Emo-folk like Dashboard Confesional, Alanis Morrissette, Emily Gould and a world of bloggers have served to teach us the cautionary – and embarrassing – tale of oversharing (really, have you no shame?).
But, if there ever was a right way to overshare, if one could use narcissism for the purposes of good instead of evil, wintry confessional Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin certainly would take that prize.
The self-aware Canadians latest delirious delight, “My Winnipeg,” is documentary docu-fantasia” ostensibly about the the director’s hometown – the city of Winnipeg in Manitoba, as commissioned by the documentary channel in the Great White North (“I’m from Canada, so I don’t ever have to pitch movies, the government just pays me to make them”).
However, Maddin’s Winnipeg isn’t just a straight civics history lesson – though those elements certainly exist, albeit imagined. Instead, the iconoclastic filmmaker used the concept as an excuse to revisit his favorite topic: himself. The third movie in what Maddin describes as his “me trilogy,” to him hometown means home, means family: the filmmaker used the government funded project to go autobiographical once again and delve into his dysfunctional child hood issues growing up in the wintry prairie province – it’s essentially a surrealist form of aversion therapy that vacillates between the personal and the provincial.
Maddin was at the Apple store in April for a Tribeca-related Q&A. We took notes and since the film comes out today in limited release (also on the IFC OnDemand channel), we thought we’d spit it out now. Plus, we loved the enchanting film to death, it’s one our favorite movies of the year thus far. For additional context, the trailer lies here.
As we’ve just noted, “My Winnipeg” is like a feverish dream and far from a traditional documentary. “All documentaries are personal, or relatively anyhow. Just like all things more or less taste like chicken, documentaries are more or less completely personal,” Maddin said.
But the producer who originally pitched the series unintentionally encouraged the filmmaker to take a more imagined perspective on the city. “For some reason he came to Winnipeg and by some strange fluke he had been enchanted [by the city] and so he just said, ‘Enchant me.’ ” Maddin took the idea and ran with it.
In the highly fabulist doc – it’s hard to tell what’s fabricated Winnipeg lore and what’s fact – Maddin rents out his old childhood home to revisit the early salad days and hires actors to play his family members – except, he says, “mother” (but he’s lying, his moms is played by B-movie icon Ann Savage).
Maddin’s autobiographical work has rubbed friends and family wrong in the past (his journals were recently published in Canada and again, ruffled a few feathers, “I write things down like I have Tourettes and don’t think of the consequences,” he said), but one benefit of his mother’s advanced age keeps her from the frighteningly Guinol manner in which he depicts her.
“Lucky for me she as ocular degeneration,” he said sounding pleased. “She’s going blind, and she can’t stand the quick cutting, so I just tell her it would make her eyes sore. She wouldn’t like it.”
As for why the city’s history is so imagined and fabricated? Well, there’s multiple reasons. “I hate doing research,” he said for one. For two: “Canadians and Winnipegger are lousy self-mythologizer. One of the reasons I was excited to make the movie was a chance to [create some myths]. There’s something about living in Canada next to such a strong cultural force. Canadians insist on identify themselves as ‘not American’ and that usually means we don’t exaggerate when we tell our stories.”
The filmmaker even made a wry dig at his films truths meets abstraction mien. “I had it vetted by lawyers and poets” he said with a dry wink.
Seemingly working out his issues through his art, Maddin would purposely confuse the actors playing his family members in the reenactments; not divulging details or background information and sometimes intentionally delivering their dialogue only moments before they he called action. “I don’t know why,” he laughed, perhaps secretly wondering if it was some passive aggressively removed stab at sibling revenge. “It just felt so good hanging them out to dry like that.”
He pondered the strange move for a moment. “It gave me the exact effect I wanted; people reenacting some megalomaniacs childhood for reasons that couldn’t be comprehended by even the megalomaniac,” he laughed.
The director originally used personal elements in his films as a ways to to ground his fanciful and surreal films in some kind of reality (he also said he didn’t want to be labelled an “artsy wanker”). But around the time of his first overtly autobiographical film, “Coward Bends The Knee,” outwardly naming the main character Guy Maddin and pinning all the ugly flaws nakedly on himself was strangely liberating. “Once I realized I was the person I was depicting, I got a really intoxicating kick of masochism cause the character was really cowardly and horrible. It was like spilling my guts and I wasn’t expecting any forgiveness; it felt Dostoevsky-ian, it felt masochistically delicious.”
And the the thrilling rush of holding your warts and all self up to a mirror became only more addictive. “Then the next film (“Brand Upon The Brain!“) I started outing my family members by including them in my confessionals and that felt sadomasochismtically delicious. And then with ‘Winnipeg’ I outed my city, myself and my family.”
Suffice to say Maddin said he’s probably exhausted autobiography and will likely move on to a new terrain for his next work. “I can’t do it anymore. It’s so self-loathingly [gross]… enough already! Maybe I revealed too much,” he said sounding rather sad.
Separating fact from fiction in ‘Winnipeg’s is mostly a moot point, but surprisingly, a few things in the film’s fabled fiction are actually true, including “If Day” – a staged Nazi take over the municipality in the middle of WWII that was meant to scare citizens into buying war bonds (it worked).
Another seemingly fantastical whimsy was a legendary stable fire that caused horses to dive into a local river only to freeze to death. The frigid temperatures iced the animals alive, with their heads above the frozen river all winter long (you can see the scene here). The bizarre spectacle soon became a local draw and the film’s hypnotic narrator (Maddin) insists that the city enjoyed a big baby boom the next fall after the location became a romantic spot for lovers. “These frozen stallions made Winnipeggers really horny,” he said matter of factly.
The film hasn’t been seem by most Winnipeggers yet and Maddin is understandably a little nervous. “Winnipeg is tough on its own people even at the best of times and I love the temperament, but i don’t know if they have a great sense of humor about themselves, we’ll see,” he said before pausing very awarely. “This very conversation will be available in downloadable podcasts, even in Winnipeg, so I’m going to be very tactful in what I say.”
“My Winnipeg” comes out in theaters in limited release today. Go out of your way to see it.
