Instant Favorite.

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Stanlkey Kubrick once said that Bergman, Fellini and De Sica were the only filmmakers who he thought weren't "artistic opportunists", meaning that whatever they made they had to make, not for any real financial consideration and that either they wrote or had other people write films for them. While I might not yet put Maddin quite as high in the ranks of masters as those Kubrick mention (albeit I've yet to see some of Maddin's obscurer efforts like Careful), I would add Maddin to that list of those in terms of never making a film to sell out or go for commercial pursuits. He has to make films like My Winnipeg just as Allen Ginsberg would have to pick up a pen and write about the city. And every time he makes a film it's about film-making, about himself, about life and history and family and finding oneself over and over. Maddin is more accurately like Fellini in that if one were to ask "are you self-indulgent" they would say (maybe deadpan maybe not) "Yeah... And?" In the case of My Winnipeg he takes a character on a train as the centerpiece (very loosely one at that) and transposes on him going through history - of the city of Winnipeg, of childhood, of and of his own sort of mental state connected to both. This "character" of sorts, if he even is one, is making a film about his family (because nothing says self-portrait like that) casting actors in the roles of his brothers and sister (even if one of them has been deceased for decades) and Ann Savage as his "mother" who in the film within My Winnipeg is a slightly loopy actress who can't always remember her lines. But for Maddin this isn't enough, of course, so he puts in folklore, the lineage of hockey in the city, of the tragedy of the hockey arenas (one being demolished the other sprouting up like a corporate weed), of what the city is like in January, what it's like to go to the local three-tier swimming pool, or the mystical power of forks - not silverware, like forks in the road.As with other Maddin works like Brand Upon the Brain, one cannot really see My Winnipeg as classifiable. You just have to see it for yourself. I'm not sure if this is the best place to start with My Winnipeg, but it couldn't hurt. The only very slight thing, not exactly a downside, is that the completely and wonderfully cracked sense of humor Maddin has is not quite as in full force as in his masterpiece Brand Upon the Brain. And while the scenes with Ann Savage are rather incredible just for their 'is-it-or-is-it' sense of autobiography (maybe the deer scene is based on a real thing and the 'give-us-dinner-or-parakeet' isn't is a juicy question), they don't quite strike the same person chord as when Maddin goes into, oddly enough, documentarian mode with the city.In part this is through him talking, as if in a mode not too unlike Michael Moore in Roger & Me on Flynt, to begrudge something like the old department store being demolished into a gaudy hockey arena that barely even counts as anything, in his eyes. It's moving to see him, as narrator, describe what happened to the hockey teams, those arenas, and then how one level didn't demolish since it was added on by the NHL in the 70s. Even better still is to see him insert "footage" of an senior-citizen hockey team that continues to play even as demolishing is taking place in the old Winnipeg arena. It all gets capped with a reminiscing of his father, who he says died a slow death, "shrinking in smoke until he was gone" once he lost his job at the hockey arena.My Winnipeg is loaded with visual wonders that include the three "symbols" that seem to overlap the dreamer on the train (one of these might be a woman's crotch, I still can't be sure), the images of Ann Savage as a super-omniscient Mother of Winnipeg, and that pug, apparently a girlfriend of the director's, wandering around in the snowy January nights. My Winnipeg is epic poetry and epic film-making, but compact and made personal and warped, like digging through a wizard's scrapbook. 9.5/10

