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Spring 2011 REVIEW ESSAY: PACKING, UNPACKING, AND REPACKING THE CINEMA OF George Melnyk University of Calgary

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Melnyk, George, "REVIEW ESSAY: PACKING, UNPACKING, AND REPACKING THE CINEMA OF GUY MADDIN" (2011). Great Plains Quarterly. 2683. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/2683

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Playing with Memories: Essays on Guy Maddin. Edited by David Church. : University of Press, 2009. xiii + 280 pp. Grayscale photography section, notes, filmography, bibliography, index. $29.95 paper.

Into the Past: The Cinema of Guy Maddin. By William Beard. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010. xii + 471 pp. Photographs, appendix, notes, bibliography, index. $85.00 cloth, $37.95 paper.

Guy Maddin's "." By Darren Wershler. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010. 145 pp. Photographs, production credits, notes, bibliography. $45.00 cloth, $17.95 paper.

My WinniPeg. By Guy Maddin. Toronto: Coach House Press, 2009. 191 pp. Photographs, film script, essays, interview, filmography, miscellanea. $27.95 paper.

PACKING, UNPACKING, AND REPACKING THE CINEMA OF GUY MADDIN

Guy Maddin is Canada's most unusual film­ director, allowed him to create a genuinely maker. He also happens to have a global cult unique body of work. The recent spate of aca­ following for his retro b&w films. His stature demic studies on Maddin that are discussed as a cult filmmaker began almost a quarter of here (plus his own text on his 2007 film My a century ago, when his sophomore film, Tales WinniPeg) points to the complementary nature from the Gimli Hospital (1988), was launched at of word and image in his work. He has not only a midnight screening in New York that drew created a cinematic legacy distinct from that audiences for a year. A Winnipegger by birth, of any other filmmaker in the world, but he he has become that city's most famous film­ has also created a literary footprint that tracks maker and one of the few Canadian film direc­ that legacy and coyly de constructs it. Truth, tors with an international following. His New for Maddin, whether it be in film or in text, is York debut led to a regular stint in the 1990s as a marvellous fantasy that his devout followers a film commentator in The Village Voice, which have enjoyed for two decades. in turn led to a literary career of sorts. He went He is known for the uncanny re-creation on to publish From the Atelier Tovar: Selected of archaic modes of film from the period of Writings (2003), a combination of his "jour­ silent and semisilent black-and-white cinema. nals" and assorted other pieces, and Cowards Drawing on the film traditions of the 1920s and Bend the Knee (2003), which combined the 1930s, both American and European, he has "script" from the film of the same name with forged an anachronistic cinematic style that essays on him and an interview with him. He infuses an outdated aesthetics and lost rhetori­ repeated the Cowards format with My WinniPeg cal modes with a post modern sensibility echo­ (the book) in 2009. ing the historical evolution of his native city. His willingness to write personally on his When grain was king, Winnipeg was Canada's films and the filmmaking process makes him third largest city and an economic powerhouse. a special case of Canadian auteurism. It also Today it is an urban Canadian backwater whose suggests that control of both visual and textual glory has long faded. This historic rise and fall elements of a film, which define the auteur parallels Maddin's own efforts at resurrecting

