Archangel

Some movies can be called nightmare movies or like Lynch's Eraserhead, "a dream of dark and troubling things" and while Archangel is a film that falls into the "dream" genre, it is sort of like a whole bunch of mini-dreams that you get during catnaps strung together, and as such, is easily one of the most insane movies I have ever seen. Needless to say, I highly recommend it.

This wierd, dreamlike film goes a long way on a limited budget, creating a completely unreal experience about a real historical event in Archangel, Russia during the Russian revolution.

Like all of Maddin's other films, Boles is and anti-hero, his subversive obsession with Veronika could not be interpreted as love or heroic, a brillliant deconstruction of your average war movie.

The ending is a bit disappointing (out of the brooding character with the rest of the film) but in all a great film.

The idea that one made a silent-era looking feature in the early 90s didn't sound as compelling to me, on account that I hear all kinds of crazy ideas all the time and that I'm very familiar with the David Lynch universe; but the fact that the person who came up with the idea would also execute it with such authenticity (to the point that aliens knowing nothing of human chronology would list "Archangel" among Pudovkin's "Mother" and Dreyer's "Joan of Ark"!), makes it for one of the most hardcore comedies I've ever seen. Most people wouldn't laugh, this is an inside joke, for either comedians, or people with great sense of humor, or people of the film industry to pick up. After 15 minutes in, I stopped caring about the "idea" behind it, and a sentence kept coming inside my head every next scene, making me either smirk or laugh: "The Balls!.. The Balls!..", meaning: ".. the audacity to troll the world like that!"; the same kind of feeling I had while reading Joyce's "Ulysses"!.. I understood little of the plot, since, suffering from the critic's malady, as I've confessed before, I was, in vain, trying to draw parallels between the movie I was watching and movies from the silent era. I just got that there is an amnesiac soldier in post-great-war's Russia, obsessed with a girl who is in love with some other amnesiac soldier! At some point, an accident turns her into an amnesiac as well. Each technique helps us get into this confused trio's chaotic psychology; the highly saturated black&white photography (to the point there are no greys), the use of sound and silence, the abrupt transitions tactlessly switching the previous scene's tone (a cacophony very common in even the most masterfully edited classics of the silent era), the blurs in our frames' corners, as if caused by humidity, or, at times, as if some heavy snowflakes have landed over the lens; well, life is a confusing bitch for even the sanest among us, let alone for amnesiacs who have to battle against the Bolsheviks right after they battled against the Germans! Life is a confusing bitch, why would we demand from art to make sense?.. Fellini wondered once. What makes "Archangel" more than just a troll picture is the consistency of Maddin and his collaborators to accomplish this look, and create an experience that overstuffed viewers, like me, can say is unlike anything they've seen before.

I only know a few of Maddin's projects. This seems to be the earliest available.

I'm really beginning a deep appreciation of this man's visual soul. While this project didn't change my life, it demonstrated the power to do so, like a strutting policeman among weak minds.

What I like about his mind is how he seats the thing first in the soul, then in the cinematic vocabulary instead of the usual path which values character, motivations, narrative clarity. What he's done here is revisit Eisenstein. I don't suppose many filmgoers have much truck for a Russian silent filmmaker who was primarily occupied in Soviet propaganda. He developed some important ideas about how a scene (never a movie — only a scene) can be constructed from visual fragments — what it means to "see."

His particular solutions aren't popular today, and the whole idea of slicing the eye has been appropriated to the service of now-conventional values of storytelling and the cult of celebrity — some few jokes and even fewer emotions destinations.

Eisenstein's idea is based on the notion of readable cells of retinal comprehension, more or less of the same size which when combined give an impression. The more discrete the components in presentation the more comprehensible the assembly, what he called the collage.

What Maddin does here is make a metaEisenstein. The story is set in Russia and populated by international warriors, all of whom have only a groggy notion of why they are there. Our hero, like Maddin, is Canadian. It is essentially a silent movie. There is a parallel movie that is a talkie, into which this silent, main piece is embedded.

Within the silent movie is a sort of "movie within," exactly as abstract from the silent portion as the silent portion is to the talkie portion and thence not to our world (as is the usual case with folding) but to the world of normal movies.