Wittgenstein once observed, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent". It should follow on from this wearied maxim that all true art is destined to be personal. Such a truth is evident when watching Guy Maddin's "My Winnipeg". Apparently inspired by the film he shot of Isabella Rossellini remembering her father, "My Dad Is 100 Years Old" (2005) (a documentary of memories - a hyper-documentary? - rather than realities), with "My Winnipeg" Maddin cine-alchemically recreates the patchwork quilt of his life and history of his city, indelibly stained with Winnipegian fluids and woven with Manitoban heart-fibres.Influences become clear as never before, Maddin's ambisexuality is on display (1995s Sissy Slap Boy Party now makes sense), "La Roue" (1923/Abel Gance) is revealed as his cinematic touchstone (following on from the quotation in "Odilon Redon - or The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity", also 1995). The movie is almost like a coming out, a cry of freedom, a love letter to all he holds dear, ice hockey, Winnipeg, silent cinema, sexuality, proletarian utopias, family memories. It reminded me of the words of a Portugese man on TV when describing the Carnation Revolution of 1974, where armed forces were conquered by ordinary people wielding carnations, he called it a "giant national orgasm". "My Winnipeg" is Guy Maddin's heart nailed to the screen, as fiercely courageous a movie as you will ever see.There are blue truths in the film, we're not spared his mother's genitalia or fever dreams of childhood sexuality. Here are some quotations from interviews Maddin gave for this film just so you know what you will be seeing: "Children are sexual beings, just think of your own childhood. In my case, I was far more sexual as a child than I am now" "Nothing bothers me more than a movie about the innocence of children! What are they innocent of? They might be innocent of murder, but that's about it! Children haven't learned to repress yet or anything like that. They're just teeming with wonderful luridity, from very early on!" There is something universal about the film, Maddin incants a litany of opprobrium and indignity that the city of Winnipeg has suffered, from the demolition of an iconic department store, to the closure of two underground swimming pools and the hockey stadia. Modern history is written in the rictus of the agonised city exposed to modernity. Many cities have undergone such outrages, my own city lost it's old centre to Nazi bombing, a fragile heart torn out. The swimming pools of Maddin's memories are lustful pits, at street level families swim, down one tier the girl's practice mouth to mouth resuscitation on one another, and on the bottom level the boys cavort naked in the changing rooms.The film transcends documentary, even fantastical documentary into mysticism. Maddin uses the imagery of horses, as have many great artists from Raphael, to Gericault, to Marc, to Parajanov. We see Golden Boy parades, a Masonic town hall, and the two forks under the forks, the mysterious underground rivers that feed the mons veneris on which Winnipeg nestles.My personal favourite scene was Lorette Avenue where we are show a "hermaphrodite" street where on one side the street has houses facing front, and on the other side the backs of houses. No-one talks about Lorette Avenue… (Previously Maddin had made distinctions between alleys where the backs of houses only can be scene, and streets where we only see the fronts of houses).I won't spoil the ending for you, you have yet to see the wonder of Citizen Girl! Do not waver or hesitate, make ye to the cinema! Maddin has now taken the step from being a beloved cult director, to being a great auteur. Vive le Cinema! Vive la Résistance Culturelle!

A tribute, kind of, to the great city of Winnipeg, Manitoba (I'm not being facetious-I've been there), this is an 80 minute documentary about the place. It accentuates the winter's bitter cold, the days gone by (some of the images are amazing) and what the city meant and means to Mr. Maddin. This film is not for everyone. It is in black and white and grainy. At first, I wasn't sure if this was a mockumentary, but even though the narrator laments the passing of people and places, I was wondering if the whole point was to explain why people don't leave. Sure, its no Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver (you get the idea), but its a medium size city that thrives. I have seen Mr. Maddin's "Saddest Music In The World", so I know I was expecting something different. Maybe you have no interest in Winnipeg (or can even find it on a map!), but that doesn't detract from the narrative. An added bonus is Ann Savage playing the narrator's mother. Wow, she is in her mid 80's and she agreed to do this role. I don't expect mass agreement here, but if you were commissioned to do a film about your hometown, I'm not sure how different your film would be than this, especially if you life in a city thats cold in the winter. I'm waiting for "My Buffalo" or "My Fargo". For now, I'm quite content with this film that moved me and even taught me about the city. A great left of center cinematic achievement.

Screened with live director-narration at the Sydney Film Festival, My Winnepeg was not always easy to engage with but was, ultimately, one of the most satisfying filmic experiences of the Festival fortnight to-date.Mixing surreal, dreamlike images with heartfelt reminiscents, Guy Maddin created extraordinary cinema that will linger long in the memory of all that witnessed it.The first 20 minutes are the toughest slog - it takes a little while to comprehend exactly the direction this loving-yet-satirical homage to Maddin's home town is trying to accomplish. And I also have reservations as to how this is going to play to audiences without the immediate, personal engagement the live-narration provides - the connection the on-stage presence provided made for an intimacy that may not be otherwise available.But, with no reservation, the dreamlike images, coupled with the heartfelt words of the creator, made for a unique, beautiful, hilarious, moving experience. This is a major work from an extraordinary talent; a must-see for those that crave films that engage the head and the heart.