Archangel (film)

Archangel 1990 is the second feature film directed by Guy Maddin. The film fictionalizes, in a general sense, historical conflict related to the Bolshevik Revolution occurring in the Arkhangelsk Archangel region of Russia, a basic concept presented to Maddin by John Harvie. The film marks Maddins first formal collaboration with coscreenwriter George Toles.

Archangel is set in 1919 in the northern Russian area of Archangel, during a brief historical moment of Canadian intervention in the Bolshevik Revolution following the end of World War I. Onelegged Canadian soldier Lt. John Boles sighs on the rail of a steamship over the ashes of his dead lover Iris. An officer mistakes Iris urn for a bottle of liquor and throws it overboard into the sea. A narrator then delivers a sermon on the glories of Love and the horrors of SelfLovePride and how it forms the roots of War. Maddins daughter Jilian makes a cameo here as a young Cossack girl who orders the execution of a young boy.Boles arrives in the town of Archangel as an Allied troop and billets with a local family consisting of a brave son, Geza, a cowardly father, Jannings, and mother Danchuk who is immediately smitten with Boles and a grandmother simply called Baba along with a seemingly nameless baby. Geza has a seizure as Boles arrives but Boles treats him by scrubbing the boys torso with horsehair brushes. He then prescribes Geza horsehair to eat to cure worms and other folk remedies, while scoffing at the folk remedies Baba offers. Veronkha enters and Boles spies her in a mirror and faints, so affected by her resemblance to his lost love Iris. After reviving, Boles remains convinced that Veronkha in fact is Iris, forgetting that Iris has died. As coincidence would have it, Veronkhas husband Philbin also suffers amnesia, and has forgotten that he is married to Veronkha. ........

Source: Wikipedia