My Winnipeg poster & wallpaper

Amy Stewart, Ann Savage, Cory Cassidy

Told in three strands, chronicles the personal history of filmmaker Guy Maddin against the backdrop of his hometown of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

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78% liked it

2,193 ratings

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95% liked it

77 critics

Unrated, 1 hr. 20 min.

Directed by: Guy Maddin

Release Date: September 7, 2007

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Flixster Reviews (370)

  • her69eyes
    May 9, 2009
    her69eyes
    Guy Maddin's "My Winnipeg" is, as he calls it, a "docu-fantasia". He was given funds to create a documentary about Winnipeg, a forgotten town in Manitoba, and instead created a very personal and intimate portrait of, as it turns out, himself. The film is still about Winnipeg, and...( read more) Maddin passionately defends that several of the absurd scenarios in the film are grounded in some truth, but it's more about the connection between the filmmaker and his hometown. By revisiting the town, or the town he perceived it to be, he's able to make sense of his sexuality, childhood, and identity.

    Maddin, in the film, is played by Darcy Fehr (although narrated by Maddin himself). Fehr sits on an icy train with hypnotic and surreal landscapes. At one point, a projection of his mother's watchful eye peers out and makes sure he's not up to any trouble. Winnipeg, Maddin says, is a town of sleepwalkers, and it's time for him to leave the city for good - again. In his effort to escape the town and make sense of his history, he takes on a peculiar project. By filming his own childhood, it will allow him to escape Winnipeg. He casts actors to play his family and a dog to play his long dead dog. The only part that didn't need recasting was his father. They simply dug him up and put him under the family room rug.

    It's hard to make clear sense of "My Winnipeg". When Maddin recalls a daily television series from his childhood called "Ledge Man", which featured a man ready to jump from a ledge everyday until his mother talked him out of it, we feel the urge to Google it if only to prove the film wrong. But that's not the point. I wouldn't necessarily call it simply allegorical, either - it's literally true, but not necessarily literally true to, say, the Chamber of Commerce. This is Maddin's recollection, and who are we to doubt what he's presenting?

    The film is stylized as an old silent film. The images, all in a heavy contrasted black and white, jump around the screen and are broken up by title cards that move as quickly as subliminal advertisements. The acting, such as that of the star of the 1945 noir cult classic "Detour", Ann Savage, is over-the-top and absurdly melodramatic. There's a scene where Fehr's sister comes home in tears saying she's hit a deer, and has patches of blood and fur on her car to prove it. Savage, playing Fehr's mother, is convinced that the only thing that went down was fornication in the back seat.

