At a time when ‘arthouse’ can mean any old bourgeois French muck or independently produced American marriage comedy, it’s good to know that Canadian auteur Guy Maddin is out there taking one for the team.
This fabulous, almost entirely fabricated documentary detailing the history of the World’s Coldest City (and Mr. Maddin’s hometown) calls itself My Winnepeg. It is, more accurately Guy’s Winnipeg, a wonderland imagined in grammar borrowed from noir and early cinema.
The northern city’s noble history of organised labour is thus reimagined as clashes with Soviet ice hockey supermen, communist heroines, spiritualism, respectable prostitution and a fully fledged Nazi invasion. Back in the Maddin homestead, the young Guy’s life is transformed into a Freudian themepark, dominated by a tyrannical mother (Ann Savage) and a dead patriarch whose corpse under the rug doubles as handy prop for watching TV.
Maddin embellishes these unlikely details with gorgeous, unforgettable images. Looking at frozen horses’ heads sticking out of the snow, one is reminded how influential this unique filmmaking talent has been on young upstart artists like Marcel Dzama. Shine on, you crazy, wonderful diamond.