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My Winnipeg
IFC Films


7.8

based on 24 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 11 votes
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Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Starring Darcy Fehr, Ann Savage, Amy Stewart, Louis Negin, Brendan Cade, and Wesley Cade

Have you ever wanted to relive your childhood and do things differently? Guy Maddin casts B-movie icon Ann Savage as his domineering mother in attempt to answer that question in My Winnipeg, a hilariously wacky and profoundly touching goodbye letter to his childhood hometown. A documentary (or "docu-fantasia" as Maddin proclaims) that inventively blends local and personal history with surrealist images and metaphorical myths, the film covers everything from the fire at the local park which lead to a frozen lake of distressed horse heads to pivotal and factually heightened scenes from Maddin's own childhood, all laced with a startling emotional honesty. My Winnipeg is Maddin's most personal film and a truly unique cinematic experience, winning the best Canadian film at the Toronto International Film Festival and the opening night selection of the Berlin Film Festival's Forum. (IFC Films)

GENRE(S):	Drama
WRITTEN BY:	George Toles Guy Maddin
DIRECTED BY:	Guy Maddin
RELEASE DATE:	Theatrical: June 13, 2008
RUNNING TIME:	80 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	Canada

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

TV Guide Ken Fox

So it should come as no surprise that what Maddin eventually produced is a film about HIS Winnipeg, a psychological terrain that's no more -- nor less -- "real" than William Carlos William's Paterson or Marcel Proust's Combray.

100

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Both the definition of ''my'' and the definition of ''Winnipeg'' become profoundly fluid in this exquisite ''docu-fantasia'' (Maddin's term), an entrancing riffle through the olde curiosity shoppe of the filmmaker's psyche.

100

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

(1) Shot for shot, Maddin can be as surprising and delightful as any filmmaker has ever been, and (2) he is an acquired taste, but please, sir, may I have some more?

The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray

Maddin talks at length about Winnipeg's hidden layers, but what makes My Winnipeg perhaps his best film to date is that so much of it is right out in the open.

The Hollywood Reporter John DeFore

Hilarious for those on Maddin's mad wavelength and more varied than his strictly fictional features.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

This haunting phantasmagoria of a film -- comic, singular, surreal -- is not only something no one but the Canadian director could have made, it's also a film no one else would have even wanted to make. Which is the heart of its appeal.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Mock-heroic yet still lyrical, faux-mythic but honest too, uniquely and absurdly and often hilariously Canadian, My Winnipeg is like no documentary you've ever seen.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Deeply personal, wryly funny and fantastically cinematic.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Ann Savage, the femme fatale from a slew of old Hollywood noirs, is savagely funny as Maddin's beauty-parlor proprietress mom.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Maddin's Winnipeg is a rich, funky, funny stew of fears and desires, of mangled civic chronology mashed up with hothouse private emotions. This is a secret history, and it's a wonder.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

It's sometimes uneven, but it's glorious, too, with constantly churning invention and the guarantee that you have never seen anything like it before -- unless it came from Winnipeg and Guy Maddin.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

The movie is dominated by Maddin's usual black-and-white photography, silent-movie syntax, and deadpan melodrama.

Empire David Parkinson

Witty, moving and visually dazzling.

Washington Post Philip Kennicott

Maddin has called his new film a "docu-fantasia," and it's an apt label for an entirely idiosyncratic mix of local myth and history, dubious science, salacious gossip, personal rumination and endless camp humor.

Film Threat Matthew Sorrento

The faux-doc/tone-poem hybrid My Winnipeg is a worthy product.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

Like all poetic inward journeys, My Winnipeg is likely to resonate with sympathetic viewers in unexpected ways. In viewing his apparently placid prairie city, and his apparently placid prairie childhood, as an intensely symbolic landscape of mystery and terror, Maddin invites all of us to view our own equally ordinary lives in the same light.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

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

New York Magazine David Edelstein

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.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

In the course of this clanging, spectral memoir, all of the artist's previous movies--from his underground mock epic "Tales from the Gimli Hospital" through his faux–Soviet silent "The Heart of the World" to his period spectacular "The Saddest Music in the World"--come to mind.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

Maddin's real point -- and, for admirers of this brilliant and idiosyncratic artist, the true source of the movie’s interest -- is that Winnipeg explains him.

New York Post V.A. Musetto

Guy Maddin's films are always delightful, but his latest, My Winnipeg, has an added treat for film buffs: It features Ann Savage!

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

It's a twisted but beautiful love letter to a city, not factually correct but emotionally true.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

The best way to take this film is with a box of popcorn and a grain of salt.

Variety Eddie Cockrell

Though it may feel undernourished to the faithful, Winnipeg is an easily digestible meal, for the uninitiated and fans alike.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.8 (out of 10) based on 11 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Chris P. gave it a7:
It's watchable and amusing, but incomplete as a work of art. Maddin's voice-over narrative has some witty quips but deflates rather than fueling the romantic/mythic/dreamlike emotional energy he's trying for. The best sequence in the film is a silent recreation of a seance in the Legislature; only for these few minutes is the film allowed to speak for itself and achieve some real emotional impact. For such a visual director, he repeatedly violates the "show me, don't tell me" rule, so that the visuals and narrative don't add to each other but just run side by side, and that loosely. Also surprisingly, there are too few visual ideas in the film; Maddin keeps showing us the same image over and over long after the point has been made. There's some brilliant editing, but the style of the film is monotonous; intensity comes in random fits and starts, but never achieves any momentum or arc. Narratively, there's no insight what makes Winnipeg tick or why its city council makes the famously bad decisions it does, nor why Winnipegers allow those decisions to happen and nurse the feelings of betrayal that they do. Maddin's ironic detachment functions more as a self-protective mask than as an opportunity for critical reappraisal of the sentiments he's expressions. Overall, the whole thing comes across as fairly masturbatory (metaphorically speaking, although there is some fairly cliched stuff about sexual repression in here); one is tempted to think the director isn't interested in anyone's emotions but his own, and is not much in touch with those. There is a lot of potential in this film (it might have worked brilliantly as an all-silent film) but it's an unfinished and art-schoolish, not the work of a mature artist.

Bryan R. gave it a10:
WOW! Guy Maddin is filmmaker who hasn't has his vision stomped by TV or Hollywood -- like the last living real movie director cringing in an ice cave in Canada of all places!

sally w. gave it a7:
The sleepwalking theme was very strong and both myself and my boyfriend fell asleep half way through. I give it 7 for the part I did see. I liked the soap 'on the ledge', must catchu up with it sometime. Is Guy Maddin a hypnotist?

Missy H. gave it a4:
I felt as if I too were sleepwalking, a theme in this over long film. A 20 minute documentary on the very interesting though questionable subject would have been enough. A feature...not!

Michael S. gave it a10:
Guy Maddin's movies make me feel alive. I feel surges of happiness and melancholy like I'm on a great new prescription. What a ride Guy, thanks for the Art baby.

Lawrence T. gave it a9:
Very ingenious and creative without being pretentious ... I love this director and am glad that I newly discovered him ... I look for more from him to be just as intriguing .... I highly recommend this film.

Jb E. gave it a10:
Absolutely hilarious, though certainly not for everyone. i recommend it to anyone with a sense of the surreal and a sense of humor, or anyone remotely connected with central Canada.

My Winnipeg IFC Films

My Winnipeg
IFC Films