MEDIUM COOL - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Haskell Wexler Classic on Criterion Blu-Ray

In anticipation of the upcoming 2015 Toronto Hot Docs International Festival of Documentary Cinema, enjoy a repost review of Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool, a classic of Direct Cinema blending Documentary and Drama on Criterion Blu-Ray.

Medium Cool (1969) *****
Dir. Haskell Wexler
Starring: Robert Forster, Verna Bloom, Peter Bonerz, Marianna Hill, Harold Blankenship

Review By Greg Klymkiw

“I hope we can use our art for love and peace.” So said cinematographer Haskell Wexler as he accepted an Oscar last April for his work on Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? His seriousness and obvious sincerity startled the Academy Awards audience, long used to the standard thank yous to co-workers and producers. “I realized I might never get another chance at an audience of 60 or 70 million people. It seemed too big an opportunity to miss. What was I supposed to do – thank my gaffer and Jack Warner?”

Kevin Thomas

Los Angeles Times, 1 June 1967

A car off the highway. Metal twisted. Open door. Woman's body splayed on the asphalt. Blood gushing. A photographer attached to a movie camera hovers above - shooting - like a vulture circling its prey. One gruesome shot after another. Every conceivable angle caught on film. Real film. Real movie camera. Real cameraman - or so we think. We pray he isn't real because when he's sucked as much life out of his quarry as possible, he packs up and leaves the woman to bleed and presumably die. Alone.

The cameraman is John Cassellis. He is played by Robert Forster. Yes, we're watching a movie, but WHAT a movie! When Medium Cool was unleashed upon the movie-going public, nothing like it had ever been seen before and without question, not much (if anything) like it has been seen since.

Written, directed and photographed by Haskell Wexler, the celebrated cinematographer of such films as In The Heat Of The Night, The Thomas Crown Affair, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest as well as two Oscar-winning turns for Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf and Bound For Glory, he crafted what might be the ultimate auteur film made in America. To this very day, Medium Cool is an important and influential work of the Cinema Vérité movement. It's exciting, urgent and vital - impossible to take your eyes off the screen while watching it, almost impossible to blink for fear of missing a frame and most of all, impossible to get out of your head once you've seen it.

On the surface, it might seem very simple - deceptively and cleverly so. Cassellis doesn't seem to care about much of anything unless he sees it through the lens of his camera. He loves shooting to the exclusion of all else. The only thing that matters is what he sees is what he shoots. The image is everything to him. It's not even especially important what story he's telling so long as he's telling it, so long as he's capturing his perspective on the world around him. He shoots, then hands off his negative (yes, kids - negative - ever hear of that?) to a helmeted motorcycle rider who crazily zips through the Chicago streets in the film's great opening title sequence.

The shots are in the can. What's next for him to plaster onto negative? He's like a junkie. He needs another shot. All that counts is the shot. From his eye, through the lens and bouncing back from his target and captured on unexposed stock greedily demanding a chemical bath in order to spool itself through the projection sprockets of a telecine and then, beamed over airwaves, mediated through a cathode ray screen and into the eyes, hearts and, hopefully, minds of its viewers.

His aim is true. What's done with it afterwards might not be.

Certainly Cassellis seems untroubled with his own part in journalistic exploitation and this is hammered home by his purely sexual relationship with a sex-drenched young fuck-buddy (Mariana Hill). He needs to SHOOT - film AND sperm. It's only once his life has been touched by a chance encounter with a pair of Appalachian expats in the slums of Chicago - a single mother (Verna Bloom) and her only child (Henry Blankenship) - that Cassellis opens his eyes to the insidious manner his images are being disseminated.

When he discovers that the corporate pigs running the stations and networks are furnishing his potentially incriminating footage of civil unrest to law enforcement officials (most notably, the FBI), he flies into a rage. The film builds to a harrowing climax involving a riot where his eye, so fixed on the events he's shooting, misses the plight of the people closest to him and eventually (and literally) jettisons both himself and the audience smack into a shocking conclusion.

The eyes of Cassellis remain shark-like, though the emotion fuelling his actions shifts from obsession to a form of vengeance. Nothing, however, can match the eyes of the mother and her son - especially her son - they're the battered and bruised receptacles of America's indifference and their part in Wexler's film reaches heartbreaking proportions.

The corruption and collusion of mainstream media and its relationship to both corporate interests and government are today a given fact, but in the late 60s, when Medium Cool was made, such a thing seemed unthinkable. When Wexler fashioned this film it was a shocker, but somehow in the context of today's world - our own strife amidst uncaring governments, in turn the puppets of a new world order of corporations - this picture is more important than ever. Its importance to both history and the art of cinema is virtually a given, but its importance to exposing and keeping all of us aware of contemporary political gangsterism has seldom been matched.

Films that focus upon media have never been uncommon, but only Federico Fellini in his 1960 film La Dolce Vita pre-dates Medium Cool with any significance. Via the character of Paparazzo (a name Fellini derived from Italian dialect to describe the buzzing of mosquitoes), the Maestro's masterwork is often credited with generating the etymology of paparazzi to describe the European phenomenon of photo journalists who use their lenses to capture celebrities in poses of compromise.

Certainly, Wexler's horrific opening pre-dates the death of Princess Diana and the photographers who chased and surrounded the twisted metal - shooting with abandon as life painfully drained from her. Years after Wexler's picture, writer Paddy Chayefsky and director Sidney Lumet delivered Network, the savage satire of news becoming "entertainment" and being rooted in corporate greed rather than any altruistic desire to deliver news in a traditional journalistic sense. Finally, though, Medium Cool is the yardstick to measure all cinema dealing with media and I'd argue that nothing even comes close to matching it.

America was on the precipice of massive upheaval and there was an overwhelming sense that major shit was going to hit the fan in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic Convention - which, of course, it did. Wexler designed his film to shoot on location during this time and what he captures is probably the most powerful cinematic game of "chicken" between documentary and drama ever made.

He populates his film with a mix of great actors, non-actors and the real thing in the midst of actual events Cassellis and, by extension, Wexler's film, both capture so indelibly.

Robert Forster is the revelation here. Handsome, rugged, nicely buff - he's handed the difficult task of being often mute, bereft of real passion or caring - until, of course, it's too late - and even then, he switches into obsessive auto-pilot. Forster's performance here is one of the great performances in contemporary American cinema. Cassellis is a superbly etched character - seemingly passive, but active where it counts. His early years as a boxer (which he continues to train as) are the sort of physical skills cameramen absolutely require to get the brilliant handheld footage they need.

His motion picture debut was a couple of years earlier in John Huston's magnificently insane adaptation of Carson McCuller's novel Reflections in a Golden Eye. This was a brave way for any actor to expose himself in his first film. Playing the apple of Marlon Brando's closeted military officer's homosexual eye, Forster taunts Brando by riding a horse nude in eyeshot of the smitten military man, and in turn, obsessed over Brando's sexually frustrated wife played by Elizabeth Taylor, he repeatedly enters her bedroom nude and jerks off into her dirty panties as she dozes deeply within the Land of Nod.

Most actors today would greet such a role as a bad career move, but if they were lucky enough to have a director as visionary as Wexler, they'd go from one great role to another, as Forster did by going from Huston to Wexler. Forster, by the way, never hit the heights of stardom he should have and instead had a hugely successful film and TV career as a "working" actor until Quentin Tarantino displayed the same vision Huston and Wexler were imbued with and cast him in the world weary male romantic lead bail bondsman opposite Pam Grier in the wonderful Jackie Brown.

If anything, though, Wexler might well have handed Forster the role of a lifetime here - especially within the context of a medium like cinema that has the power to inform, entertain and effect real change. The shooter Cassellis is always alert to the possibility of those images and Forster always commands our attention to this fact with his expressive eyes. His powerful body helps him hoist that camera and aim it where his eye wants to go.