149 150 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SPRING 2011 the filmic glory and discourse of the past in a how this long-term collaboration, comparable to mood of extreme nostalgia. He recreates exag­ that of the Coen brothers, has worked creatively. gerated visual tones and narrative excesses Masterson addresses an important issue when reminiscent of the first thirty years of cinema he tries to decipher how much of a film is Toles's history. For most audiences these long-gone subconscious and how much is Maddin's. While rhetorical devices are difficult to decipher. there is no definitive answer, it is clear that the Maddin had been an auteur feature film­ imaginations of these two men are so closely maker for over a decade before academic intertwined that the perennial themes of sibling criticism of his films began to appear in rivalry that permeate the plots of Maddin's films 1999, and not until this century has this are rooted in a dual autobiographical source. criticism expanded into a significant body. George Toles addresses the issue in his own con­ The four recent books on and by Maddin are tribution, "From Archangel to Mondragora in an acknowledgment of how important his art Your Own Back Yard: Collaborating with Guy has become to Canadian cinematic identity. Maddin," in which he discusses the method of For a quick taste of Maddin's cinematic oeuvre their collaboration. one should first turn to Playing with Memories: Saige Walton (University of Melbourne) Essays on Guy Maddin, edited by the youth­ provides a vital interpretative tool in her study ful David Church, a PhD student at Indiana of two of Maddin's autobiographical films: University, who has compiled the first-ever (2003) and Brand collection of scholarly writings on various Upon the Brain (2006). Her theory of the films' Maddin films. He brings together fifteen essays baroque qualities and their deixis (orienta­ published between 1999 and 2009 that provide tional features of language) provides some of both an overview of Maddin's work as well as the book's best insights. She concludes that detailed studies of specific films. There was an "Maddin reignites the presentational sensual­ earlier collection by Caelum Vatnsdal (Kino ity of the baroque by privileging the expressive Delirium: The Films of Guy Maddin, 2000) that surface of body and film through gesture and offered Maddin's own take on his films rather self-conscious display" (204). Anyone who has than a critical analysis. ever tried to comprehend the archaic acting Church's volume offers insights by scholars styles, film lighting, and "debased" sound and from the United States, Canada, and Australia, image quality that Maddin privileges will be making it an international collection. That grateful for her explanation. so many American film scholars have con­ A complementary theoretical approach tributed to the book is indicative of Maddin's is offered by William Beard (University of stature in contemporary filmmaking. Among Alberta) in his essay on the melodramatic the book's highlights are Donald Masterson's aspects of Maddin's work. Among the descrip­ "My Brother's Keeper: Fraternal Relations in tors Beard draws on to characterize Maddin's the Films of Guy Maddin and George Toles," melodrama are "childlike naivete" (84), Saige Walton's "Hit with a Wrecking Ball, "retro-kitsch" (87), "reckless hyperbole" (89), Tickled with a Feather: Gesture, Deixis, and and "pastiche of impossible earlier idealisms" the Baroque Cinema of Guy Maddin," and Bill (92). Beard's 2005 essay seeks to delve into the Beard's "Maddin and Melodrama." fundamental wellsprings of the Maddin style. Masterson's contribution is important because The essay can be read as a precursor to Beard's it highlights the centrality of the collabora­ major work on the filmmaker, Into the Past: The tion between Guy Maddin and George Toles, Cinema of Guy Maddin. To use a culinary meta­ a professor of film studies at the University of phor, one might think of Church's Playing with Manitoba, in the creation of Maddin's body of Memories as a selection of appetizers or tapas, work. Toles has received cowriting credit on a teasing the diner's appetite through a variety number of Maddin's films, and Masterson shows of tempting, but small, dishes, while Into the REVIEW ESSAY 151

