Manitoba Newsmakers of 2008 Guy Maddin

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/12/2008 (6283 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Prior to its DVD release a few weeks ago, Guy Maddin’s feature-length self-described "docu-fantasia" My Winnipeg had yet to surpass even $300,000 in box-office returns, according to Box Office Mojo.

But Maddin’s films have never been ones to be judged by the common coin of box-office receipts. His films are too personal, too eccentric and just too Maddinesque ever to be adjudicated on the basis of mere profit.

With his heartfelt portrait of his hometown, inextricably linked with his family history, Maddin made his biggest artistic splash yet in 2008.

Maddin is no stranger to the Top Ten list, and previous films such as Heart of the World and The Saddest Music in the World have routinely appeared in the year-end evaluations of cineaste writers such as the Village Voice‘s J. Hoberman.

But as My Winnipeg toured throughout North America and Europe (often at special screenings with live narration by Maddin himself), Maddin experienced a breakthrough in 2008. By year’s end, the film was awarded a stamp of approval from no less a mainstream critic than Time magazine’s Richard Corliss, who labelled Maddin a "Canadian deranged-genius filmmaker" and ranked My Winnipeg as the No. 3 film of the year, surpassed only by the popular Pixar hit WALL-E (#1) and the Charlie Kaufman mind-bender Synecdoche New York.

Naturally, Maddin maintains his standing with less mainstream critics, too. In his 2008 roundup, outlaw filmmaker John Waters placed My Winnipeg No. 6 on his list, stating: "I remain frozen in admiration of this homegrown masterpiece from the most reluctantly radical and humorously tortured maverick working in the movies today."

Roger Ebert, the influential critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, voted My Winnipeg a "Special Jury Prize" in his roundup of the top films of 2008, enthusing that the film’s landscape of sleepwalkers, back lanes and frozen horses gave audiences "a deeper and, in a crazy way, more ‘real’ portrait of Winnipeg than a conventional doc might have provided — and certainly a far more entertaining one."

From Maddin’s modest perspective, he took the greatest pride from an acknowledgment of his leading lady, the long-retired octogenarian star of the ’40s noir classic Detour, who played Maddin’s mother.

"Perhaps best of all was J. Hoberman of the Village Voice naming Ann Savage best supporting performer of the year," Maddin says. "I’ll never be famous as an actor’s director, but Ann is just so cool, so fierce. I’m proud of the way she swept aside concerns about her half-century acting layoff and kicked serious derriere."

Prior to debuting the film at the Toronto International Film Festival in September of 2007, Maddin said his purpose in creating the fanciful work was to help mythologize the city and its history in the way Americans so adeptly mythologize their home turfs.

At the close of 2008, Maddin wonders if that effort is required any longer.

"I’ve come to the conclusion Winnipeg doesn’t need me to mythologize it — the place is so singular, strange and enchanted," he says.

"It’s attracting and manufacturing its own mythologies every day.

"Just read the paper and tremble."

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Randall King
Writer

Randall King writes about film for the Winnipeg Free Press.