You Can Never Go Home

Some people can’t wait to leave home. They constantly annoy their friends with comments on how much “it sucks so bad here, man,” and they dream of the day where they can venture off into the great unknown. Others can’t dodge their birthplace. Maybe something terrible happened there, or maybe...

By John Linn

August 14, 2008

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Some people can’t wait to leave home. They constantly annoy their friends with comments on how much “it sucks so bad here, man,” and they dream of the day where they can venture off into the great unknown. Others can’t dodge their birthplace. Maybe something terrible happened there, or maybe they’re just cocooned in childhood, but for whatever reason their past haunts them. For Canadian director Guy Maddin, who lived in Winnipeg all his life, his hometown had soured on him. He had to finally make the cut from this place that harbored so much sin and shame, and he had to do it fast.

So Maddin decided to film his farewell letter to Winnipeg. He rented the small apartment where he spent his youth, and set to work on reenacting all his most pertinent childhood memories. Draped in Maddin’s disturbing, black-and-white film style that lies somewhere between Fritz Lang and David Lynch, his recreated youth, full of creepy, agit-prop imagery, is both a destruction of those memories and his catharsis. The result is My Winnipeg, a funny, scary, and surreal trip into the totally f’d up mind of Maddin. This winner of the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival screens Friday through Wednesday at the Lake Worth Playhouse (713 Lake Ave., Lake Worth). Tickets cost $8. Call 561-586-6410, or visit www.lakeworthplayhouse.org.
Mon., Aug. 18, 2008

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