Past is the grand entree on which the chef has least Maddin's public version of that psyche as expanded a great deal of thought and time. In displayed in his writings and pronouncements. terms of Maddin's work, Beard is the master Beard's methodology is useful in that it tries to chef and Into the Past his Piece de resistance. grow organically out of the subject matter and Beard had already distinguished himself characters of the films themselves. He then with an earlier magnum opus on the Canadian links them to the filmmaker's own traumatic filmmaker , which estab­ family history. lished a whole new benchmark for studies of a A good example of Beard's approach is single Canadian director. So when he turned his discussion of the 2003 film Cowards Bend his attention to Guy Maddin, expectations the Knee, which purports to provide autobio­ were high. Fortunately, he did not disappoint. graphical insight into one Guy Maddin. Beard Like an intrepid Boswell he has delved into describes the film as having a "surreal, fertile every nook and cranny of Maddin's films, the overprinting of past and present . . . Oedipal filmmaker's mysterious life, and the available confrontations with the father's giant sexual critical material. The result is as overwhelm­ member and the mother's perceived cruel and ing as Maddin's films themselves. Written in aggressive sexual appetite directed at the son" Beard's slightly baroque style, the text provides (202). According to Beard this narrative arc a combination of detailed narrative description of "fantasy and lamentation" (217) results in of each film along with a variety of interpre­ "a completely painless for a modern tative crescendos that sometimes take the audience to watch" (218). He also believes that reader's breath away. Beard's verbal hyperbole it is "closer to the filmmaker's fundamental and Maddin's visual excesses were made for source of imaginative activity than any of each other. his films since The Dead Father" (227). Beard Beard's book is illustrated with both auto­ argues that Maddin's films are so powerfully biographical images of the director and stills introspective, so rooted in the wellsprings from his films in the restrained manner typical of his familial imagination that they surpass of the University of Toronto Press film studies the influence of the long-lost precursors on books, implying that what matters is the criti­ which his films are based. One will not find cal text. To summarize an extensive work of poststructuralist obscurantism in Beard's text. almost 500 pages is a daunting task. Each of the His approach allows the idiosyncratic flavors of ten chapters is a study of one film, beginning Maddin's films to emanate gradually and with a with The Dead Father (1986) and concluding certain manic delight. with My Winnipeg (2007). The chronological For the reader who has the gumption to finish progression through the films allows Beard to Beard's substantive tour de force, rather than analyze Maddin's development as a filmmaker simply assign it to a senior course on Maddin's and provide the reader with an evolutionary work to be nibbled at week after week, it is perspective on those films and how they reflect time for something lighter and sweeter. This each other. Beard draws out common themes, is where Darren Wershler's playful, yet intel­ dissects visual strategies, and roots his analysis ligent, 145-page treatment of Maddin's latest in a Freudian perspective, which the filmmaker feature film-My Winnipeg (2007)-comes himself seems to share. into its own. It offers a contrasting flavor to Beard does not apply a grand theory to the previous two texts by being an extended Maddin's work (other than melodrama). study of a single film. Wershler defines Maddin's Instead he links the content and style of each films as part of a "differential cinema" (3), film to certain preoccupations the filmmaker which he says emphasizes an assemblage of himself has articulated in both his writings elements, none of which is more important and in numerous interviews. Beard tries to root than any other. The term potpourri comes to the films in the filmmaker's own pysche, or at mind, while others might prefer pastiche. While 152 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SPRING 2011 referencing numerous culture and film critics a strong antidote to the academic commentary from Raymond Williams to Marjorie Perloff, offered by the previous three volumes. Its large he finds the intellectual mix provided by Slavoj format and bright green cover suggest visual Zizek to be "extremely useful" in analyzing pleasures. Maddin has annotated the script how Maddin's "repository of fantasies" (15) from the film with photographs from his life works, especially in the "docu-fantasy" mode, and augmented stills from the film, extensive which is how Maddin himself characterizes side bars of texts in which he offers "aids" to My WinniPeg. The film is the final instalment sourcing the inspiration for particular scenes, in Maddin's autobiographical trilogy of films, and a lengthy interview conducted by the which began with Cowards Bend the Knee, fol­ Canadian novelist Michael Ondaajte in 2008. lowed by Brand Upon the Brain. That Maddin There are also commentaries on Maddin's film­ has not produced a major feature film since My making by three individuals who have been WinniPeg may be indicative of how much of his close to the action. The book cleanses the pal­ autobiographical genius this trilogy has con­ ette of theory and replaces it with the delights sumed and how My WinniPeg serves as a cap­ of artistic fun. If one needs to get a glimpse into stone, summarizing many of the more salient the workings of a film genius, then My WinniPeg features and themes of his filmmaking. is the best venue available to date. In fact, one While Werschler uses Maddin's own anec­ does not have to even see the film itself. The dotal pronouncements (the filmmaker has a book is a worthy substitute. penchant for giving interviews) in a manner It is fair to ask why Maddin is so important similar to Beard, he prefers to analyze My to Canadian cinema and cinema in general. WinniPeg from a variety of theoretical perspec­ Here is a figure who revels in a form of cin­ tives. Of particular relevance is his discussion ematic anachronism by artificially submerging of "The City and Circulation" in which he his films in the language of archaic silent-era describes the film as representing an urban precursors for which he is lauded by critics for mode of seeing that combines "the believable, his innovative understanding of a forgotten the memorable, and the primitive" (70). In medium. Because his films were originally con­ other words the psychological dimension is key structed in a language that audiences no longer to our relationship with urban space, and that understood, he had only a small cult following, is what Maddin excels at. The memorialization augmented by a coterie of academic critics, who of a native son's relationship to his mother city delighted in parsing his creations. His work becomes an expression of everyone's urban rela­ does not propel the medium forward the way tionship, wrapped in a Freudian Weltanschauung. a digital breakthrough might, and it does not Werschler also draws on the generic category of influence other directors to imitate his work "city symphonies" from the 1920s as a model for and so launch a new school. With The Saddest this film. He concludes that My WinniPeg comes Music in the World (2003) and My WinniPeg at a historical juncture when the concreteness (2007) he has modified his artistic purity in a of "the city" and "the cinema" is slipping away way that allows these two films at least to have and that Maddin is able in this film to capture sufficient vernacular power to be understood by that moment when he acknowledges the failure a larger audience. Nevertheless, when Wershler of human desire to recapture the past by simply characterizes Maddin's films as "an emergent willing itself to do so. It all slips away into a kind cinema that requires his audiences to consider of kitschy fantasy. the contexts through which his film circulates, After Wershler's taste-bud-stimulating des­ and how that process of circulation transfigures sert, one yearns for an aperitif, something more the 'film' itself" (120), we are reminded of how liquid and hallucinatory to end this grand marginalized Maddin is in terms of audience Maddin meal. Maddin's book, My Winnipeg, is and influence. REVIEW ESSAY 153

