Archangel

1990 romantically-comedic fever dream of a war movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: It's World War I, and Lt. John Boles finds himself in the arctic Russian town of Archangel where he meets a woman named Veronkha who he mistakes for his dead former lover Iris. Veronkha's married to cowardly Philbin who can't seem to remember that he has a wife. Meanwhile, Veronkha starts to believe that John is her husband. All this while a war is going on! Maybe. I think the narrator said at one point that the war was over. I'm not sure because I was almost almost as confused as the characters in the movie.

And the likable thing about shane-movies favorite Guy Maddin movies, to me anyway, is that it all doesn't matter a whole lot. His characters follow their own logic, a fuzzy dream logic that I suppose would make perfect sense if you were able to use a different part of your brain to watch it. Idiosyncratic (read: downright weird) to say the least. At the same, Maddin's got a message very similar to Tarantino's in Basterds about how film or, more specifically, propaganda film can shape people's opinions on war. Archangel features some nifty photography and creative expressionistic set design, and like most of Maddin's movies, offers a generous helping of dry, ultra-askew humor. If you're into old-timey melodramatic and surreal oddballery, I can't recommend this guy's (pun intended) movies enough. And if all that isn't enough to sell this to you, I'll add two more words: intestine strangulation! Hooyah!