My Winnipeg

What really struck me about 2007's MY WINNIPEG was how relatable it is.  For all of its insane creativity, observation, and eccentricity, writer/director Guy Maddin's "docu-fantasia" about his titular hometown in Manitoba, Canada speaks to anyone who has spent all or most of their lives in the same city, no matter where it may be.  Where changing times inevitably reveal regrettable civic and corporate decisions.  Things seemingly as slight as the removal of a beloved neighborhood tree to the monumental horrors of razing hockey arenas and closing department stores, places which formed our identities.  

Maddin narrates his film, describing Winnipeg as a snow clogged, sleepy place that no one can quite leave.  Because they are so sleepy.  An actor playing him is periodically seen on a train, barely able to rouse himself to look out the window, to follow a route and finally escape.  He hits upon an idea - "film his way out."  This will involve renting out his childhood home, hiring actors to play his family, placement of furniture and nick nacks where they once were.  He will have them play scenes from his life, like when his sister came home distraught after hitting a deer with the car, but their mother is convinced she rather just lost her virginity. Or how his brothers could never quite get that hallway runner straight enough for their mother's satisfaction.  

The mother is played by Ann Savage, perhaps best known for her role in the 1945 noir DETOUR.  Maddin describes her as someone who is always there, omnipresent, whether alive or dead.  Following him as he leaves snow prints on the sidewalks in front of a girls' school, perhaps seeking unclean experiences. As he urinates in the Winnipeg Arena (where he was born) just before the wrecking ball takes it out.   As he sleepwalks.  

MY WINNIPEG is an original, clever meta exercise blending partial truths about the city's history and the filmmaker's life.  Maddin utilizes mixed media to tell tales of the 1919 General Strike, the racetrack fire that sent several horses to their deaths in the Red River, their heads preserved, frozen above the icy surface, the trash dump that was soded over as a grassy hill, in the winter (half the year) used as a favorite spot for tabboganning, and where some children get impaled by a rusty car fender.

This sort of mordant humor emerges frequently in MY WINNIPEG, and it's fairly depressing, too.  My favorite bits involved a ghostly hockey team, the city's mysterious and sometimes scandalous back roadways and alleys, and the theory about why everyone carries so many keys, but I loved just about every inclusion.  At times Maddin comes off as a bit pleased with his own wit, but his film has enough familarity for those souls who've lived in the same place long enough to see the glory fade into mediocrity or worse, even if things really weren't all that great to begin with.  What is a town without ghosts, indeed?