And yet Maddin's work has connections their identities in the midst of so many compet­ to a wider context. Beard is right when he ing loyalties. They swim in a muddle. argues that Maddin's films offer a peculiarly Maddin has shown the world that Canadian "Canadian" sense of melodramatic sensibility. film art does not have to be imitative of Maddin has infused his work with a strong other national cinemas and that it can make sense of Canadian nationality and its angst significant breakthroughs when left to its over its identity. Confrontational melodra­ own devices. His psychosexual fantasies, his matic episodes rooted in unresolved family deeply Freudian escapades, and his dance conflicts are what allow Maddin to mate psy­ with memory and illusion are rooted in the choanalysis with nationality. His films suggest Canadian cultural landscape. With only one that Canada's multicultural and multiracial percent of theatrical screen time in their own social structure and its bilingual (English and country, English Canadian films can display a French) status make for a confusing sense of the profound sense of liberation from the demands self. Maddin's deeply psychosexual interpreta­ of the marketplace that Hollywood dominates. tion of communal identities emanates from This context allows figures like Maddin to the ethnic plurality of his native Winnipeg, a flourish and inform world cinema with an art city whose demographic history has undergone that could not be sourced in any other place. major changes. Winnipeg's nineteenth-century One does not have to be a Winnipegger to Anglo vs. French and Metis vs. settler conflicts enjoy My WinniPeg because it has a universal were subsumed by a huge influx of non-English quality of urbanity. One does not have to be Europeans in the agrarian period; in recent a Canadian to fall into the allegorical magic times this social frame was replaced with a of The Saddest Music in the World. One does renewed Aboriginal fact, thereby returning the not have to be an aficionado of silent cinema urban space to its presettler identity. Maddin, to be unsettled by the whispered nuances of by living in Winnipeg for over half a century, Careful. has rooted himself in that specific history more The publication of these four books is a substantively than any other filmmaker in the sign that Maddin's work has come of age. The country. At the same time he has "lost" himself level of recognition and critical insight they in the history of cinema and its earlier forms as offer is indicative of his growing stature in no one else has done. By combining these two the film canon, both in Canada and globally. separate journeys into the past he has been able But their penetration into Maddin's work is to generate a cinematic universe that is both always limited by the filmmaker's legendary historical and fantastic. No other Canadian evasiveness and the clever traps he sets in his filmmaker today is more postmodern and films. He is the master of the false clue. While postcolonial than Maddin. In creating a retro there is more work to be done in analyzing cinema like no other he has actually caught the Maddin's films, what might help now is a text essence of contemporary Canadian identity as that examines Maddin's own writings on film­ it struggles to articulate a self suited to a world making. The games he plays as an interpreter of where the old national-realist paradigm no his own work offer revealing clues to the films longer holds. Like a pretend shaman, Maddin themselves. conjures up a miasma of historical references, alternative narratives, idiosyncratic allusions, GEORGE MELNYK bizarre characterization, and all sorts of locally Department of Communication and Culture sited incantations to create a spell over his view­ University of Calgary ers. That is how Canadians currently construct