It's Guy Maddin's Winnipeg -- but it's not the only one.
In fact, the local filmmaking legend is the first to admit the version of his hometown presented in the new "docu-fantasia" My Winnipeg is by no means the definitive one; that in fact, there are hundreds of thousands of Winnipegs out there -- one for everyone who's ever lived here.
Which goes a long way to explaining some of the more fantastical elements of Maddin's quasi-travelogue -- the sexy seances and underground waterways and horses heads frozen in river ice that co-exist alongside easier-to-document events like the demolition of the old arena or the general strike of 1919.
It may also explain why Maddin's new film -- which opens across Canada tomorrow, but has already toured the international festival circuit -- has been met with criticism from a few of this city's former residents.
"They get indignant on behalf of Winnipeggers, and they get very crotchety, but my answer to them is always the same: 'I still live in Winnipeg, but you moved away,' " says Maddin. "I literally got a standing ovation the first time I said it. Because I was really taken to task for presenting (Winnipeg) in a poor light, for not including the Taste of Manitoba festival or the Winnipeg Contemporary Dancers, or this laundry list of local institutions. But I always say to them, 'If you like it so much, why did you move?' "
Maddin might just as easily have pointed out that his critics clearly weren't paying attention. For while the film -- commissioned by the Documentary Channel, but shot in Maddin's distinctive surrealist style -- posits Winnipeg as a snow-shrouded dreamscape of wistful sleepwalkers and barely-believable urban legends, it's also as affectionate a love letter as this city has ever seen.
And so what if the creative license taken tends to blur the line between what's real and what's fiction, to the point that even longtime residents may be questioning their own histories? To hear Maddin tell it, that's exactly the effect he was going for.
"I just want Winnipeg to be mythologized," he explains from a hotel room in Toronto. "Canadians are very shy about self-mythologizing, while Americans are not. Our Canadian identity is such a flimsy thing. When Canadians are asked, 'What's a Canadian?', all we can say is, 'Well, we're not Americans.' And when pressed, we just say, 'Well, we don't exaggerate.' And there's no surer way to consign a local folk hero or event to complete oblivion than by presenting it in lifesize terms."
Maddin admits he found it tough writing in the realm of non-fiction, but knew from the start he didn't want to deliver anything that resembled a traditional documentary. Even his liaison at the Documentary Channel -- who'd visited Winnipeg twice, and loved it both times -- wanted Maddin to capture those elusive qualities that keep people coming back.
"He said, 'Everyone knows Winnipeg -- to the naked eye, anyway -- is just a frozen hellhole, but there's something else going on,' " he recalls. "So it's charged with this strange mission, almost like propaganda, to somehow get to the bottom of the powers of enchantment that Winnipeg possesses."
As much as it's about his hometown, My Winnipeg is also about Maddin's home -- specifically, the childhood home (above an Ellice Avenue beauty salon) where he and his siblings spent their formative years.
After coaxing '40s legend Ann Savage ("the fiercest femme fatale in the history of film noir," in Maddin's words) out of a 50-year retirement to play his mother, Maddin literally recreates that early abode, and the many life-shaping events that transpired there.
"I was attempting to mythologize the city, but somehow I couldn't disentangle city from family from childhood home," he explains. "And I realize I'm not quite through with home yet. I'd like to make another movie some day that really nails what home means to everybody. There's something magical about the place you call home. It may just be four crummy walls and a roof, but there's something that happens within it that makes you think differently."
So far, critics worldwide have hailed My Winnipeg as the latest in a long line of Maddin masterpieces (though they're careful to write around some of the details, as if even they can't tell what's real and what isn't).
And while Maddin admits he makes a point of telling "professional fibs" to outside audiences, he hopes local crowds will go along for the ride.
"My friend Melissa Steele (wife of longtime Maddin collaborator George Toles) told me I should get some sort of pre-emptive T-shirt made that says, 'It's My Winnipeg, not yours,'" he quips. "Whether it exaggerates some things or romanticizes others, at least it's getting the old Hollywood treatment."
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