Wexler captures so many genuinely real events during his drama and it is Forster who is always at the centre of them. Whether we see riots, national guardsmen in mock training during protest march scenarios, the lives and milieu of Chicago's most racially segregated areas of Chicago - it's Casselis who is our onscreen tour guide as we see what Wexler sees via Forster - and it is ALL TOO REAL; the looks of hatred and mistrust upon the faces of those living in the neighbourhoods, the poverty stricken naked kids splashing through fire hydrant water in the blistering heat, encounters with revolutionaries in tenement slums, Wexler uses this great actor to allow us into a world of reality.

It's a mediated reality, to be sure, and this is always Wexler's aim.

But where the film, its intentions and ultimately, its impact become all too clear is the breathtaking, salient moment when Wexler trains his lens upon Cassellis and Forster so evocatively utters one of film history's great lines:

"Jesus," he says with a hint of passion that escapes from his seemingly cold, detached demeanour, "I love shooting film."

And so he does. He loves shooting film with a purity that is eventually soiled by both corporate and government evil. What then is left for a man when he discovers that his lifeblood is being perverted, subverted and sucked out of him - not for the good of man, but for the good of profits and maintaining the Status Quo? What finally is left, is that which Wexler shockingly provides us in his movie.

It's not a pretty picture.

What's truly terrifying to me and utterly disgusting (because it continues today with even more frequency and intensity) is that Wexler was strongly urged to re-cut his film as the corporate giants at Paramount were being pressured from so many levels of influence to mute and ultimately emasculate the film's power. Wexler refused. He had the power to do so. Instead, a brilliant filmmaker who had just won a fucking Oscar had his work initially manhandled and censored by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). For one brief scene of nudity and a handful of cuss words, the film was slapped with an X-rating which was effectively a kiss of death as it relegated Wexler's film to the same status of hard core pornography.

Nobody in their right mind would believe the rating was due to the aforementioned language and nudity.

Medium Cool was being censored for being too political and worse, not the capital "R" RIGHT political.

"Jesus, I love shooting film."

This is the sin more grave that those laid down in the Ten Commandments since loving to shoot film often means we must expose the evils of God and Country.

And God only knows, we can't have that now, can we?

The Criterion Collection Blu-Ray and DVD of Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool is perhaps one of the best packages the company has ever put together. Wexler's haunting images are gorgeously transferred for our edification and the entirety of this disc is bursting at the seams with a wealth of material.

There are two audio commentaries, one with historian Paul Cronin and the other with Wexler, editing consultant Paul Golding and actress Marianna Hill, as well as a new Wexler interview.

The real gems are extended excerpts from Look Out Haskell, It’s Real!, Cronin's documentary that has interviews with Wexler, Golding, Forster, Verna Bloom, Peter Bonerz, Chicago historian and the film's intrepid consultant Studs Terkel and a myriad of others, as well as excerpts from Sooner or Later, Cronin’s documentary about Harold Blankenship, who plays Verna Bloom's son in the picture. Both of these documentaries form an important and near-epic look at a film AND a time and place when America was on the precipice of the eventual decline it's experiencing now. They both look great on this disc and present enough salient details for most viewers, though, in fairness, versions can be accessed in full unexpurgated form outside of the disc. They don't look "pretty" and suffer a bit from the editorial decisions made by Criterion, but part of me wishes they'd been presented in their whole on this disc in addition to the excerpts.

The other absolute gem is Wexler's new documentary Medium Cool Revisited which focuses on the Occupy movement’s protests during Chicago's 2012 NATO summit.

As per usual, the disc includes a trailer and a fine booklet with a new essay by film critic and programmer Thomas Beard. This is a keeper. If you care about cinema, you'll want to own this. I've only had this disc for two weeks and I've already spent hours and hours pouring over it.

IF YOU WANT TO BUY THIS MOVIE, JUST CLICK THE HANDY LINKS BELOW AND BY DOING IT DIRECTLY FROM THIS SITE YOU WILL BE CONTRIBUTING TO THE ONGOING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER.

In USA and the rest of the WORLD - BUY Medium Cool - HERE!

In Canada - BUY Medium Cool HERE, eh!

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MY WINNIPEG - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Criterion Blu-Ray Delivers Guy Maddin Magic

My Winnipeg (2007)
Dir. Guy Maddin
Dialogue By: George Toles
Starring: Ann Savage, Darcy Fehr, Louis Negin, Amy Stewart, Fred Dunsmore

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"I dream of home." - The Time of Your Life by William Saroyan

We all dream of home. Even if our homes are one and the same, no two dreams will ever be alike. Most notably, those whose homes might have been fraught with the madly paradoxical emotions of deep caring and the most repellently denigrating, rancourous T-Bone piledrives might recognize the patterns, but will indeed experience details in their odious nocturnal reveries that will be uniquely all their own.

For Guy Maddin, he generously removes the top of his skull, dips a brush into the viscous ooze of his magma-like grey matter and splashes the torpid incubi, which roil about his puffy cauliflower mush almost Jackson Pollock-like onto the canvas of cinema. Though all his pictures are deeply personal, none cut quite to the marrow the way My Winnipeg does - his most wondrous, haunting and heart-achingly moving work to date. This autobiographical documentary, filtered through dreams of home that live and breathe on celluloid in ways no other filmmaker has quite managed to achieve, is a triumph of form, beauty and wit that's unequivocally unique.

Like every film by Guy Maddin, My Winnipeg works within a Holy Cinematic Trinity. First of all, there are all the important insights into the gentle madness and tantalizing repression which consumes Winnipeg, and as such, all of us. These, can be enjoyed, appreciated and worshipped by everyone - regardless of race, creed, colour and/or private predilections. Secondly, one discovers the provision of mirror images for all Canadians, but especially Winnipeggers, of the corners, back alleys and closets of shame which cascade throughout our nation (well, mostly Winnipeg). Thirdly, and perhaps more importantly are the elements which provide special meaning to about ten people in the world (and yes, full disclosure, I am one of them), though brilliantly they work just as splendidly for others, albeit on surface levels which can never be cracked open to reveal the depths of shame shared by God's Chosen, those who share specific experiences with Maddin that remain close to our breasts of joyful remorse.

Let us examine the first tine of the Maddin Trident. My Winnipeg is, perhaps, the most truthful, historically accurate and penetrating history of the Gateway to the West, Little Chicago, the former hub of western expansion - that beautiful winter city snow bubble which trembles with reticence at any sign of outsiders, yet emits swirling clouds of fluffy snowflakes, eternally floating amidst the pain and despair which all of us cling to like the warm blankets that we pull over our heads to hide our sorrow, to keep it private and, by extension, holy.

We all must escape the Winnipeg of our hearts and minds. Flight is inevitable. As Sherwood Anderson wrote in his book "Winesburg, Ohio" (Winesburg actually being Anderson's thinly disguised version of Winnipeg):

"The young man's mind was carried away by his growing passion for dreams… With the recollection of little things occupying his mind he closed his eyes and leaned back in the car seat [of the train compartment]. He stayed that way for a long time and when he aroused himself and again looked out the car window the town of Winesburg [really Winnipeg] had disappeared and his life there had become but a background on which to paint the dreams of his manhood."

Such is Guy Maddin. Such is Winnipeg. Such are all who have left love behind to temper the hatred of our new environs with the fleeting memories of that which shaped our very being.

Maddin, at the beginning of My Winnipeg, has not left. "I need to get out of here," he declares in his voice-over narration, "It's time for extreme measures." Yes, indeed. Extremity is, after all, what Winnipeg is all about - a city where temperatures plummet to such numbing lows that exposed flesh will freeze in less than 30 seconds.

