--- title: "Archangel" year: 1990 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/archangel" fi1m_id: "archangel" imdb_id: "tt0099053" tmdb_id: 85559 wikidata_id: "Q2090872" fi1m_score: 68 critics_reviews: 3 published: "2026-09-26T02:01:58.832012+00:00" updated: "2026-09-26T02:02:44.311650+00:00" region: "PA" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Archangel (1990) Directed by Guy Maddin · 1h 22m · War, Romance, Drama ## Identity Archangel - **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/archangel - **Type:** Film - **Fi1m ID:** archangel - **IMDb ID:** tt0099053 - **TMDB ID:** 85559 - **Wikidata ID:** Q2090872 - **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099053/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/85559, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2090872 **Fi1m score: 68** · Critics: 3 of 6 reviews so far *In a sentence:* Everyone has amnesia, including the soundtrack, which keeps arriving a beat late > Guy Maddin’s second film is a fake antique: a war melodrama shot as if in 1928 and dubbed as if nobody had ever recorded a voice before. The joke is precise and often funny. It does not quite have 82 minutes in it. ## Synopsis Archangel, northern Russia, 1919. The Great War is over and nobody has told the soldiers here, who are still fighting Bolsheviks in the snow. Lt. John Boles (Kyle McCulloch), a Canadian officer with one leg and a dead sweetheart he cannot stop mourning, is billeted with a local family: Danchuk (Sarah Neville), her husband Jannings (Michael Gottli), who hides from every fight, and their small son Geza (David Falkenburg), who takes to the lieutenant at once. At the hospital Boles meets the nurse Veronkha (Kathy Marykuca), who looks exactly like the woman he lost. She is married to Philbin (Ari Cohen), a Belgian aviator who forgets he has a wife before the wedding night is over. Boles decides Veronkha is his sweetheart returned. Memory, in this town, is not reliable. ## Review Guy Maddin’s second feature, after *Tales from the Gimli Hospital* (1988), is a war film made to look as if it had been found in a cellar. It is set in Archangel in 1919, where Allied troops are still fighting the Bolsheviks months after the Armistice, and it is shot, cut and dubbed in imitation of a picture from the last years of silence, when studios were adding sound to films that had not been built for it. The imitation is precise and often funny. The film underneath it is thin, and 82 minutes is long enough for us to notice. It is worth an evening for anyone curious about how Maddin began; we would not press it on anyone else. Lt. John Boles (Kyle McCulloch) arrives in the city with one leg and a grief he cannot put down. He is billeted with Danchuk (Sarah Neville), her husband Jannings (Michael Gottli), who hides from every fight, and their son Geza (David Falkenburg). At the hospital he meets Veronkha (Kathy Marykuca), a nurse with the face of the woman he lost, and her husband Philbin (Ari Cohen), a Belgian aviator who forgets he is married before the wedding night is over. Boles forgets things too. So does everyone. The script, by Maddin and George Toles from a story by John B. Harvie, treats forgetting as the local weather. Dennis W. Smith builds the city out of painted sky, plaster and cardboard. The cannon look like stage cannon, the trenches look dug in a warehouse, and snow falls indoors as readily as out. Donna Szöke puts the men in greatcoats two sizes too large and the women in white so bright it burns on the film. Maddin, cutting his own footage, uses irises and fades and the occasional lurch that suggests a missing reel. The lens is smeared so faces glow and edges dissolve. It looks, at a glance, sixty years older than it is. The sound is the best joke. Dialogue has been recorded flat and dropped in a beat late, so mouths finish before words do, and every line arrives with the hiss of a room nobody bothered to quiet. Actors speak the way people did when the microphone was new, slowly and towards it. McCulloch plays Boles with a stunned, upright blankness that is exactly right for the style and leaves us nothing to hold onto once the style has been established. Neville does better; her Danchuk wants the lieutenant and knows she is not allowed to, and she lets it show in small movements the soft focus nearly erases. We laughed, properly, when Philbin was told for the second time that the woman in front of him was his wife. Not long after, the film cuts to a trench and shows us something done with a man’s insides that we will not describe, and the laugh stopped in our throat. For a minute *Archangel* is horrible and absurd at once, which is where Maddin wanted it all along. It does