Archangel

When postmodernism suddenly awakens from amnesia and realizes that surrealism has been forgotten. The film is situated on many interpretive edges - from farce to imaginative questioning about the nature of human memory, and from a game with genres to multi-layered references to the history of cinema. It should not be forgotten that it is a quite interesting criticism of war: the film deliberately adopts the expressions of the wartime propaganda of that time for its overall framework of space and events, which occasionally creates delightful contrasts - anti-German slogans fighting against Teutonic barbarians framing the time and space of the film and standing against the personal search for emotion, the death of loved ones, etc. However, it is primarily a surrealist anabasis to the end of the world, wrapped in the retro black and white garb of silent films of the time, more so those German films rather than war or Soviet films (where the most famous product of Soviet cinema of the 1920s in the form of the montage school automatically comes to mind). However, Maddin adds some more historical inspiration to the postmodern urn - the noir genre. After all, the lonely hero with amnesia, in a hostile environment of a mysterious city, tracking his femme fatale at night and commenting on this self-destructive pursuit of solving the mystery through voice-over, is a classic fulfillment of this genre. (17.02.2016)

Yes, I enjoyed this film mainly because of how it was directed. But luckily it also has a story that is so beautifully insane that it completely captivates you in combination with the form. The film is shot in the style of silent movies, but dialogue is spoken in voice-overs. The impression is unique, as if a completely new genre is being created. (18.02.2016)