With the threat of frostbitten limbs turning black and requiring amputation, it's best, really, to nestle oneself in a fluffy blanket of forgetfulness - and dream, dream, dream - if only to remember in the best manner of remembrance, through the clouds and mists of our foggy minds shrouded in the comfort of Nod's Land.

Maddin, however, chooses to be proactive with his documentary. He gets the kind of idea only a Winnipegger could (or would) get. "What if I film my way out of here?" his narration asks - mostly to himself, but, as an afterthought, the audience as well.

It's time for extreme measures, indeed.

Maddin does, what nobody in the history of cinema and the genre of documentary has ever done. He captures his flight from Winnipeg, by touring through it on the city's mighty trams which slowly wend their way through the city's grids. Even better, Maddin chooses an actor to represent himself so he can more conveniently concentrate upon directing the picture.

Darcy Fehr, who played Maddin in Maddin's Cowards Bend The Knee is the only man for the job. Fehr is Maddin's cinematic doppelgänger and acquits himself in the role perfectly. Having shared many naps with Maddin myself, I can attest to the fact that Fehr's naps as Maddin are matched only by Maddin himself. In fairness,though, actor Kyle McCulloch in Tales from the Gimli Hospital, Archangel and Careful does indeed give both of them a run for their money. For an actor to rival another actor portraying a living human being is one thing, but McCulloch's ability to nap onscreen comes very close to out-Maddining Maddin in the nap sweepstakes.

Winnipeg, of course, is the nap capital of the world and this is one of numerous examples where Maddin feeds us a delicious factoid about this sleepy, flat, midwestern Canadian city. Maddin informs us, quite accurately, that Winnipeg has "10 times the sleepwalking rate of anyplace in the world."

Somnambulism is hardwired into the DNA of all Winnipeggers. The natural tendency to sleepwalk is not restricted to such vaguely ambulatory acts as walking, but one will find that most, if not all of those who live in Winnipeg will happily operate moving vehicles under the influence of noctambulist impulses.

One fact Maddin neglects to mention, perhaps because it is not shameful enough, is that drinking and driving, whilst technically illegal in Winnipeg, is so socially acceptable that many party hosts will slosh more rotgut into one's beverage receptacle with the hearty toast, "Come on, have one more for the ditch" - referring, of course to the wide ditches of Winnipeg which fill up with snow for 10 months of the year and flood waters for the remaining 2 months, so that drunk drivers who go off the road can gently cascade, ever-so safely, into the fluffy-floaty cushions which prevent dangerous flips most associated with such activities.

It's quite perfect, really.

One waits quietly in one's vehicle, still sipping from the nectar floating in a jar of open liquor until the flashing lights of an RCMP cruiser arrives, waiting patiently on the side of the road for a tow truck to arrive until the scarlet-adorned officer of the law can then point the way for the burly trucker to skilfully winch the safely-stranded vehicle back onto the road, whereupon the smiling Dudley Do-Right offers up a knowing wink-n-wave so the drunk driver can continue on his (or her) most merry way.

But, I digress.

As Maddin's narration intones, Winnipeggers "dream while we walk and walk to where we dream." And here's the rub, the second tine of the aesthetic trident; Maddin not only secures an actor to play himself, but he rents his old West-end Winnipeg childhood home on Ellice Avenue which now sits atop an Asian tailor shoppe. He takes one bold step forward and casts actors to play his sister Janet, his living brother Ross, his long-deceased brother Cameron and then borrows his girlfriend's pug to step in for the equally-long-dead family chihuahua. A body, representing Maddin's long-dead father Chas, is shoved under a rug in the living room so he too may experience this grand experiment at discovering the past in order to move on. Now that Maddin assembles this surrogate immediate family, all parties can now live for one month as, well, as a family again, with cameras rolling upon the makeshift Maddin clan.

And here is the all important third tine of Maddin's aesthetic trident of shame.

Mother.

Mother love.

Mother all eternal.

The sweetly immortal Herdis Maddin will be portrayed by none other than the legendary "Velma" from Edgar G. Ulmer's 1945 film noir masterpiece Detour. Over 60 years later, in the middle of the first decade of the new millennium, Savage travels to Winnipeg from a rest home in California to take on her most iconic role since the Ulmer picture. She is perfection incarnate. Ann Savage proves to be as spry, powerful and sex-drenched as a century-worth of Fjallkonan Queens (super old Icelandic ladies wearing humungous head-dresses) who have been crowned during Gimli, Manitoba's Islendingadagurinn, then photographed and immortalized in a volume (available for purchase exclusively at Gimli's annual Icelandic Festival) which provides such delectable masturbation material that it effectively puts Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler, Oui and She-Male Love Tunnel collectively to shame.

This third tine might be Maddin's greatest achievement. In fact, it might well be one of the greatest achievements in all cinema history. If one has been intimately acquainted with Guy's Mother, the thought of Anne Savage playing her is tantalizing enough, but once one experiences the performance, there's the added pleasure of seeing a great actress embodying the indomitable spirit of Mrs. Maddin herself. Ah, and for those not intimately acquainted with Guy's mother, all is not lost, for the third tine still affords a brilliant performance by one of the genuine goddesses of the silver screen.

One of My Winnipeg's most breathtaking set pieces is a recreation of an incident from the Maddin family past when his sister Janet (Amy Stewart) comes home late at night in a disheveled state and tries to explain to her mother that she's had a horrendous car accident on the snowy Trans-Canada highway halfway twixt Falcon Lake, the cross country skiing haven for Winnipeg WASPs and Prawda, a proud rural enclave of hearty Ukrainian immigrants ("Prawda" is translated into English as "Truth") and home to the world-famous Yogi Bear Bistro. And here is where we all, no matter which side of the trident's tine we fall on, experience Janet's tearful recounting of a genuinely harrowing experience that is then transformed into a nightmarish, accusatory interrogation launched by Mrs. Maddin as she somehow concocts an imagined shameful sexual tryst twixt Janet and a kind man who helped her out on the highway.

This veritable Holy Spirit of the trident's tine indeed offers additional pleasures to those who have heard Guy recount the tale before (usually round campfires in Gimli under the stars and rustling leaves of elm and birch trees). The anointed few are blessed in ways that someone present at Jesus Christ's Last Supper would hold in their hearts forever. For those not-acquainted with this arcane piece of Maddin family history, the intensity does not abate since they're afforded the sheer joy of an octogenarian "Velma" from Detour abusively spitting out the bile of accusatory maternal concern over her daughter's potential to have succumbed to sexual depravity. This is the stuff great dreams and even greater cinema are made of.

For everyone, it's a win-win, especially since this and, in fact, all of the domestic dialogue in My Winnipeg has been written by longtime Maddin screenwriting collaborator George Toles with the precision, expertise and downright tasty floridity originally generated by only the greatest of Old Hollywood scribes who, of course, penned the very best studio and poverty row noir and melodrama. In particular, the words Toles infests Ann Savage with are singularly pungent in their malodorously bilious venom.

When I first saw the film, the aforementioned scene infused me with the most stratospheric levels of gooseflesh I'd ever experienced in the over 30,000 films I've seen in my life. It's that great! Subsequent viewings never disappoint.

As I was born, raised and lived the first 33 years of my life in that magical old winter city of Winnipeg, I thought I knew everything, absolutely everything about it. Well, that was before seeing My Winnipeg. Maddin stuffs his film with so many magnificently tasty globules of history, all of it glistening with the sheen of truth, that I must admit to being overwhelmed with shame - DEEP SHAME over all he reveals that I did not know.

For example, Maddin reveals that in its heyday, the grand old Eaton's department store in downtown Winnipeg was so popular that 65 cents of every Winnipegger's retail dollar was spent at Eaton's. God knows, it was one of the very few places my family shopped, but thanks to Maddin's deft research, I'm now aware of the precise amount of money my Mom and Dad shelled out into the large pockets of Timothy Eaton, founder of this majestic store. I suppose I could have guessed this, but the fact remains - I DID NOT KNOW IT!!!

