My Winnipeg
The unconscious of a filmmaker. The unconscious of a city. Merged in a fever-dream.
That's my best attempt at summing up My Winnipeg, the film I saw at The Poly this evening. The poster calls it a 'docu-fantasia'. Either way (and both ways), it's definitely the only film I've ever seen that credited a 'Tapioca Wrangler'. A detail that at once seems utterly relevant, utterly misleading, and as distinctive as the film itself.
Film contains: snow; sleepwalking; Surrealism; attempted leaving; hilarious short experiments in family psychodrama; psychogeography; critical nostalgia; brilliance; and as much to inspire and haunt the memory as you'll find in many a good book (it's brilliantly filmic, but at the same time you can't help thinking about the best experimental literature).
The highlight: rediscovering that feeling of being in a cinema and - for a whole movie - having absolutely no idea at all what's coming next - it was like spending 80 minutes in the company of a long-lost friend (there was even that initial awkwardness - in other words, if the opening ten minutes or so seem hard going, they're more than worth it).
If only it hadn't been the last showing - I kept getting distracted by short story ideas...
Trailer time:
2 comments:
That sounds wonderful - definitely up my street - and one for the list.
It's out on DVD apparently. No big screen atmosphere that way, but there's probably no alternative. Maybe I'll just sit close to the screen and put the lights out...
Ooh, excellent, I'll have to get that :)
If I have one real criticism of it, it does feel a little like two films in one. On the other hand, that might just have been because I'd happily watch another whole film along the lines of his absurd family event re-enactments (fingers crossed for some DVD extras...).
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