timespace coordinates: 20th century Snowy, Sleep-Walking Winnipeg
My Winnipeg is a 2007 film directed and written by Guy Maddin with dialogue by George Toles. Described by Maddin as a “docu-fantasia,” that melds “personal history, civic tragedy, and mystical hypothesizing,” the film is a surrealist mockumentary about Winnipeg, Maddin’s home town. A New York Times article described the film’s unconventional take on the documentary style by noting that it “skates along an icy edge between dreams and lucidity, fact and fiction, cinema and psychotherapy.”
Maddin also released a book titled My Winnipeg (Coach House Books, 2009). Maddin’s book contains the film’s narration as a main text surrounded by annotations, including outtakes, marginal notes and digressions, production stills, family photos, and miscellaneous material. The book contains a “Winnipeg Map” by artist Marcel Dzama featuring such fictional attractions as “The Giant Squid of the Red [River],” various poster designs for the film, and short articles about working with Maddin by Andy Smetanka, Darcy Fehr, and Caelum Vatnsdal. Maddin also includes an angry e-mail from an ex-girlfriend, collages and notebooks pages, and an X-ray of the dog Spanky from the film. The book also includes an interview with Maddin’s mother Herdis, conducted by Ann Savage, and an interview with Maddin conducted by Michael Ondaatje. Maddin’s publisher offers the book with or without a DVD of the film, distributed by Seville Pictures.
Speaking of the political and social commentary the film encouraged, director Krasinskisaid, “The best compliment you can get on any movie is that it starts a conversation. The fact that people are leaving and talking about anything is really fun—but certainly about deep stuff like that, is awesome.”Krasinski, who did not grow up with horror films, said that prior films of the genre such as Don’t Breathe (2016) and Get Out (2017) that had societal commentary were part of his research. In addition to considering his film a metaphor for parenthood, he compared the premise to US politics in 2018, “I think in our political situation, that’s what’s going on now: You can close your eyes and stick your head in the sand, or you can try to participate in whatever’s going on.” He cited Jaws (1975) as an influence, with how the protagonist police officer moved from New York to an island to avoid frightening situations, and was forced to encounter one in his new location with shark attacks.
Matthew Monagle of Film School Rejects said A Quiet Place seemed to be “the early frontrunner for the sparsely intellectual horror movie of the year”, like previous films The Babadook (2014) and The Witch (2015). Monagle said Krasinski, who had directed two previous films, was “making an unusual pivot into a genre typically reserved for newcomers”, and considered it to be part of a movement toward horror films layered “in storytelling, [with] character beats not typically found in a horror movie”. Tatiana Tenreyro, writing for Bustle, said while A Quiet Place was not a silent film, “It is the first of its kind within the modern horror genre for how little spoken dialogue it actually has.” She said the rare moments of spoken dialogue “give depth to this horror movie, showing how the narrative defies the genre’s traditional films even further”.
Bishop Robert Barron was surprised by strikingly religious themes in the film. He likened the family’s primitive, agrarian life of silence to monasticism, and commends their self-giving love. Barron noted the pervasivepro-life themes, especially in the choices of the parents, as Mrs. Abbott risks everything to give birth to a child, and her husband lays down his own life so that the children can live: what Barron sees as the ultimate expression of parental love. Sonny Bunch of the Washington Post also commented and expanded on a pro-life message.
Krasinski, who had recently become a new father, said in a conference interview “I was already in a state of terror about whether or not I was a good enough father,” and added that the meaning of parenthood had been elevated for him by imagining being a father in a nightmare world, struggling to simply keep his children alive. Jonathan Hetterly, writing in Shrinktank, saw the film’s whole premise as a commentary on modern American paranoid parenting, saying that Krasinski “viewed the premise as a metaphor for a parent’s worst fears”.
Krasinski himself has told CBS News “The scares were secondary to how powerful this could be as an allegory or metaphor for parenthood. For me, this is all about parenthood.” (wiki)
The stories range from the true story of Johnny Appleseed to Pollan’s first-hand research with sophisticated marijuana hybrids in Amsterdam to the paradigm-shifting possibilities of genetically engineered potatoes. Pollan also discusses the limitations of monoculture agriculture: specifically, the adoption in Ireland of a single breed of potato (the Lumper) made the Irish vulnerable to a fungus to which it had no resistance, resulting in the Irish Potato Famine. The Peruvians from whom the Irish had gotten the potato grew hundreds of varieties, so their exposure to any given pest was slight.
Largely a tale of a peaceful situation between local Christians and Muslims before becoming a lethal one due to external forces, the screenplay focuses on the preceding chain of events in decay of government, expansion of terrorism, and the monks’ confrontation with both the terrorists and the government authorities that led up to their deaths. Principal photography took place at an abandoned monastery in Azrou, Morocco. (wiki)
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