    "My Winnipeg" is worth seeing if only because you've never seen anything else like it. The film is extraordinarily surrealistic and dreamlike, and Maddin is so proud of the tone he creates that, at a Q&A after the screening I attended, he said he wouldn't mind if people had a good nap during the film. It's a film completely void of any restraint, and it's an irresistible expression of filmmaking freedom. A joy to watch.
  • gor41
    November 1, 2008
    gor41
    Fascinating poetic hymn to Maddin's home town which bombards you with captivating images as Maddin narrates. Mixes documentary footage with staged reenactments and surreal flights of fancy. A truly original visual and narrative style - Maddin deserves a wide audience.
  • bort16
    October 27, 2008
    bort16
    Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Winnipeg. Everything in Winnipeg is a euphemism. Sleep walkers hold the keys to their old homes! By law! Nazi Fascists invaded Winnipeg! The coldest city in the world! Home of the Ultravixens! Forks and the Forks under the Forks, and the horsehead picnic tabl...( read more)es! Hermaphrodite streets - half front street, half back lane! Masons, ghosts, spirits and sad buildings!
    Yes, you can find these things in Winnipeg, Winnipeg, wonderful Winnipeg!
    If you've ever seen a film like My Winnipeg before, it was likely only in your dreams, or the dreams of the mad poet of Winnipeg, Guy Maddin. Maddin's love of the silent film era has shaped his own visual style, shot usually on old grainy film stock, appearing as it his films were perhaps well preserved 1920s avant garde. He's built a career on making films so outrageously insane by modern filmmaking standards. His films are usually either bizarre horrors or totally unique comedies, or both.
    My Winnipeg is a film of sinisterly off the wall humor, conveyed through Guy Maddin's narration (played by Darcy Fehr). One gem: "My father died, with nothing left to do, he died. I'd like to say he spontaneously combusted on the ice at the area, that would have been great."
    The narration often doubles back on itself, repeating itself in different forms, or entirely contradicting itself in single sentences. All the while the images (usually grainy black and white, but also occasionally in color or animation) are puncuated with flash cards, usually in single or short phrases (Tragedy! Dead Man walking! Dance of the Hairless Boners, Naked! Hairless! Dance! Swollen Pride! Why?!) They flash only for a fraction of a sentence, making them difficult to read.
    I guess if My Winnipeg could be placed in a genre, they would have to call it a slapstick documentary. Maddin uses archive footage mixed with Maddin's own. The central thesis of the film is Maddin's memories and the city's as well. To begin, he rides a train, sleeping, while it rolls around the Winnipeg streets, seemingly unable to ever leave town. To come to terms with his inability to ever leave the city. He rents his old home for a month, to recreate his childhood memories. He recruits actors to play his siblings, and takes his mother (Ann Savage) to the home, then recreates memories and incidents from childhood. Maddin always seems to have a fascination with mothers, his mother.
    Elsewhere, he details the Masonic undercurrents of the city, the occult, man pageants, Nazi takeovers, and the rape of the city's beloved Winnipeg Jets by that corrupt National Hockey League!
    So, the question that many ask then, "is it true?" Being Canadian, I know some things are true, some things are not.
    Would you want to really know the answer anyway? Its law that everyone gets to keep the keys to their old homes. Why? Because the town has the highest sleepwalking rate in the world! They leave their homes and wander to their old houses in the dark, in the cold, in the snow! You must let them in until they wake! Is that true? I don't care to know. If I knew then I would have to have come back to reality. Unless of course Maddin's Winnipeg is reality. In which case, Winnipeg! Wonderful Winnipeg!
  • columbiatch
    June 26, 2008
    columbiatch
    Told like a first person, stream of thought documentary with plenty of nostalgia, but often veers off into bizarre "fantasies". I use "" because some of the weird stuff like the horses and the "What If" part Maddin actually confirms as truth in an interview I read. I liked Maddin...( read more)'s montage style, the throwback cinematic technique, and the pseudo-noirish narration. His often queer little stories are funny and imaginative. The ending is so silly.
  • littlecharmer1959
    July 29, 2009
    littlecharmer1959
    A fantasy/documentary on Maddin's hometown of Winnipeg. It's a very personal film but it was engaging and fascinating throughout. Maddin's Winnipeg is one of sleepwalkers, frozen horse heads, the academy of the ultra-vixens and man-pageants, and I didn't feel like leaving it. My ...( read more)favourite Guy Maddin film so far.
  • rayld02
    November 27, 2009
    rayld02
    The director's concept brings us into a world of fantasies, with surreal pictures in black and white. Bunuel, Lynch, Hitchcock, Bergman... I don't know actually where did he get his inspiration from, but this film is a blast of expose.
  • sagapart12
    September 29, 2009
    sagapart12
    What the hell? But at the same time... kinda interesting and entertaining. I'm still somewhat dumbfounded by Guy Maddin.
  • drpritch
    September 7, 2009
    drpritch
    Bizarre, surreal, profoundly Canadian, largely entertaining and - surprisingly - often true. Search the web for "If Day" in Winnipeg.
  • myfavchords
    March 12, 2009
    myfavchords
    This is a weird film that I only enjoyed parts of it. I assume I would enjoy the movie more if I had ever been to Winnipeg.
  • cfhornetfan
    February 4, 2009
    cfhornetfan
    I would love to see this movie. Expecially when I am from Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada & I love it here. I want to recognize certain buildings, certain places in the movie.

View All My Winnipeg Reviews

Critic Reviews

July 11, 2008
Ty Burr, Boston Globe

This is a secret history, and it's a wonder. full review

June 30, 2008
Kurt Loder, MTV

...dark, mesmerizing. full review

June 27, 2008
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

If you love movies in the very sinews of your imagination, you should experience the work of Guy Maddin. full review

June 26, 2008
Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer

For the uninitiated, I heartily recommend this free-associative, autobiographical gem. full review

June 26, 2008
Colin Covert, The Minneapolis Star Tribune

Weird, fascinating and uproarious, My Winnipeg takes place not in chilly Manitoba but in the dreamscape of Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin's overheated imagination. full review

June 20, 2008
Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal

This autobiographical meditation is seductively funny, as well as deliciously strange, and hauntingly beautiful, as well as stream-of-consciousness cockeyed. full review

June 13, 2008
A.O. Scott, The New York Times

My Winnipeg, which combines archival documentary images with freshly shot passages, is more concerned with lyrical truth than with literal accuracy.

June 9, 2008
David Edelstein, New York Magazine

My Winnipeg is overloaded and digressive -- it comes with the territory -- but it's also grounded in a place, Maddin's Manitoban hometown, and it's painfully engrossing. full review

View more My Winnipeg reviews at RottenTomatoes.com

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