same time attempting to escape it. He combines reenactments, archival footage, and oddball imagery to construct a portrait of Winnipeg. Well, it's not Winnipeg exactly. But it's his Winnipeg.

"Docu-fantasia" is not my word, by the way, but it does manage to capture what is going on with My Winnipeg. Maddin is the director of The Saddest Music in the World, Careful, and Brand upon the Brain!, all which showcase his appreciation for all things antiquated--silent melodrama, antique cameras, title cards. It's gimmicky, but it's a gimmick I can appreciate, so I love the movies. This is a heavily-narrated documentary on Winnipeg, sentimental and at times bitter, and also on Maddin's childhood, but the director's style--and this is a melange of influences working here--and a lot of the more fantastical elements of the city's history that he creates--frequent references to a hidden pair of rivers beneath the pair of rivers that are on the surface, the story about the horses trying to run through one of the rivers and freezing with only their heads being above the ice surface, the long-running television show about a guy who threatens to jump off a ledge and is talked back into the apartment by Maddin's mother every week (see poster)--give you more of a general feeling than information. Sure, I came away from the documentary knowing a little more about Winnipeg, but more importantly, Maddin's able to use the images and his narrative text to help me feel some of the more unique aspects of Winnipeg. Maddin's Winnipeg is a Winnipeg that hits you in the gut. It's a movie about loss, ennui, regret, family, hard work, values, escaping the past, and other stuff, shared in a way that I think most people can connect with despite a lot of bizarre subject matter and the off-the-wall film techniques. The movie also has this amazing ability to make things that just shouldn't be important into things that seem really important. I laughed frequently, but there were several moments that were downright touching. I really liked the extended sequence about the hockey players and the old sports arena, and the reenactments, featuring what I assume really is Guy Maddin's actual mother, are endearingly pointless. I'd recommend this, but somebody who's already seen (and enjoyed?) some of Maddin's other films would probably appreciate it a little more.

Edit: It's not Guy Maddin's mother. It's actress Ann Savage who was most famous for playing Mrs. Thornhill on Saved by the Bell. My apologies to everyone involved.