Archangel

jboothmillard

I found this film in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, I was confused when I saw the images of it, I was fine with it being a black-and-white film, but I wondered if the year information was correct, it was only when I read about I realised what was going on. Basically it is modelled on the style of a part-talkie early cinematic film, in other words, it is made in a way that makes it looks like something from the early 20th century, hence my confusion. The story is set in 1919, during the Bolshevik revolution, it is about one-legged amnesiac Canadian soldier, Lieutenant John Boles (Kyle McCulloch), who was assisting the White Russians in the Russian Arctic during the First World War. He finds himself in Archangel, a crystalline city of spires and domes, inhabited by some very confused people. He lodges with a local family consisting of brave son Geza (David Falkenburg), cowardly father Jannings (Michael Gottli), and mother Danchuk (Sarah Neville), the grandmother called Baba (Margaret Anne MacLeod) and an unnamed baby. Veronkha (Kathy Marykuca) enters and Boles faints, he is affected by her resemblance to his long-lost love Iris, forgetting that she has died. Coincidentally, Veronkha's husband Philbin (Ari Cohen) is also suffering amnesia and has forgotten everything after his wedding day. A Doctor (Michael O'Sullivan) explains that Philbin will relive his wedding day over and over without remembering what came after. There is much that goes on, including travelling across a field of corpses to place a grave marker, Boles confusing the unnamed baby for his own with Iris, a dreamlike trek and treasure hunt ending in failure, and a flood of rabbits running about. Veronkha decides to renew her marriage to Philbin after annulling her first marriage, and they travel to the Murmansk Hotel to repeat their honeymoon. Veronkha mistakes Boles for Philbin, and somehow develops amnesia herself, he takes the opportunity try to convince Veronkha that she is Iris, but she runs away. They reunite, but then Veronkha sees Philbin and remembers who she is, then rejects Boles and threatens to kill him, Boles is dismayed and heads back to the war. Geza is killed in battle and reunites with the ghost of his father, while Boles is injured by a grenade in a final assault, staggering through the same treasure map route that previously took him to Veronkha. In the end, Boles is emotionally destroyed and leaves Archangel to return home to Canada. Also starring Victor Cowie as Sea Captain, Robert Lougheed as Kaiser Wilhelm II and Stephen Snyder as Stage Kaiser Wilhelm II. It is a clever idea, to make a film look and feel old-fashioned, it succeeds with this concept, hence why it is considered a "must see" I suppose, but I will be honest, it was difficult to follow what was going on all the time, with little dialogue and not a lot of action, it was a reasonable stylised drama. Okay!

score 4/10

jboothmillard 6 May 2019

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw4831851/