SHAME! REMORSE! HOPELESSNESS! MORE SHAME! ANGUISH! These are what drive Winnipeggian existence, to be sure, but they are multiplied ad infinitum when faced with IGNORANCE!

Thanks to My Winnipeg, however, this ignorance is abated - somewhat.

Of course, no documentary about Winnipeg would be complete without focusing upon the fascinating hidden grid of the city via its network of back lanes. Back lanes were always a favourite route to travel, especially during the melancholic joy of the Christmas season when one desperately needed to avoid Winnipeg Police Department spot-checks in order to drive freely whilst blind drunk (often holding/guzzling the aforementioned jars of open liquor parcelled out by party hosts).

What I personally learned about these alleys by watching Maddin's film (and in so doing, admitting further my utter ignorance oh-so-very shamefully) that during a bitter rivalry between Winnipeg's two cab companies, the city fathers needed to put an end to the deadly, gangland tussles twixt porkpie-hatted cabbies and ordered one company the ability to use the main streets and the other to use only the alleys.

This must have seemed a brilliant solution to the City Fathers, but if truth be told, cabbies were now cluttering many back lanes that were exclusively the domain of those wishing - on foot or behind the wheel - to engage in surreptitious avoidance of prying eyes.

In spite of my ignorance of the cabbie rivalry, I was always aware of just how tantalizing and shameful these alleys were: filled with noxious trash, the abhorrent refuse of the odious citizenry, the dark shadows of despair one could happily stumble through when life seemed to have little meaning, wherein one could derive solace in knowing that it couldn't get much worse than urinating and vomiting behind someone's garage, or even occasionally using a pothole or two in Winnipeg's network of sorrowful alleys to squat and release fetid faecal matter when, on not-so-rare occasion it became nigh impossible to clench one's buttocks together (an almost vice-like grip ALL Winnipeg Mothers trained us in to avoid using public washrooms as children in order to avoid being molested by pedophiles - no matter how much WE might have craved such shameful fondling).

Ah! Winnipeg back alleys!

The preeminent fairgrounds in which to plunge madly into the nadir of one's horrendous existence, utilizing hidden, weed-filled crevasses of the murky cover of night to engage in filthy, shameful trysts with one whom you'd plied with cheap liquor at some vile watering hole and dragged into the lanes of despair, emptying foul seed within whatever orifice could be discovered upon the rank, near-comatose rag-doll; desperate thrusts, sloppy booze-addled pronging, only to leave the spent, bedraggled receptacle of manly juices, lying in a heap of its own offals to sleep it off in sub-zero temperatures whilst you, the bearer of shame, hailed a cab to take you back to a spartan flat to boil up a can of Puritan Stew on a hotplate before finally closing the weary ocular lids and diving, once more, into a very special dream of home.

These things I knew.

What I didn't know, before experiencing the truth infusing My Winnipeg was that the back lanes were ever-so tantalizing because they were shameful. As Maddin states in the film's narration: "It was inside these black arteries where the real Winnipeg is found - shameful abandonment."

Shame and abandonment were always the clarion calls of Winnipeg's foul sirens of doom.

Now, while this might surprise you, there is also sadness in Maddin's film to temper the joy. Maddin points this out, quite rightly and accurately when he reveals that "Demolition is one of our city's few growth industries."

The true pain of Winnipeg is the scourge of demolition - the violent removal of the city's history to replace it with thudding mediocrity.

Take, for example, the disconsolate tale Maddin weaves of the grand, old Eaton's department store. When bankruptcy forced the closure of this retail titan, the city did what it had always done best. It demolished this grand edifice of consumerism and in its place, erected an arena - an ugly, architecturally execrable slab of inadequacy that bore the horrendous corporate name: MT Centre. Empty, indeed. Empty of vision, of history, of promise and filled only with the pathetic hopes and dreams of the most mediocre of the city's denizens.

And why, pray tell, destroy a gorgeous old department store which could have been remodelled for any number of tantalizing purposes to build a new arena when a perfectly grand arena already existed - the famed Winnipeg Arena. It is here, Maddin tells the most doleful tale of all, one which is especially sorrowful to those of us perched on the third tine of Maddin's Aesthetic Trident.

The Winnipeg Arena was pure magic and Maddin captures the old rink's glory with the veneration it deserves. We also learn the astounding fact that Maddin was born in the home team dressing room of the Winnipeg Arena and, like other hockey children of the era, myself included, had been weaned in the Hockey Wives' Lounge during games. I am, in fact, deeply honoured to personally share these glories which Maddin imparts so movingly in his film. He tells the tale of the famed Winnipeg Maroons hockey team who were such an astonishing force on the ice that they were, throughout the 1960s, Canada's National Hockey Team - battling the finest teams of Europe, but most importantly, the dreaded Russians. What formidable rivals these were who went head to head in that arena.

Here is where, for me, the third of Maddin's aesthetic tines protrudes mightily, proudly and stiffly, burrowing itself deeply within me. Guy and I shared identical childhood experiences in that glorious Winnipeg Arena. Many years before Guy and I met, our respective fathers were colleagues and friends. Guy's father Chas Maddin was the business manager of the Winnipeg Maroons. My own father, Julian Klymkiw, was its goaltender.

Maddin, on afternoon visits with his Dad to the empty Arena would experience the "pleasure of flipping down every one of the 10,000 seats, admiring them, then flipping them all back up again." I too, on similar visits, though on different days, would do the same thing, though shamefully, I'll admit to never engaging in said glorious activities to the tune of 10,000 seats. I'd be lucky to accomplish a similar feat with a mere 3000-4000 seats.

The other shared reminiscence twixt two lads who wouldn't meet until years later in early adulthood was perhaps the most awe-inspiring of all - dressing room visits where we'd be eye-level to the soapy genitals of hockey players.

How could it get better than that?

You'd think it couldn't until Maddin wisely intones the following words of truth within his voice-over narration: "Urine, breast milk, sweat - the Holy Trinity of the Winnipeg Arena's odours." YES! THE ODOURS! They are with me also, permeating my olfactory senses on a daily basis.

My Winnipeg offers up fascinating bits of the city's storied history, but as outlandish as they seem, do not forget that these tales which Maddin regales us with are PURE FACT and proof positive that there is clearly no city in the world like Winnipeg.

There is, however, one tale to tower above them all.

It is a tale which exceeds even that of how downtown Winnipeg streets were named after venerated turn-of-the-century brothel madams and prostitutes, bearing their names to this very day.

It is a tale that tops one in which the entire city of Winnipeg reenacted what it would be like to be taken over by Nazis.

It is a tale which runs roughshod over the curious nugget of Winnipeg's only locally produced television soap opera, "The Ledge" which ran for over 50 years and starred Maddin's mother as a woman who, each episode, coaxed a different subject from taking a suicidal plunge to the filthy pavement below.

It is a tale which has no problem smothering the otherwise delightful recollection of how Winnipeg generated the highest point of elevation in the city by covering a massive hill of garbage with a fresh lawn to act as a summer picnic park and a winter toboggan slide (which still causes yearly accidents in which its victims break their necks and/or spines, then suffer lifelong paralysis).

Good Lord, it even bests the famed yearly Golden Boy pageants presided over by the city's beloved Mayor Cornish (Louis Negin) who lasciviously measured the buff bodies, paying particular attention to, well, uh, all manner of, uh, measurements, to arrive at a winner.

