STRANGER THAN FACT

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Located in Manitoba, Canada, Winnipeg is right in the middle of the North American continent. When Guy Maddin, who is often compared to his contemporary David Lynch for his surrealist films, was given a chance to produce a documentary about his hometown Winnipeg, he did not make a straitlaced textbook example. Instead, his resulting film is a “docu-fantasia” (a term coined by Maddin) that exposes his own complicated love-hate relationship with his longtime home through the city’s historical events and urban legends. Mixing travel documentary, childhood anecdotes and silhouette animation (and more) together in his cinematic laboratory, Guy Maddin (or should I say Dr. Frankenstein?) stitches together a wildly imaginative and absurdly engrossing film in My Winnipeg.

After introducing 1950s femme fatale Ann Savage in the role of Maddin’s mother in the opening shots, My Winnipeg takes the viewers to a midnight train filled with sleeping passengers. Guy Maddin, who also serves as the film’s narrator, introduces Winnipeg and confesses his motive behind this film is to explore the reasons why he never succeeded in leaving Winnipeg for good. His first step is to sublet his childhood home, a big white house he grew up in with his parents and siblings. For one month, Maddin invites his mother to live in the house, hires actors to play his sister and brothers, pretends to exhume his father’s body and reburies it in the living room (under the rug), has his girlfriend’s Pug, Spanky, play his childhood Chihuahua, and reluctantly includes the weird old lady who sublets the house but refuses to leave. He suggests that by reenacting his family episodes on film, he will be able to understand how both his relationships with his family and his hometown keep him from leaving the sleepwalking Winnipeg once and for all.

A few minutes after calling his mother’s beauty salon “embarrassing,” Guy Maddin the narrator recalls all the details and vivid memories of the little shop in front of his house and nostalgically proclaims his love for the place. Ledge Man, a TV drama which Maddin claims to be the only original production in Winnipeg for the last fifty years, features a young man threatening to kill himself by jumping off his apartment’s ledge in every episode, only to be talked down by his mother (“coincidently” played by Maddin’s mother) every time at the end of the program. While Maddin has previously explored his relationship with his overbearing mother in his last film, Brand Upon The Brain, it becomes explicitly personal this time around with his melodramatic reenactments of specific family incidents. Moreover, his complicated feelings towards Winnipeg bear uncanny emotional resemblance to his relationship with his mother. At times, he can’t seem to bear the city’s (and his mother’s) dealings at all. Yet deep in his heart, he always has a soft spot for his maternal roots.

There is really no way to tell what’s fact and what’s fiction in My Winnipeg. Maddin boasted that Winnipeg has ten times the sleepwalking rate than any city in the world. According to Maddin, Winnipeg is also the coldest city and the city with the most paranormal occurrence. Once during a fire at a racetrack stable, a band of horses stomped out into the wild in panic and ended up having their bodies frozen underneath a river with their heads stuck above the ice – the spot becomes a popular picnic spot for lovers for the rest of winter. Many of these folksy stories may not be factually accurate, but like any good campfire story, who cares how true they are if they’re wild and entertaining?



Despite the factual liberties Maddin took in his storytelling, My Winnipeg is an emotionally truthful film at its heart. Guy Maddin’s narration is passionate and intimate as if he was reading straight from the diary he kept under his pillow. He forcefully condemns the civic government for demolishing the historical architecture in Winnipeg, turning its landmark department store into a sterile and corporate-owned minor league hockey arena, which he describes as “a zombie in a cheap new suit.” Soon afterwards, the government tears down the old Winnipeg Arena, “the real Winnipeg Arena,” says Maddin. He claims to be born inside the arena’s dressing room and grew up in the locker room while his father managed the team. For Maddin, hockey is the paternal side of his upbringing and his beloved arena is a memorial of his childhood. With one last chance to say goodbye to his holy place, he literally marks his own territory by relieving himself in the bathroom one last time. With much wit and heartbreak, he vehemently expresses his anger towards the senseless city planning and his grief over the loss of his sentimental mementos in his powerful voiceover.

A big reason why My Winnipeg is so successful in convoluting the facts with the myths is Guy Maddin’s seamless blend of archival footage and newly-shot materials. Maddin, who is an avid fan of silent films and early talkies, has the remarkable ability to produce contemporary works with the vintage look of a 1920s film. For My Winnipeg, he shot most of it on an HD camera, projected his digital recordings on his refrigerator and re-shot the images with a film camera to create his vintage effects. His actors’ melodramatic acting style heightens those long-
buried feelings with an occasionally humorous edge which fits right in with his visual design.

“What if…?” is a question that Guy Maddin keeps asking himself throughout the film. What if Winnipeg Arena had never been torn down? Maddin imagines having hockey legends playing their hearts out in their old age as the wrecking ball crashes onto the pillars of the arena. He also envisions Winnipeg being salvaged by a proletariat superhero, Citizen Girl, who would right all the wrongs done to his dear city. There is not a doubt that Guy Maddin has a romantic heart full of nostalgia. But My Winnipeg does not come across as mawkish because Maddin’s feelings for his Winnipeg are endearing to anyone who has a hometown where they once belonged.

The Museum of Fine Arts Houston is showing
My Winnipeg at the following times:
Saturday, Nov. 22 (1:00 PM)/ Sunday, Nov. 23 (7:00 PM)/ Friday, Nov. 28 (7:00 PM)/ Saturday, Nov. 29 (7:00 PM)/ Sunday, Nov. 30 (5:00 PM)/ Sunday, Nov. 30 (7:00 PM)