My Winnipeg
Directed by Guy Maddin
Written by Guy Maddin and George Toles
2007/Canada
Buffalo Gal Pictures/Documentary Channel/Everyday Pictures
First viewing/FilmStruck
[box] I’ve never bought that cliché that you should never take people out of the narrative, take people out of that dramatic illusion. I’m more of a person who loves his grandmother. I’m thinking when a grandmother sits at the foot of your bed and tells you a bedtime story, you get absorbed into the story, you notice her style of telling a story. Some parts you should tell badly, other parts charmingly. You’re totally sucked into the story. You’ve been scared, moved, engaged, and then every now and then you notice your grandmother has a dental whistle or a nose hair or that she’s getting pretty wrinkly and that she’s sitting on your foot, and then you go back into the story. I’m one of those filmmakers that likes to show the grandmother. – Guy Maddin[/box]
I wasn’t quite expecting this witty surreal homage to Manitoba’s capital. Wild!
Director Guy Madden’s conflicted love affair with his home town, turns out not to be so much documentary as fictionalized autobiography with the people in Madden’s life played by actors. Notably, Ann Savage (Detour) plays the nagging mother! Manitoba itself is another major character. The cinematography is dreamy, with black-and-white accentuating the cold, drab atmosphere Madden both extols and laments.
I enjoyed this a lot, having travelled to Canada many times on a prior job. It’s not something I would necessarily recommend though. You have to have some sort of affinity for Madden’s hipster sensibility to really appreciate it I would think.