The story I refer to is none other than that of the notoriously near-Arctic Winnipeg Winter of 1926 wherein a squirrel fried itself on an electrical wire, subsequently causing a massive fire at the Whittier Park racetrack. The poor noble horses tore out of the barns in a mad panic - whinnying in sheer terror until they galloped into the icy waters of Winnipeg's mighty Red River and froze to death. The waters were so cold that the pain-wracked torsos and heads of the horses, froze almost immediately, dotting the tundra of the river and jutting out of the ice - frozen in time. This horrific sight actually became a favourite ice-stroll for young lovers who were so smitten with desire amongst these poor, dead animals that it resulted in a massive baby boom nine months later.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is Guy Maddin's Winnipeg, but be eternally grateful to him. It is my Winnipeg, his Winnipeg, but most of all, your Winnipeg too.

And, of course, it's one of the best pictures ever made.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

My Winnipeg is available on one of the greatest Blu-Rays ever produced. This magnificent package is courtesy of the Gold Standard of home entertainment, the Criterion Collection.

So magnificent is this release, that Winnipeg will play host to one of the world's most esteemed film critics, Jonathan Rosenbaum, who will travel from the real Chicago ("Big Chicago" as Winnipeggers call it) to "Little Chicago" (which Winnipeg was once referred to). He will present three fun-filled days of cinema celebration. Cinema in the Age of the Internet: A Conversation with Jonathan Rosenbaum will be featured at the world-renowned Plug-in Institute of Contemporary Art on March 9. This will be followed by Jonathan Rosenbaum's Global Discoveries: An Evening Of Clips and Commentary at the Winnipeg Film Group on March 10 and lastly, the crowning glory of this trinity of cinema-Bacchanalia is Celebrating the Criterion Collection release of My Winnipeg, featuring a special public chat twixt Rosenbaum and Guy Maddin at the University of Manitoba on March 11.

And this is surely a Blu-Ray to celebrate. It's a DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION that you will definitely want to own and cherish forever. It comes complete with an HD film transfer, supervised by Maddin and his illustrious producer, D.O.P. Jody (David O. Selznick/John Alton) Shapiro, an interview twixt Maddin and critic Robert Enright, a featurette entertainingly capturing segments of My Winnipeg "Live in Toronto" at the Royal Cinema, four striking cine-essays by filmmaker Evan Johnson (Maddin's brilliant collaborator on the all-new feature film The Forbidden Room) and Maddin himself, all focusing on - what else? - arcane tidbits about Winnipeg, a fine essay by critic Wayne Koestenbaum, the trailer, a gorgeous new cover design by famed contemporary artist Marcel Dzama and, frankly, the real supplemental treat of the whole package, five - COUNT 'EM - FIVE short films (three of which featuring intros by Maddin). The shorts include Only Dream Things, The Hall Runner and Louis Riel for Dinner - all excellent, but the golden feather in this Blu-Ray's cap are two shorts so moving and powerful that not only did they have me weeping like some old grandmother, but are clearly destined for short film classic status: Spanky: To the Pier and Back and Sinclair. The shorts are so amazing that I'll just let you discover them for yourself.

Just buy this Blu-Ray. In fact, buy two. You might just wear one of them out.

In Canada - BUY My Winnipeg HERE, eh!

In USA and the rest of the WORLD - BUY My Winnipeg HERE!

In the UNITED KINGDOM - BUY My Winnipeg - HERE!

THE FORBIDDEN ROOM: ***** Review By Greg Klymkiw - Take a bath with Guy Maddin at the Sundance Film Festival '15 or @ the Forum during Berlin International Film Festival '15

Marv (Louis Negin) teaches you how to take a bath in THE FORBIDDEN ROOM

LOUIS NEGIN is MARV

The Forbidden Room (2015)
Dir. Guy Maddin
Co-Dir. Evan Johnson
Scr. Maddin, Johnson, Robert Kotyk
Addl. Writ. John Ashbery, Kim Morgan
Edit. John Gurdebeke
Prod.Design Galen Johnson
Cinematog. Stephanie Anne Weber Biron and Ben Kasulke
Prod. Co. PHI Films, The National Film Board of Canada, Buffalo Gal
Starring: Roy Dupuis, Clara Furey, Louis Negin, Céline Bonnier, Karine Vanasse, Caroline Dhavernas, Paul Ahmarani, Mathieu Amalric, Udo Kier, Maria de Medeiros, Charlotte Rampling, Géraldine Chaplin, Marie Brassard, Sophie Desmarais, Ariane Labed, Amira Casar, Luce Vigo, Gregory Hlady, Romano Orzari, Lewis Furey, Angela La Muse Senyshyn, Kimmi Melnychuk, Kim Morgan, Darcy Fehr, Jean-François Stévenin, Judith Baribeau, Graham Ashmore

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Ladies and gentlemen, it's time to take a bath with Guy Maddin in his closet of tantalizing shame, his forbidden room. God knows I have partaken on occasions too multitudinous to enumerate. So please, allow me to assure you, bathing with Maddin is a most gratifying and sensual treat for the mind, body and most of all, your very soul.

So then, my dear ones, do yourself a favour and hop into the stew with the Crown Prince of Prairie Post-Modernist Cinema and revel in the myriad of pleasures that motion pictures can offer: the fleshly, the ectoplasmic, the magically incorporeal, the visually and aurally celestial and, most assuredly, the cerebral complexities of all human existence in this world and the next, as filtered through the mind (within an enormous head of magma) of the great Icelandic Satyr who worships - nay, attends to all the needs of that Bacchus who rules over us all, the most holy and resplendent gift that IS the great silver-embossed photoplay, the magic bestowed upon our world by the immortal Brothers Lumière.

The Forbidden Room is 130 glorious minutes you'll want to experience over and over and over again. If, God Forbid, you find you're unable to experience it more than once, or worse, if you're compelled to not see it at all, you either don't care about cinema and/or have no taste and/or hold the unenviable dishonour of exhibiting little more than bone matter twixt thine wax-filled ears and behind eyes of cement.

I, for one, must confess to having seen the film five times now. My fifth helping occurred precisely at the scheduled time of the first public screening in Park City, Utah at the Sundance Film Festival, which I was sadly unable to attend.

I did, however, attempt to replicate the joy of said event, in an outdoor soft tub, located at the northernmost tip of the penetratingly puissant peninsula dividing the moist Great Lake of Huron and its clitoral Georgian Bay, surrounded by the glories of the natural world, the horses, ponies, donkeys, dogs, squirrels, beavers, hibernating bears, coyotes, wolves and chickens, puffing fine tobacco purchased from my Aboriginal Brothers on their cheap-smoke-shoppe and hunting lands down the road, with jets of hot water massaging my rolls of flesh and every so often, just now and then, mind you, the hand not gripping a stick of sacred, smouldering, oh-so natural leaves of First-Nations bliss, would plunge greedily into the bubbly water, seeking netherworlds of sheer exultation to grip, to manipulate, to squeeze and tug with abandon until finally, emitting an ejection, an eruption (if you will) of jubilant gratification, a cascade, a geyser, a blast of liquid force in honour of the grandiose cinematic pulchritude before me.

By a waterfall, bath-time with Guy Maddin is calling yoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!

As a matter of fact - pure and simple - I do not even wish to imagine how many more times I shall partake of this scintillatingly sudsy broth that celebrates the incalculable joys of life, shame, regret, sorrow, love, death and cinema, all those things which render our otherwise pathetic existence with meaning. Even one helping of The Forbidden Room can drain a feller (or lassie) more powerfully than several months of Sundays infused with gymnastics of resplendent amore. Yes, a drain in more ways than one:

Lo! This motion picture is most assuredly one drain we all must want to be slurped down, down, down into. Please, dear ones.

Let me try to explain why.

