Constant flurries of fake flakes make the Russian town of Archangel seem suspended in a fantastical snowglobe. So too is the present, a perpetual now of dreamlike warfare as German, Russian, and Allied soldiers swarm across the countryside, circa 1918. All this ado takes place in what Maddin calls “a mustard gas blanket of forgetfulness.” Into the ambient amnesia stumbles Lt. John Boles (Kyle McCulloch), a shell-shocked Canadian soldier who mistakes the local beauty Veronkha (Kathy Marykuca) for his deceased love. For her part, Veronkha is married to Philbin (Ari Cohen), a thoroughly gassed aviator who hasn't an inkling of their wedlock. Interrupted only by ironic intertitles, Archangel is an uncanny triumph of sardonic circularity in which identities are continually reinvented in a roundelay of memory loss. It's as though the story itself is threatened by a gaseous oblivion and must scramble to recuperate its own past. Maddin's farcical sets with gawky perspective and off-kilter props further exaggerate the dizziness of a most unforgettable film.