popcorninhell My Winnipeg is a pseudo-documentary/essay film/work of elaborate fiction that is arguably the best depiction of a person's complicated relationship with their birthplace ever committed to celluloid. In it director Guy Maddin mythologizes the city he's called home his whole life with surrealist tall-tales of Winnipeg's old hockey arena, the 1919 general strike and a rivalry between two warring taxi cab companies. At the center of it is Maddin (Fehr) who walks like a somnambulist through his snow-covered hamlet, interacting with actors who are hired to reenact half-remembered childhood traumas, most of which concern his shrewish mother (Savage).Somewhere between a waking dream and a Freudian melodrama, the amateurish reenactments only adds to the atmosphere, which conjures comparisons to early David Lynch. Always the neo-constructionist, Maddin employs a sloe of old-school effects and technical wizardry that enhances the experience. It has been said that Maddin's films always have the feeling of seeing pre-code talkies from another, warped dimension. A dimension where people of the thirties would accept fluid sexuality, incest and gore in their films. Granted while My Winnipeg sacrifices the gleefully salacious themes of Careful (1992) and the grotesqueness of Tales from the Gimli Hospital (1988) the film stands as the director's most personal work. The same themes do remain but only on the fringes, subtlety weaved into a complex tapestry of nostalgia and surreal flights of fancy.Those seeing My Winnipeg for the first time may catch themselves wondering if the myriad of tall-tales are true. So many claims skate the edge between amusing peculiarity and improbable absurdity that it's hard to ferret out what's real and what's a product of docu- fantasia. While I can sympathize, asking such questions is comparable to asking how many angels you can fit on a match head. It's better to let the film wash over you and be regaled by stories of frozen horse heads, treasure hunts, aboriginal origin stories and other "facts" about the heart of the heart of the continent. That and be taken in by the crisp black and white cinematography that only adds to the city's macabre charm.Maddin states via narration that he must escape Winnipeg. "I must leave it now, but how to escape one's city?" Many people ask themselves that same question before taking that fateful step to (hopefully) greener pastures and opportunity aplenty. Even if you're the type of person who yearns to leave their small town, it seems, at least according to director Guy Maddin, that you can't really escape the smothering embrace of a world exaggerated in your own mind. Whether all is true or none of it is, My Winnipeg still remains an exemplary portrait of the Canadian "The Gateway to the West".

burntouthack Meh. Whimsical/bitter reminiscing with lots of made up facts and anecdotes which you can imagine some audiences rocking with mirth to but which aren't all that clever or witty - they're just very whimsical.eg (my spoof)Grainy b/w shots of someone in a living room being offered a cup of tea and drinking it with a smileNarrator: A cup of tea. A cup of tea. My mother would always offer visitors a cup of tea. What is this drink? This tea, cupped in porcelain, porcelain as white as the snow which falls outside onto our Winnipeg sidewalks? My mother served tea in a cup from a set her grandmother gave her, a cup which had come from the mayor's wife, who murdered her own sister, drowning her in a bath of Earl Grey. A drink of death. The cup of life. A cup of tea.It's sort of like that, with a quick shot thrown in of the sister drowned in the bath of tea. 80 mins of that. Doesn't really have anything to say.

ryancarroll88 What is "My Winnipeg"? Sure, it's easy to dismiss it as an experimental film, but that's like blacklisting it to a future in some storage bin in a modern art museum, which would be a shame. The film claims to be a documentary about Guy Maddin's hometown, Winnipeg, MB. The footage shows what appears to be reenactments of Maddin's childhood, scenes from his family and a speckled history of the town. The narrative feels like it is being materialized just as Maddin thinks it, juggling arresting emotion and fleeting sentimentality. The repeating stock footage, circular cinematography and grizzly black and white tone make the film hypnotic to watch and add to its dream-like state.From the beginning it's obvious that this 'reality' is pure imagination, a fantasy concocted by Maddin, but for what purpose? Why is he trying to escape reality and his hometown that he loves so dearly? The best way to understand is to watch it, accept it as truth like Maddin has, and experience the world as it becomes a much more magical place.

Andres Salama This engaging, very personal tribute from weird Canadian director Guy Maddin to his hometown of Winnipeg is very well done. Shot in black and white with his familiar style that reminds one of both silent cinema and the films of David Lynch, the plot has an alter ego of the director hire his elderly, domineering mother (actually b-movie starlet from the 1940s Ann Savage) and actors playing his siblings in order to relive his teenage years in the sixties, and sort of understand what makes him tick. The movie includes a lot of lore about Winnipeg that may be true in some cases and is almost certainly not true in other cases (the story about the frozen horses' heads in the river, for example, is hard for me to believe). This deadpan, funny tribute is most of all a nostalgic paean to his childhood, and a denunciation of modern capitalism mindless drive to change all things (Maddin recounts in a heartfelt way how they demolished a popular department store as well as his beloved ice hockey arena, for example). And because nostalgia of our childhood is something that most people can relate to, this makes this movie more accessible than other films of him. The film explains also the reason he never leave Winnipeg (in order to defend it, and not let others completely ruin it) as well as a lot of the obsessions in his other movies (for instance, his fascination with communist aesthetics seems rooted in the strong labor movement in his hometown).