MAESTRO UDO KIER:
DEEPLY OBSESSIVE
WORSHIPPER
of DELICIOUS
DERRIERES

The Forbidden Room opens with an astounding credit sequence which stutters and sputters by like fragments of decaying film on nitrate stock (not unlike that of Peter Delpeut's 1991 found-footage documentary Lyrical Nitrate, unleashed upon North American audiences by Zeitgeist Films, who also gave us Maddin's Archangel and Careful as well as the similarly stylish work of the Brothers Quay). The imaginative way of placing gorgeous period title cards announcing key creative elements is an equally brilliant way to dispense with the ludicrous number of producers and the decidedly non-period acknowledgments to gouvernement du Canada et gouvernement du Manitoba agencies like Telefilm Canada and Manitoba Film and Sound, etc. (At least the National Film Board of Canada makes sense given the significance of Holy Father John Grierson's efforts during that historical period detailed in Pierre Berton's book "Hollywood's Canada".)

Once these are all dispensed with, the film opens proper with the John 6:12 passage:

When they were filled,
he said unto his disciples,
Gather up the fragments that remain,
that nothing be lost.

It's a powerful passage, to be sure, but its resonance, its weighty thematic substance and, in fact, the very Raison d'être for The Forbidden Room is clutched almost parsimoniously by John's recapitulation of Our Lord's words.

Though the film is comprised of several different stories, they represent fragments of cinema from days long-gone-by which, through the ravages of time and the lack of care ascribed to film preservation during the first half-decade-plus of its history saw so many pieces of time go missing without a trace, or indeed, pieces of time that never even existed, but should have. Maddin, not unlike Georges Melies is a magician of sorts. His film conjures up fragments of films lost, stolen or suppressed, brilliantly re-imagined (or rather, just plain imagined) by Maddin and his co-director Evan Johnson and the pair's co-writer Robert Kotyk. They have been gathered up, these fragments, these very ghosts of cinema, "so that nothing shall be lost".

The Forbidden Room is a structural marvel. Kudos to Maddin and team for creating it so solidly from what must have been reams of magnificent footage written, prepped, shot and cut during the over-four-years it took to make this grand epic that honours both cinema and the lives of ghosts. In fact, the movie astonishingly adheres to (an albeit slightly skewed) three-act structure in terms of story and tone. The first third establishes its series of problems and obstacles right off the bat. The middle act slides into a journey in which said obstacles must be encountered and hurtled over or deviated into delicious nap times of dreams and reveries which provide even more obstacles to be hurtled over or deviated into, well, nap time for sure, but in this middle section one will find some of the most heart-achingly beautiful and tear-squirtingly moving emotions and images. And then, there is the third act - more on this later, but suffice to say it's an insanely eye-popping affair.

Tonally, then, the first third is jaunty, fun and occasionally sinister.The middle act is supremely elegiac with dapples of madness, humour and absurdity.

The third act is a hurricane.

Many tales are interwoven throughout and our first story (the writing of which is additionally supplied by John Ashbery) is a garishly coloured industrial documentary featuring a flamboyantly bath-robed Marv (Louis Negin), our host on the journey to the joys inherent in taking a proper bath. Marv recounts the history of bathing, then narrates all the proper steps needed to take a bath. Twixt Marv's peacockish descriptions and asides, we're delighted with images of pretty young ladies (Angela La Muse Senyshyn, Kimmi Melnychuk) bathing each other, then followed by the buff fortitude of a male bather (Graham Ashmore) carefully applying Marv's instructions as he settles into a nice, steamy, frothy tub. The man is especially eager to get to Marv's most important instructions of all:

"Work down to the genitals. Work carefully in ever-widening circles."

The sensual digital manipulations within the steamily sopping froth give way to another tale, another film infused with the serous lifeblood (and yes, danger) of water itself. A submarine carrying dangerous explosives and rapidly depleting oxygen is stuck between a rock and a hard place as the pressures of the sea above will be enough to send the vessel into a massive eruption of its deadly cargo and though the necessary slow journey it undertakes to avoid disaster is the very thing that will guarantee another disaster, the lack of oxygen which could kill every man on board. Luckily, there is some solace taken in the constant serving up of flapjacks, which in spite of their culinary monotony, are found to be full of porous insides which offer added oxygen to extend the men's precious lives.

Roy Dupuis is a dreamy, hunky, handsome woodsman
searching, ever-searching for his lady fair.

When a dreamy, rugged and brave Woodsman (Roy Dupuis) appears in the sub, the narrative becomes even more tied into other films and as the movie progresses, its literary properties seem rooted in a kind of Romantic period use of concentric rings (albeit skewed in ways they never should be).

One story after another, either recounted by characters in one film and represented by another or told as stories within stories or, my favourite, as dreams within dreams, flash by us ever-so compellingly, taking us deeper into a liquid-like miasma, a ripe flatulence of wonder, a churning, roiling sea of volcanic lava - DEEPER, EVER-DEEPER INTO THE VERY CORE OF EXISTENCE AND CINEMA!!!!!

We follow Roy Dupuis's Woodsman into a cave of scarlet-furred-lupine-worshipping barbarians who have kidnapped his lady love. We see his infiltration into this den of murderers, kidnappers and thieves as he successfully proves his worth during several challenges including:

- finger snapping;
- stone weighing;
- offal piling and, my personal favourite;

- BLADDER SLAPPING!!!!!

GERALDINE CHAPLIN
THE MASTER PASSION
Le Dominatrix
des adorateurs derriere

When we meet the Woodsman's lady love, the film takes us into her mad dreamworld wherein she acquires amnesia and we're assailed with glorious images of native dancers, sexy crooners, and a delicious pitstop involving a sexy anal dominatrix, The Master Passion (Geraldine Chaplin) and then, an even more delectable pitstop involving a madman (Udo "Who the fuck else?" Kier) obsessed with bottoms who is then worked upon by an equally mad doctor who performs open brain surgery to slice out viscous portions of cerebellum afflicted with buttock obsession and climaxing with the ultimate fist-fucking as the doctor plunges his whole hand into the buttock-like brain of Udo Kier to attack the deep core, or prostate, if you will of the man's anal intrusions upon his very mind, his very soul.

There's the tale of a kindly bone specialist who operates upon a sexy motorcyclist who has 47 broken bones after a horrific accident in which she swerves to avoid a family of ducks in her path. Of course, the doctor must take special care to lay his hands upon her prodigiously in order to heal her broken breast bones and, in so doing, falls madly in love with her before being seduced and kidnapped by a bevy of sexy skeleton women who are under the control of a skull-headed medical insurance fraudster.

In DreamLand, Crooners Croon of Derriere Worship.

One yarn after another assails us and as they emit their fantastical glories, constantly astounding us as to how they dovetail in and out of each other - a tale of a mill keeper and his gardener, a tale of a train psychiatrist and his screaming patient and seductive ways, a tale of volcano worshippers always on the lookout for living sacrifices, a tale of a forgetful husband (Mathiu Almaric, that great French actor whom one can watch for an eternity) who ends up murdering his loyal manservant (Udo Kier - AGAIN!!!) to cover-up his gift-giving incompetence, a tale of the manservant in death as his moustache hairs dream about taking him for a final visit (or several) to his little boy and blind wife (Maria de Medeiros), a tale of a consular official and his gorgeous fiancé (Sophie Desmarais) and the man's obsession with a cursed bust of Janus which turns him into an evil Mr. Hyde-like defiler-of-women and the tale of . . .

Have I mentioned the vampires yet?

Oops. Sorry. My bad!

They're called ASWANG (pronounced ASS-WANG).

You will not want to take a bath with any of them - except maybe the ultra-sexy Aswangs.

Will the submarine blow up? Will the woodsman be reunited with his lady love? Will she be cured of her amnesia?

Will we be able to count how many times Louis Negin appears, Franklin Pangborn-like, in different roles?

Will we be able to count how many times Udo Kier appears, Eric Blore-like, in different roles?

Will we ever meet the mysteriously missing Captain of the submarine?

