From Big Snow to Big Sadness: The Repatriation of Canadian Cultural Identity in the Films of Guy Maddin

Much has been made of dwarfing of Canadian cultural heritage and identity by neighbouring behemoth that is United States. This anxiety proves especially true when one considers canon of Canadian cinema, where early Yankee-produced Yukon adventure films and Bombardier-endorsed corporate propaganda were answered in wake of Second World War with reactionary and largely compensatory slew of government-subsidized documentaries which constitute what Jim Leach refers to as Canada's national-realist project. (1) With ostensible exception of Quebecois cinema, which has benefited greatly from both unique cinematic sensibilities of francophone filmmakers such as Jean Pierre Lefebvre or Denys Arcand, and eager responsiveness of Quebec's embedded francophone audience, it appears as if Canadian cinema has largely failed to produce a filmmaker who can singularly articulate national experience in a way that approaches mammoth cultural resonance of American counterparts of John Ford or Robert Altman variety. And while talents of Arcand, Cronenberg and Egoyan have certainly drawn eye of world cinema upon Canada (however fleetingly), these filmmakers have failed to speak to issues of Canadian identity with same level of intellect and necessary absurdity as Winnipeg auteur Guy Maddin. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Here, I will examine how issues of national and local identity are portrayed in work Canadian writer/director/cinematographer/editor Guy Maddin. First, I will analyze historical misconstruction of Canadian identity on film at hands of Hollywood, drawing largely from Pierre Berton's Hollywood's Canada: The of Our National Image. Next, through a discussion of relation between filmmaker and cinematic city which serves as his base of operations, I will situate Maddin within Canadian national filmic project as specifically a Winnipeg filmmaker and articulate exactly what differentiates sensibility of a Winnipeg filmmaker from rest of Canada's larger cinematic body. Finally, I will speak to Maddin's position as preeminent contemporary Canadian auteur and chief mythmaker. In doing so, I will make claim that Maddin, through his highly allusive style and idiosyncratic approach to Canadiana, is a filmmaker who has not only reimagined Canada's national history but that of cinema itself in interest of repatriating Canada's dominion over not just its own national cinematic narratives, but its national and cultural identity more generally. America's Northern Frontier: Yankee Images of Canada In Hollywood's Canada, an analysis of half a century of American (2) films about Canada, historian Pierre Berton provides an exhaustive account of phenomenon which he calls Americanization of Canada's national image. So powerful, writes Berton, Hollywood image of Canada that in many cases it was accepted as real thing--even by Canadians. (3) His unease is rooted not exclusively in concern that image of Canada, both nationally and abroad, has been cinematically commandeered and consequentially compromised by United States. For while Berton is apt in noting importance of the earnest and often brilliant documentaries of National Film Board (4) to Canadian cinematic project, he stresses value of a more representative portrait of Canada in commercial movies: being those which popular audiences are regularly responsive to. How this consistent cinematic misrepresentation of Canada has transpired historically is often, not surprisingly, in accordance with classical tenets of American mythologizing. The traditional image of Canada, propagated as frequently on our own souvenir t-shirts as in films Berton dissects, is one of unsullied wilderness, big snow, sex-crazed courier des bois and implausibly moralizing Mounties. Many of films detailed in Hollywood's Canada depict Canada as being same sort of unspoiled frontier (depicted most commonly in sweeping vistas of American Western) that had collapsed in United States following proliferation of modern metropolis and resulting shift to urbanity. …

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