That "movie within" is the "illumination" a set of stage tableaux depicting famous battles. If you experience nothing but these — or rather if you skate over all the surrounding context and focus only on these — you will be rewarded. There's so much reference there.

The overall theme of the thing is the hard boundary of memory, where the continuity of knowing begins and ends. In the story, this exhibits as amnesia plus a sort of quantum identity shifts — of women, who else? That's good, its valuable. But the interesting thing is how this is seated in the collage itself. Eisenstein's idea is that each cell, each image, of the collage needs to have some reference to the others. The art is in the nature of that reference.

Maddin makes that reference sit on the cells. In his case they are not bubbles in transparent foam that light can shine through. Instead they are stones, smooth stones with hard impenetrable skins that only know themselves and keep forgetting those they are nestled against. So they forget who they are.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

But seriously, you have films being made out there that are budgeting around $500,000,000 and then there are films like this; not even nominated for any major motion-picture awards? In my world, this is an Academy Award winner for best picture // and it only cost 50,000 Canadian Dollars! ARCHANGEL, at first, was a slippery slope, but somehow elevated to a nice, flat plain of gorgeousness.

We have a typical Guy Maddin story (B/W) based in 1919 about an amnesiac soldier named John Boles (no big names in this film) who sets out to find his true love, Iris, in Archangel, Russia where the Great War has already ended three months prior, but they have not received word about it yet. Obviously, the whole thing can be looked at as a gag; people wasting their time, dying (perhaps) when they shouldn't be. A lot of elements stuck out to me during this story that makes me believe that YOU CAN WATCH THIS FILM A MILLION TIMES AND NEVER, EVER, EVER, EVER GET BORED.

Let us start right off the bat and mention that this film was VERY EISENSTEIN- ESQUE. Definitely not a bad thing; we all love IVAN THE TERRIBLE, but for some amount of individuals, it is just not their cup of cameo-mocha tea. The things I find similar are the CINEMATOGRAPHY; very old fashioned just as Eisenstein had it in the 40s and 50s // then there is the SET DESIGN, which is the biggest in my opinion, because, as complex as the movie may seem, it was such a simple development and everything (costumes and all) ran smoothly (nothing seems too quirky or fake). He really gave a sense of direction regardless of how amateur the locations seem.

**Speaking of Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible: Part II, ARCHANGEL used a similar effect towards the end to give the audience a sense of direction from one place to another; one, red tint // one, blue tint. Very beautiful.

I rated Guy Maddin's Twilight Nymphs (pretty low, in fact) and couldn't help but feel betrayed by him. Now after seeing this project, I want to RE-WATCH that film until I can find the greatness in it. THE MADDINESS!! if you will..

***But like other Maddin films, this one has the same style of dialogue. That means, unnecessary laughs and confusion all around the audience. BUT I LOVE IT. Like I said, this movie you can see numerous times and always get a different out-look on it. Some things you might take to heart, but others you might find are actually part of the story and fit very well // however quirky or surreal they may seem. My favorite line comes from Iris's second lover, Philbin, when he says:

+ PHILBIN: I believe there is a reason for everything. For instance, someone shaved my mustache while I slept last night. What could that mean? +

I think this film is very easy to understand, even for a baby.. okay, maybe not really, but some might thinks there's too much going on. BE PATIENT, the story will come to you. Besides, there is written text shown to update you every once in a while of what it happening in the scenes.

*****There is a scene with someones intestines that I REALLY want to bring up, but I do not want to contain any spoilers in my reviews. **If you watch this film or have already embarked upon it, then you will know what I am talking about; Hehe.

I hereby rate thee film a 10 OUT OF 10!!! I know, many will concur, but film for me is a serious art form. While some things out their are being made with no effort, money wasted, and DREAMS CRUSHED.. it is works like this that can really make you take a second and actually appreciate LOVE, FRIENDSHIP, POSSESSIONS, or even COURAGE/BRAVEY; claiming your part in the world. And I got all of that from Guy Maddin's Archangel. - Heart-on!

-- Michael Mendez