My Winipeg

My Winnipeg

Guy Maddin

What is outstanding about this 80 minute documary(docufantasia as Maddin
likes to call it, is the use of the English language. My Winnipeg is not
geared to youth, to children or those who had trouble making it out of high
school with diploma in hand.

It is English at its best, with words seldom heard in film, on television
and almost never encountered in books, with the exception of Joyce Carol
Oats who is a master of the English language.

Guy Maddin's voice is heard throughout the film, He is the commentator and the
self professed narrator and subject of the film. He is it!

Plot:

My Winnipeg is a story of a boy, Maddin, growing up in Winnipeg and still
living in the same City many years later. He wants to get out of the City,
to live elsewhere but in order to do that he has to go back into the past,
to remember and know what it is he wants to leave and to determine if
leaving is the right thing to do.

Commentary:

Maddin uses mystical rumination, personal history and unforgettable images
of his mother to brings his goodbye letter to fruition.

It feels as if the audience is going for a ride, maybe one of those Disney
rides that go through tunnels and exposes us to a different world than our own.

Winnipeg is strangely at odds with our way of life because of its extremely
cold weather but the underlying tragedy, the senseless destruction of buildings
filled with generations of memories and the importance of the working men and woman
is as tangible in Winnipeg as it is in the United States.

Ice Hockey being the pinnacle of this change. In the fight between the Capitalists' greed versus
elation from victory and the effort of striving for excellence in ice hockey, the winner was not
the old timers who Maddin shows with such love and atttention to their importance
In Winnipeg but to the demolision machines that care only about the new
and not the resultant damage that their acts of "moivng on" create in the lives
of the City's denizens.

Maddin's father was a vital part of Ice Hockey and so was Maddin. It is sad, tragic
that this Winnipeg Hockey Arena is gone and the way of family life enjoyed by many
is no more. In its stead is the Ice Hockey brought into the world arena, another sport
to be a source of Capital largess.

This important and enjoyable view of Winnipeg, of Maddin's family in his formative years
and an intimate acquaintance with Maddin's Mother and his relationship with her,
make this film well worth your time and money.

My Winnipeg is a film of extraordinary images worth savoring.


Linda Z
WBAI Women's Collective
Rotten Tomatoes: Witches Brew