“I am Lieutenant John Boles, in Archangel, fighting a war, and trying to find the woman I love!” This is how the protagonist, played by a deer-in-the-headlights Kyle McCulloch, summarizes in voiceover the basic plot of Archangel, but of course it is hardly so simple. For one, the war he is referring to is World War I, but as declared by an explanatory title early on, this war was officially over before Archangel begins; it’s just that authorities have failed to notify certain arctic regions of northern Russia. Also, the name of this lost love for whom Boles pines keeps changing in his memory between Iris and Veronkha, and she keeps subtly shape-shifting throughout the course of the narrative. Maddin’s overheated send-up of a Bolshevik Revolution combat film is more accurately an exaggerated PTSD narrative riddled more with romantic and paternal distress than large-scale battles. Utilizing intertitles in addition to dubbed, deadpan dialogue, Archangel burlesques an awkward transitional period in the medium’s history to reflect the concurrent postwar discontent of the Twenties.