Kathryn Higgins

4-12-10
AMCV 2654 – Ian Russell

The Heart of the Heart of the Continent: Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg

The films of Canadian director Guy Maddin are the work of a man who has a hard time letting

go of the past. Maddin's films are easily recognized at a glance, unless the untrained viewer mistakes

them for works of Soviet Constructivist or German Expressionist film. His films are frequently silent,

usually filmed in black and white, and always bizarre. Beyond this, certain themes continuously

reappear: love triangles, blindness and disability, suicide, overbearing mothers, beauty parlors, and

snow: “always, always winter.” Without knowledge of Maddin's biography, these links to his past are

not so evident. His overbearing mother and one-eyed father raised him above his mother's beauty

parlor, his sixteen year old brother killed himself, and Maddin still, to this day, lives in Winnipeg,

Manitoba. It was not until recently however, that he had ever directly addressed his past. With the

release of his documentary My Winnipeg, in which the director explores the myriad ways in which

heritage and memory merge, and the power they hold over us.

“We Winnipeggers are so stupefied with nostalgia, we're actually never quite sure. I never really

know anything for sure except that after a lifetime of trying and many botched attempts, this time I'm

leaving for good. AGAIN.” So Maddin's film begins, with the director on a train full of half-sleeping

Winnipeggers, all attempting to get the hell out. Memories, both public and private, are strong things,

and Maddin still has to make his way through Winnipeg before he can escape. Off the film goes on an

exploration of one town, and the many ways our cities are inseparable from our own pasts.

For the film, Maddin sublet a few rooms of his childhood apartment for a month, recreated his

apartment, lived there, and hired actors to play his family members and reenact key scenes from his

childhood. All of this is done in an effort to answer one question: what is it about his childhood that has
such a hold on him that ties him to this city, that traps him here? As Maddin explores this past, one

thing that becomes all to clear to him is that his ties to the back alleys of Winnipeg are just as strong as

those to Lil's Beauty Parlor. As a result, Maddin does not limit his recreations to his home, and we

learn about the life and death of the Winnipeg Arena, where his father worked for years, the 1919

General Strike, and the Paddle Club, home to legendary and scandalous beefcake “Golden Boy”

contests in the 1950s, and other tales.

It soon becomes clear, however, that his intention was never to present Winnipeg as a trap, a

town mired in misery that he is desperate to escape. Instead Winnipeg is where his heart lies, and his

heart is continually being broken. In an interview with Cinefantastique Online, Maddin explains his

intent:

I was giving the city the good ol’ mythologizing treatment that every other culture in the

world gives to themselves. Canadians are just so shy...We take all of our national figures

and events and present them in life-size, rather than giving them a sort-of emotional

truth. My manifesto for this was to take all these facts and turn them into ecstatic

truths... and just present them with some sense of glory and enchantment.1

Essentially, Maddin is interested in establishing a grand mythology of Winnipeg in an effort to inspire

civic pride. The narrative trajectory of My Winnipeg, such as it is, revolves around the destruction of

heritage. The most striking example is Eaton's department store, once the uncontested ruler of

commerce in the city, with “65 cents of every Winnipeg shopping dollar” being spent there. Despite

exerting a huge influence on Winnipeg daily life for decades, after Eaton's goes bankrupt, the city

promptly demolishes the building. While this is seen by Maddin as an unforgivable crime, the

repercussions of the destruction of Eaton's even more damaging. In its place, an “architectural lie,”a

minor league hockey arena dubbed the MTS Centre, is built. This naturally leads to the question of

1 Persons, Dan. "Guy Maddin Makes My Winnipeg Everyone’s Winnipeg." Cinefantastique: The Review of Horror,
Fantasy & Science Fiction Films. 11 June 2008. Web. 12 Apr. 2010.
<http://cinefantastiqueonline.com/2008/06/interview-guy-maddin-makes-my-winnipeg-everyones-winnipeg/>.
what is to become of the legendary Winnipeg Arena. The city has condemned it, and demolition has

already begun.

The story of the Winnipeg Arena reveals how tightly private and public memories are braided

together in the creation of heritage. Maddin states that the Arena is his male parent, and predictably his

argument for the preservation of the arena draws equally upon the spaces connections to his family and

sports history equally. Tales of his dressing room birth and anecdotes of stealing jerseys from the locker

room lead to tales of landmark Canadian-Soviet contests in the 1970s. Here and throughout the film,

the archival footage and new scenes are indistinguishable. The theatricality of the narration, the

ambiguity of the images reflects the mythologizing intent of the director. Was he really born in the

showers? Did his father really lay down and die when the National Team signed with the NHL? Does it

matter? What matters is that the receptacle for these memories and myths has been destroyed in yet

another callous revitalization move from the City, dismissing out of hand the heritage of their town.

What the movie foregrounds is the difficulty of preserving heritage in our urban areas. When a

department store goes under, it is not particularly surprising when city government does not

immediately recognize the cultural loss that comes from replacing one business with another. This is

why grassroots citizen organization is necessary, and this is what ultimately leads to Maddin's decision

to remain in the town of his birth. Maddin imagines a hero, Citizen Girl, who “with one wave of her

hand” would restore Winnipeg to her former glory: rebuild Eaton's Department Store and the Winnipeg

Arena, defend the dying Paddle Club, “and then I would know that it was finally okay to leave.”

Unfortunately, there is no Citizen Girl, only citizens, and our heritage and memories, will never be safe

if they abandon it. It is in this sequence that the film is most powerful, as anyone who loves a city

would hear this call.

For ultimately, My Winnipeg is a call to action. One tale in particular serves as a perfect

metaphor. In 1957, the Woolesley Elm scandal was the talk of the town. The small roundabout median

on which the elm stood was deemed the smallest public park in the world by Ripley's Believe it or Not,
and became a source of civic pride. When the city announced plans to cut down the elm, Winnipeg

housewives sprung into action, forming a human chain around the tree. They made it clear that in order

to get to the tree, the city would have to go through them, first. The mayor granted a reprieve, and the

neighbors went home. Overnight however, the tree was mysteriously vandalized with dynamite (likely

by the city, claims Maddin), killing it. As Maddin states towards the end of the film, “sometimes when

you miss a place enough, the background in the photos becomes more important than the people in

them.” These public landmarks serve as the guardian of our memories, but who guards the guardians?