Guy Maddin: Waiting for Twilight

Fellow Winnipeg film maker Noam Gonick spent fifteen months chronicling Twilight of the Ice Nymphs and, though little scandalous information on the troubled production is revealed, Gonick adorns his breezy portrait of its director with delightful historical nuggets and toopersonal details. As we watch Maddin sit for a haircut or paint his storyboards, Gonick sketches Maddin’s biography to date; much drama, irony and dramatic irony is provided by gruffvoiced narrator Tom Waits, who at one point was cast as Ice Nymphs’ Cain Ball. On set, a candid Maddin reveals he suffers from a mysterious neurological ailment and lives in fear that his actors (all gushing with compliments for their director) might snatch away his movie. Lying in bed morosely after the film’s wrap, Maddin replays his errors, but vows to carry on squinting into the moral twilight. Maddin: `Ever the mythmaker, Gonick portrayed me as passiveaggressive and selfpitying a remarkable editing feat!’ (M.P.)