Making a feature film is difficult. Making a feature film in Canada is very difficult. Making a feature film in Canada that stands outside of genre, commercial concern and everyday narrative logic must be close to impossible. Somehow, Winnipeg native Guy Maddin has managed to make 10 films on those terms, three of them silent.

Maddin's latest, Keyhole, finds him starting with a recognizable genre (film noir) and aesthetic bedrock (dream logic), while quickly branching out in multiple directions and tones. The story follows a gangster (Jason Patric) who hides out in his childhood home, currently occupied by ghosts and assorted unsavoury characters who challenge his reality. It is strange, frightening, funny, sad, sexual and more than a small challenge to take in.

Alongside the film’s DVD release July 24 we spoke with Maddin about how Keyhole came to be.    

Keyhole is a challenging movie, but one that’s stayed with me since I saw it.

Kinda like a strong smell in the carpet you can’t get out? [laughs] All my favourite movies, even those I didn’t enjoy watching so much at the time, are ones that have stayed with me. Even when I thought I’d forgotten them, I’d revisit them a few years later. Two favourites, Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) and Jean Vigo’s L’Atalante (1934) ... I fell asleep watching Vertigo for the first time! A few years later, I felt I needed to see them again and loved them. It’d be nice to be a musician and hit somebody’s heart the first time through.

I’d put it on a short list with Eraserhead (1977) and Europa (1991), other movies that get the tempo of dreams right, not just the imagery.

I couldn’t sleep after watching Eraserhead. I couldn’t get the sound of it out of my head, like a seashell held up to each ear. The idea that a movie could have an atmosphere that strong stayed with me. It never occurred to me to be a filmmaker when I saw it but it was like a rallying cry – I felt there might be a way to express myself as an artist. It was a very inspiring thing, so I’m honoured you would [make that connection].

Your films are not particularly story driven. So where do you start?

I’ve tried to go story driven now and again but I should probably go back and read a screenplay “how to” book.

[Keyhole] started with a feeling. In recent years, I’ve had recurring dreams of people that have passed on revisiting me — and of my childhood home. There’s a bittersweet feeling created. Sometimes incredible sadness at being in a home I can no longer live in, other times I was euphoric to find myself back. I just thought about how strong our emotional attachments are toward childhood homes, whether a tiny apartment or a mansion. I thought if I draped that feeling around a solid structure, in this case the thousand-year-old Odyssey, I’d have enough to sort those feelings out. It ended up kind of like a remake of My Winnipeg (2007), which was about my hometown and family, but way more abstract and fictionalized.

Something the movie gets very right about dream logic is the way the “home,” a familiar location for the main character, is never quite “right” as he remembers it. That’s a common nightmare I’d think, for many people.

Yeah, I dunno why houses sprout extra rooms and hallways in dreams. You certainly remember things just fine, but your brain is determined to rearrange. It’s like Polanski’s The Tenant (1976): every time the character walks into a hallway the stairway seems to be in a different place. And the dimensions of his bedroom keep changing. I couldn’t afford [transformable] sets but I thought I’d like to approach [the house] that way.

In Keyhole, you frequently “go around the room,” so to speak, with close-ups of the characters’ faces. With that, for this or other projects, do you ever cast roles on appearance alone?

Voices are really important but I do like a distinctive face. I remember for my second feature, Archangel (1990), I’d cast blonde and brunette actresses, but by the time we’d put all this makeup on them [and shot in black-and-white] no one could tell them apart! I was determined after that never to allow confusion between characters.

There’s a shot in the film of Kevin McDonald “humping” with this bizarre grin on his face — that’s easily one of the most unsettling things I’ve ever seen in a movie.

Yeah, sex can be grim even at the best of times [laughs]. At one point, since I was attempting to make a “biography of a house” and every house has its own kind of sexual tenor, there would’ve been a lot more sexual content in the movie. But I cut most of it down.

Black-and-white films aren’t totally uncommon in 2012 but you’re one of the few major directors I’m aware of still using B&W on a regular basis. Why is that?

I don’t know. I’ve switched to colour for a bigger project I’m working on now, and I’ve made a few colour features. I just thought Keyhole was a black-and-white story. I’m not sure why. Maybe the predominance of ghosts and shadows.

Do you think Keyhole fits into a genre? You could call it a psychological drama, a horror film, a black comedy ...

I wish it was more of a horror film. There’s the dressing, with ghosts, but they’re not particularly scary. It’s not really a gangster picture — they throw their guns down a garbage chute. It’s probably just the kind of thing I’ve always done. Hard to classify.

It’s like a horror film for adults. It’s about the things that are really scary in life: aging, losing your home ...

... the passage of time.

It sounds pretentious but it’s true, in a way.

Actually, that might be one of the nicest things anyone’s ever said about one of my films. I don’t like most modern horror films, but I like that idea.

>> Related: TORO reviews Keyhole