Will we meet his MOTHER!!!!!

Will we survive the mad, fever pitch of a climax, that flings us into the most mind-blowing trip of visual splendour since Stanley Kubrick's stargate sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey (replete with . . . colliding zeppelins)?

What HAVE I missed?

Have I missed mentioning that the editing of John Gurdebeke and the production design of Galen Johnson are both as inspired and brilliant as Guy Maddin's most-assured hand? Have I missed mentioning that the exquisite lighting and camera work from cinematographers Stephanie Anne Weber Biron and Ben Kasulke provides the eyes to reflect Maddin's soul? Have I missed mentioning how astonishing the work that all of Mr. Maddin's creative collaborators proves to be in this, his greatest achievement?

I hope not.

I, for one, will take yet another bath with Guy Maddin.

We've taken so many together over the past 30+ years.

What's one (or a few) more.

The Film Corner Rating: ***** 5-Stars

The Forbidden Room is playing the Sundance Film Festival and the Berlin Film Festival. Its worldwide sales are being handled by Mongrel Media International.

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FULL DISCLOSURE

Oh, and for fuck's sake, lest someone point a boneheaded accusatory finger, I present to you the full disclosure that Maddin's late father Chas was business manager of the Winnipeg Maroons, and my own father Julian, who will, by virtue of his stubborn, curmudgeonly qualities, live-forever, played goal for the same team. Both fathers accompanied the team to various European bouts as the Maroons were, indeed, Canada's national hockey team during the early-to-mid-sixties. Maddin and I have been friends for over thirty years, we were flat-mates for many years, we have shared many strange adventures together and I produced his first three feature films (Tales from the Gimli Hospital, Archangel and Careful). I am, however, a true fan of his films. Always have been. I'm perfectly able to assess his work critically and the day I ever hate one of his films (which I have, in fact), I'll goddamn well say so (which I have, in fact, and done so with constructive viciousness).

MYNARSKI DEATH PLUMMET, THE WEATHERMAN AND THE SHADOWBOXER, THE UNDERGROUND: 3 SHORT CANADIAN FILMS at TIFF 2014 (TIFF Short Cuts Canada) - Review By Greg Klymkiw

Canada's Great War Hero,
Andrew Mynarski VC,
Shooting Star of
Selfless Sacrifice,
a man of Bronze.

Mynarski Death Plummet aka Mynarski chute mortelle (2014)
Dir. Matthew Rankin
Starring: Alek Rzeszowski, Annie St-Pierre, Robert Vilar, Louis Negin

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The true promise, the very future of the great Dominion of Canada and La Belle Province lies beneath the soil of France and Belgium. Between World Wars I and II, Canada lost close to 2% of its population, the vast majority of whom were the country's youngest and brightest from the ages of 16 to 30. Canadian lads bravely served on the front lines, well ahead of the glory-grabbing Americans, the Yankee Doodle mop-up crew that dandily sauntered overseas after all the hard work was paid for by the blood spilled upon European soil by the very heart and soul of Canada's future and that of so many other countries not bearing the Red, White and Blue emblem of puffery. As a matter of fact, any of the best and bravest in Canada came from Winnipeg and if you had to pick only one hero of the Great Wars from anywhere in the country, Andrew Mynarski, a gunner in the famed Moose Squadron, would be the one, the only. He is the subject of Matthew Rankin's perfect gem of a film, the one, the only genuine cinematic work of art to detail the valiant sacrifice, the one, the only, the unforgettable Mynarski Death Plummet.

Played dashingly in Rankin's film by a real, live, honest-to-goodness, in-the-flesh, Goralska-Sausage-Slurping Polish-Canadian actor, Alek Rzeszowski, Mynarski himself was a fearless Polish-Canadian kid born and raised in the the North End, the only neighbourhood in Winnipeg (alongside St. Boniface, 'natch) that bears any real historical significance in Canada's keystone to the west, the former "Little Chicago" perched majestically on the forks of the mighty Red and Assiniboine Rivers. In 1944, Mynarski flew an Avro Lancaster bomber into the heavy action of northern France. After taking out his fair share of Nazi Pigs, the plane was aflame. He ordered the other lads aboard to drop the Polski Ogórki from his Mom, grab their chutes and bail. They did so with pride in a job well done.

Mynarski was last to leave. Or so he thought until he realized that Officer Pat Brophy (Robert Vilar) was trapped in the tail gun compartment. Our North End Hero did everything possible to save his friend until Brophy demanded Mynarski save himself. The lads exchanged salutes and the Polish Prince of King Edward and Isaac Newton schools, his chute now sadly in flames, took a fateful plunge from the plummeting Avro. His fire-engulfed body shot itself over the fields of France, mistaken as a bomb by some, including a rural mayor (Louis Negin, Canada's greatest actor - like, ever), but was correctly identified by a ravishing, babe-o-licious, though simple country girl of France as 100% REAL MAN, his body melted to bronze as the woman shot beams of love and gratitude from her heart into the spirit of the eventual posthumous recipient of the Victoria Cross and honoured by Winnipeg's citizenry with a legendary North End Junior High School in his name.

This is such a great film. I could have watched all seven minutes of it if they'd somehow been elongated to a Dreyer-like pace and spread out over 90 minutes. That said, it's perfect as it is. The fact that you don't want it to end is a testament to director Matthew Rankin one of the young torchbearers (along with Astron-6) of the prairie post-modernist movement which hatched out of Winnipeg via the brilliantly demented minds of John Paizs and Guy Maddin. Blending gorgeously arcane techniques from old Hollywood, ancient government propaganda films with dollops of staggeringly, heart-achingly beautiful animation - bursting with colour and blended with superbly art-directed and costumed live action - Mynarski Death Plummet takes its rightful place alongside such classic Canadian short films as John Martins-Manteiga's The Mario Lanza Story, John Paizs's Springtime in Greenland, Guy Maddin's The Dead Father and Deco Dawson's Ne Crâne pas sois modeste / Keep a Modest Head.

In many ways, Rankin's film is history in the making of history. Most Canadians of my generation know Andrew Mynarski's story by heart, but even still, Rankin's film is so compelling, I kept hoping it wouldn't end as tragically as it did. Thankfully, Rankin infuses his tale with the sumptuous, wildly romantic image of the French babe looking longingly into the night sky and her magical explosion of squid-like polyps from within her big heart, allowing them to sail into the black Gallic atmosphere and plunge into Mynarski's very soul before he transforms into the likeness of the bronze memorial statue erected in Ottawa, the capital of our fair Dominion.

The other part of the story that all Canadians of my generation know is that Officer Brophy actually survived the crash. He was not only able to recount Mynarski's bravery and sacrifice, but he was kept alive by the strength and just-plain brick shithouse qualities of the Canadian-invented-and-manufactured Avro Bomber - an incredibly moving moment Rankin recreates in his film. (And sadly, the AVRO corp and its eventual superior aircraft, including "The Arrow", were decimated by the Americans into smithereens when Uncle Sam couldn't hack the fact that Canada had actually created something, uh, better than they could.)

A final important thought about Rankin's astonishing film. There is so much ludicrous, politically correct lip service paid to the new "face" of Canada and the need to represent the histories and stories of the said "new face". I'm all for that, but the problem is that Canadian Cinema has not even properly addressed its own history prior to the "new face of Canada". Until that happens, I think it might not be a bad idea to begin recounting and mythologizing Canada's true heroes as Rankin has done with Mynarski Death Plummet.

