Guy Maddin's frozen reverie on Canada's "Gateway to the West" is barely defrosted by the warmth of the projector bulb. The filmmaker conjures up his own "snowy, sleepy Winnipeg," a place of eternal winter and endless night, while providing a turgid stream of consciousness, babbling in an urgent, incantatory mock-travelogue style. Restaging his youth but making his own detours, Maddin transforms Winnipeg into a city of mystery. Maddin claims to have been born in the locker room of the Winnipeg Maroons' now-demolished home. "Who is alive anymore?" he wonders as the movie wends toward closure. "It's so hard to remember."
