Winnipeg, Mon Amour

Guy Maddin is a liar, and he knows it. His colleagues and collaborators know it. But his film My Winnipeg is supposed to be all true: every second, every frame vetted by attorneys, stamped by inspectors, supervised by invigilators. It has to be true; it’s a documentary.

In My Winnipeg, those familiar with Maddin’s oeuvre will experience a film that is different and counterintuitive. Hermetic and studio bound, his films celebrate the artifice of cinema. Through seven features — including Tales from the Gimli Hospital, Archangel, Careful, Twilight of the Ice Nymphs, and The Saddest Music in the World — countless shorts, an International Emmy–winning television production (Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary,), and numerous art shows, he has been consistent in his mannered absurdism. Time tunnels connecting past and present, his movies employ one of the oldest techniques of the medium — a blurring smear of Vaseline around the circumference of the lens that creates a dream state onscreen — to explore life’s unceasing melodrama.

His style is instantly recognizable. There is no mistaking My Winnipeg as anything but the work of G. Arthur Maddin, especially at its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (tiff) on the evening of September 7. There on the stage of the Winter Garden Theatre, the master himself stood in front of his film and delivered its narration live.

But the first words spoken in the film are not by him but by Mother: “I wasn’t born yesterday, dearie. I know all about fur and all about blood.” In close-up, the face of an old woman — aquiline features, silver hair pulled back, white skin glowing on the director’s trademark silver screen — is looking off-camera as Maddin’s voice prompts her lines from off-screen, like a reverse echo: first quiet, then loud.

“I wasn’t born yesterday, dearie. I know all about fur and all about blood. Where did it happen? In the back seat?” Off-camera, Maddin’s voice supplies the respondent’s dialogue. “Where did what happen? ” Onstage, Maddin stood vigilant, ready to deliver his narration.

“The real party,” says his mother. Maddin gives her a line reading: stronger. “The real party,” she repeats in a quavering, resentful voice. “The real party. Did he pin you down, or did you just lie back and let nature take its course? Was it a boy on the track team or the man with the tire iron?” Then Maddin begins his narration proper:

Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Winnipeg.
Snowy, sleepwalking
Winnipeg.
My home for my entire life.
My entire life.
I must leave it.
I must leave it.
I must leave it now.