not stay there. The battles repeat, the amnesia repeats, and by the hour mark we were bored, and slightly cross about being bored by something so peculiar. The trouble is that a melodrama needs someone to care about, and Maddin has emptied everyone out on purpose. Boles loves a dead woman, Veronkha loves nobody she can remember, Philbin cannot remember anyone. Geza is the only person on screen who wants something plainly, and Falkenburg plays him with a fierce little frown that is the film’s one warm spot. Michael O’Sullivan’s Doctor and Margaret Anne MacLeod’s Baba drift through with their own private confusions. Gottli’s Jannings, the coward, gets the sharpest scenes and the fewest of them. Against Maddin’s later work this is a sketch for a manner he would finish elsewhere; *Careful* (1992) uses the same fake-antique tools and remembers to build a story with them. Watch this one at home, late, with someone patient. It runs 82 minutes, which is the right length for the joke and still a little long for the film. *Fi1m score 68, published 26 September 2026.* ## Straight answers **Is Archangel worth watching?** *Archangel* is worth watching for anyone curious about how Guy Maddin began, and we scored it 68. It is a war melodrama faked to look and sound like a picture from 1928, and the imitation is precise and often funny. The story underneath is thin, and by the hour mark the repeating battles and repeating amnesia had us bored. **How long is Archangel, and what is it rated?** *Archangel* runs 1h 22m. It is a war and romance film. **Where can I watch Archangel in Panama?** *Archangel* is not on any streaming or rental service in Panama at the moment. It is available in 1 other country; change your country at the top of the page to see where. Availability is checked daily. **How does Archangel compare to Vampyr?** *Archangel* is a deliberate imitation of early-sound cinema, and [*Vampyr*](https://film.one/film/vampyr) is the real thing it is copying. Dreyer's film uses soft focus and disorienting cutting to make faces frightening; Maddin uses the same smeared lens and late-arriving dialogue for a joke that is funny for a while and then runs out. *Vampyr* is the better film, and the one to watch first, though it also asks for patience. ### Reviews we read (3) - **Slant Magazine**, Jake Cole (3.5/5): Cole finds the film an imaginative but somewhat derivative early work that has not yet fully developed Maddin’s signature style. He praises its precise imitation of primitive early sound, which becomes an especially funny running gag. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/archangel-blu-ray-review-guy-maddin/) - **The New York Times** (64/100, inferred): The page is inaccessible, so the critic’s verdict cannot be established. No specific praise or complaint is available from the page text. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/19/movies/review-film-love-is-blind-and-memory-is-bluffed.html) - **Time Out**, JRo (64/100, inferred): The page identifies itself as a review, but the accessible material gives no critic’s verdict. It provides no specific praise or complaint about the film. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/archangel) ## Details - **Director:** Guy Maddin - **Director:** Guy Maddin - **Screenplay:** Guy Maddin, George Toles - **Story:** John B. Harvie - **Editor:** Guy Maddin - **Production design:** Dennis W. Smith - **Costume design:** Donna Szöke - **Producer:** Greg Klymkiw - **Cast:** Michael Gottli as Jannings; David Falkenburg as Geza; Michael O'Sullivan as Doctor; Margaret Anne MacLeod as Baba; Ari Cohen as Philbin; Sarah Neville as Danchuk; Kathy Marykuca as Veronkha; Kyle McCulloch as Lt. John Boles - **Runtime:** 1h 22m - **First release (Canada):** 1 September 1990 - **Genres:** War, Romance, Drama ## Where to watch in Panama Not streaming, renting or buying in Panama at the last check. Also available in: US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *Tales from the Gimli Hospital* (1988): Maddin’s first, rougher and shorter; the same cellar-found look with fewer ideas and more smallpox. - *Careful* (1992): The same fake-antique tools, this time with a plot that holds; Alpine, incestuous, tinted. - *Vampyr* (1932), Fi1m 85: Dreyer’s real early-sound ghost film, the soft-focus original Maddin is copying. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/vampyr.md) - *Institute Benjamenta* (1995): The Quay brothers’ live-action feature; another handmade black-and-white dream nobody wakes from. - *The Saddest Music in the World* (2003): Maddin with Isabella Rossellini and glass legs full of beer; the manner, fully grown. --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/archangel