I hope this film is shown everywhere - especially in schools, especially to our "new" faces. It's bad enough Canadian History is so poorly taught in our schools, but maybe, just maybe, a super-cool new masterpiece of cinema is a good first-step to begin writing wrongs that the past century has wrought upon our great Dominion. When I say our future was decimated in the World Wars, I'm not exaggerating, but there's more to it than that. Our country has long been besieged by a cultural colonialism that has stifled genuine creativity and placed far too much emphasis on staid approaches to the cultural industries decided mostly by unimaginative bureaucrats who seek either the Status Quo of dull-edged blades or worse, hang pathetically onto their jobs by promoting "diversity" rather than genuinely looking to find ways of dramatically and artistically render a history and stories that have sadly been neglected.

Mynarski Death Plummet is a mere seven minutes long, but its impact and lasting value can be multiplied to the power of the infinite - a fine equation, if you ask me.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

Mynarski Death Plummet is part of TIFF14's Short Cuts Canada program. Visit TIFF's website HERE for more info.

A maze that begins
in childhood
and never ends.

The Weatherman
and the Shadowboxer (2014)
Dir. Randall Okita

Review By Greg Klymkiw

One of Canada's national filmmaking treasures, Randall Okita (Portrait as a Random Act of Violence), takes the very simple story of two brothers and charts how a tragic event in childhood placed them on very different, yet equally haunted (and haunting) paths.

Mixing live action that ranges from noir-like, shadowy, rain-splattered locales to the strange, colourful (yet antiseptically so) world of busy, high-tech, yet empty reportage, mixing it up with reversal-stock-like home movie footage, blending it altogether in a kind of cinematic mixmaster with eye popping animation and we're offered-up a simple tale that provides a myriad of levels to tantalize, intrigue and finally, catch us totally off-guard and wind us on a staggering emotional level.

Okita's cinematographer Samy Inayeh is more than up to the challenge of attacking a variety of visual styles with superb compositions and gorgeous lighting. Editor Mike Reisacher knocks us on our proverbial love-buns with his thrilling slicing and dicing.

As per Okita's mise-en-scene, Reisacher's challenge is to maintain the film's avant-garde nature with its equally profound narrative and thematic elements. He's more than up to the challenge and cuts a picture that we're unable to ever look away from and follow a trajectory that wends its way like a complex maze between two different characters and lands us to a spot that kicks us in the solar plexus and wrenches our hearts.

Unbelievably for some, this was produced by the National Film Board of Canada, but it appears to have been seeded and birthed out of the Montreal offices which still manages to consistently escape the often dour safety-zone prevalent in much of the Board's English Canadian output.

As for Okita, he's delivered yet another roundhouse for the ages. This is what cinema should be. Screw ephemeral needs. Immortality is, uh, like, better, eh.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4-Stars

The Weatherman and the Shadowboxer is in TIFF14's Short Cuts Canada program. Visit TIFF's website HERE for more info.

We're all cockroaches.
Don't forget it.

The Underground (2014)
Dir. Michelle Latimer
Starring: Omar Hady

Review By Greg Klymkiw

What's especially fine in this slice-of-life/slice-of-consciousness dramatic cinematic tone poem is how it presents a contemporary political and social reality that's seemingly the exclusive domain of a very specific segment of our population. Through its careful mise-en-scene, that comes close to overplaying its metaphorical hand, but pulls back in time to maintain the necessary poker face (as it were), The Underground deftly creates feelings that can, indeed, be universal.

Inspired by Rawi Hage's novel "Cockroach", the film feels all of a piece rather than some horrendous calling card for an eventual feature length adaptation. If, God forbid, it's supposed to serve this purpose, it would be a tad disappointing to know, but at least it has a singular integrity that allows it to work as a piece of film art unto itself. Cleverly rooted in simplicity to yield complexity, we follow a young refugee from some Middle Eastern hell hole as he lives out his lonely life in Canada within the isolation of a filthy, cockroach-infested slum apartment.

Part of the reason for the cockroaches could be his fascination with these seemingly vile creatures and his penchant for capturing them and setting up strange domiciles in glass jars. He spends much of his time on the floor of his filthy suite intently examining his "pets", but also experiencing flashbacks to the horror of what must have been his incarceration and torture. When a notice is slipped under his door to prepare for a visit from a pest control company, the film truly takes on the feeling of a living nightmare.

We become immersed in paranoia through a cockroach-eye-view and indeed, the images of hooded pest-control guys take on the same kind of creepy horror so prevalent in David Cronenberg's very early genre features that featured similarly-masked and/or accoutred killers/exterminators. There's a truly sickening and recognizable sense of fear, paranoia and loneliness so acute one wants the protagonist to scream. He won't, though. His is a silent scream.

And though we might all not be or can even fully comprehend what it's like to be a political refugee in a strange land, the film does make us feel and believe that at some point in our lives, if not for always and for ever, we are all little more than cockroaches in a world hell-bent upon weighing us down. We cower, hugging our floors as if we were a fetus in a blood-lined belly of viscous fluids and we wait for the secret police to drag us out of our home, or our cell, to be ripped from the safety of a womb we've made for ourselves.

And then, and only then, are we plunged into sheer horror.

The Film Corner Rating: ***½ Three-and-a-half Stars

The Underground is in TIFF14's Short Cuts Canada program. Visit TIFF's website HERE for more info.

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A similar scene to the one experienced by Jim Jarmusch and others in New York during the 70s and 80s and captured in the documentary BLANK CITY as well as many other works in the "Forgotten Winnipeg" series was happening in Winnipeg. A very cool explosion in indie underground cinema that I and many colleagues and friends were involved with was spawned during these halcyon days. This period, coined by film critic Geoff Pevere as Prairie Post-Modernism included the works of John Paizs, Guy Maddin, Greg Hanec and many others.

A great selection of early Guy Maddin, many of which that I produced and were written by George Toles, can be secured directly through the following links:



Another great film from Winnipeg during this period is Greg Hanec's extraordinary DOWNTIME which has the distinction of being a parallel cinematic universe to Jim Jarmusch's "STRANGER THAN PARADISE". Both films were made at the same time in two completely different cities and scenes and both Hanec and Jarmusch premiered their films at the same time at the Berlin Film Festival. One's famous, the other isn't - but now that the "lost" and "found" DOWNTIME has been remastered from original elements to DVD, it can now be purchased directly online.

Order DOWNTIME directly
from the film's new website
by clicking HERE

Perhaps the greatest Canadian independent underground filmmaker of all-time is Winnipeg's John Paizs. It's virtually impossible to secure copies of his astounding work which, frankly, is responsible for influencing the work of Guy Maddin, David Lynch, Bruce McDonald and an endless number of great indie filmmakers the world over. Paizs' great short film SPRINGTIME IN GREENLAND is available for purchase in a beautiful remastered edition from a fan website, the inimitable Frank Norman. Norman has Paizs' blessing to provide copies of the film, so feel free to directly make your request to Mr. Norman by clicking HERE.

Visit Frank Norman's CRIME WAVE
fan site by clicking HERE

Alas, it's super-impossible to get a copy of Paizs' masterpiece CRIME WAVE (not to be confused with the super-awful Coen Bros/Sam Raimi film of the same name that was released the same year Paizs' film was NOT released properly by its scumbag Canadian distributor Norstar Releasing, which eventually became Alliance Films (where the boneheads sat on the film and turned down several excellent offers from small indie companies to release the film properly on DVD in super-deluxe special editions because they lazily purported to be negotiating a massive package deal on its catalogue titles with some tiny scumbag public domain company that, as far as I can tell, has neither purchased nor released the film). This truly great and highly influential film is, no doubt, languishing in some boneheaded distribution purgatory within the deep anal cavities of the new owner of Alliance Films, a humungous mega-corporation called E-One. Feel free to repeatedly bug their stinking asses and demand a proper release. In the meantime, VHS copies of CRIME WAVE can still be found with the ludicrous title THE BIG CRIME WAVE. Here's a copy available on Amazon:

BLANK CITY and other works in the "Forgotten Winnipeg" Series can be accessed here: