Ann Savage in My Winnipeg

This past year, while not an especially strong one for mainstream cinema, was certainly worthwhile with regards to supporting female performances. And though there is a plethora of women to choose from, a vast and expansive spectrum that ranges from Samantha Morton's multi dimensional role in Synecdoche New York to Frances McDormand's schooled idiocy in Burn After Reading, when I decided to write a profile for StinkyLulu's Supporting Actress Blog-A-Thon, it was as clear as day the woman I was to pay tribute to.

What is amazing about the actress I chose to write on, Ann Savage, is that while someone like Clint Eastwood or Meryl Streep takes years and years, as well as many films, to cultivate an easily identifiable persona, Savage was able to create hers with a single film. No one who has seen the film noir classic Detour with any objectivity (I am aware of the vast audience of nitwits who like film noir exclusively for it's dated dialogue and sexual innuendo) could possibly forget her fatal charms, charms which were still active up until her final role. Ann Savage's turn as Guy Maddin's mother in his documentary-of-the-mind, My Winnipeg, is hands down my favorite performance by either gender of the year, not only for it's malleability, kindness and stern disapproval in equal portions, but also for it's alternating realism. Guy Maddin identifies every other member of his family as actors except for his Mother, whom Savage plays so reactively, so matronly, that we would have little choice but to believe it as truth, were her face not already etched into our memory by her anachronistic Vera in Detour.

The hero of My Winnipeg, both within the plot and outside of it, is clearly Guy Maddin, both the protagonist and the author, the creator and his creation. Because of My Winnipeg's free-flowing (I hesitate to use the term stream-of-consciousness as it is wildly inaccurate, but it does much to describe Maddin's approach if not it's effects) structure, his actors are required to pass through the film in an almost Bressonian state, emotionless but indicative of the dreamlike nature of their actions. This is a remarkably difficult task, and it is of great importance that Ann Savage rises above the brilliance of the other actors' performances, and actually inhabits the role like only a mother could. She breathes fire into her scenes which require it, but has a familial air of unconditional love not only throughout her interactions with her kin, but also when she is hovering omnisciently, sometimes just beyond a window pane on a sleepy Winnipeg train. Maddin's multi-pronged approach to filmmaking adds much to Savage's character, her alternating grimace and smile make for so much of My Winnipeg's appeal that she becomes paramount to it's success.

Though the film is much more about Winnipeg as a mythological entity and Maddin's relationship with it, Ann Savage appropriates many of the film's scenes, startling the viewer with her quizzical remarks and enthusiastic manners. While some of these bizarre and wondrous statements are later explained (e.g. "Was it the boy on the track team or the man with the tire iron?") many are left without explanation, leaving us to believe in the family's wholly rounded functionality, a trait attainable only through years of extreme proximity, and one which proves itself elusive to most fictional families.

Due to her effectiveness both as an actress as well as a mother figure, Ann Savage takes control of the film's final scenes, laying in the snow cradling her long-lost son, Freezy wrapper stuck in her once-treasured and fawned over hair. This being the final image of Savage committed to celluloid during her life, it is fitting that it is one of comfort in an uncomfortable environment, a bizarre embrace laying waste to the bitter cold. In the end, it's one of the most striking visions in an already phantasmagoric experience, one which stands above all others as a defining moment in one of the most unique Canadian auteur's ouevre. It stands as an image of defiance.
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This was written for StinkyLulu's Supporting Actress Blog-A-Thon.