This entry was posted on Sunday, July 6th, 2008 at 10:21 pm and is filed under Documentaries, Movie Reviews, N, NEW IN THEATER. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Director: Guy Maddin
Starring: Darcy Fehr, Ann Savage,
Art house, and film festival sweetheart, writer/director Guy Maddin (The Saddest Music in The World) has put out a visual poem about his hometown and one of the coldest cities in the world, Winnipeg. It has a pretentious and surreal black and white dream-like style, and elevated language that reminded me of the works I had to read for University English classes, but soon the film shows a playful and damn funny side that lightens up after its ostentatious opening.
There is no plot here, to speak of and the film is alternately ridiculous and repetitive, but also becomes increasingly funny. Guy Maddin wants to have some fun as he tells us about his memories of Winnipeg, both past and present. He talks about his quirky family before moving on to touch on hockey, the railroad, back lanes and plays with little snippets of history, some of which is partially true and others are just little Maddin jokes. In the end he comes back to his family and his own ideas and light-hearted opinions of Winnipeg. The film is often repetitive and there is a painful dance segment that made m want a nap, but still the charming narrative and tongue in cheek humor makes up for it.
My Winnipeg is an unusual film that is more of a mockumentary than anything else, and has found some support on the North American art house circuit, and with critics. As for me, it was better than I had expected. It is a poem set to film and if Robert Frost were alive today and decided to allow a movie to be made about one of his poems, I have no doubt that he would choose Guy Maddin to make the film and that it would look and sound like My Winnipeg. It’s not for everyone, but then, neither is Robert Frost.
