During the First World War, a Canadian soldier, devastated by the recent death of his fiancee, arrives at the frozen Russian city of Archangel. While billeted with a local family, he is astonished to discover a woman that may or may not be the lover he thought lost. Unfortunately, she is suffering from amnesia and remembers nothing of their former passion. A rival suitor, claiming to be her husband and who may also be suffering from amnesia, is equally unsuccessful at winning her affection. The melancholy story plays itself out against the madness of the Great War.
Filming entirely indoors with homemade props and costumes, director Guy Maddin has created a very strange and intense movie. Cribbing heavily from the look and atmosphere of German expressionist cinema, Maddin goes much further in exploring some very human issues: loss, love, memory and redemption. He also examines patriotism and by stylistically depicting the horrors of trench warfare he delivers a pacifist message that reminds me of movies like Grande Illusion and All Quiet on the Western Front. The ultimate power of this movie, however, lies in the sense of alienation we see among the characters. They are not only unable to love each other, they are barely able to communicate. In fact, under the cloud of forgetfulness that is a major theme in this movie, the characters are often not even capable of recognizing one another at all!

In the Alpine village of Tolzbad in the 1800s, the townsfolk talk quietly and restrain their movements lest they incur avalanches. This atmosphere lends itself to repressed emotions - shown through the parallel stories of butler student Johann lusting after his mother (an old flame of the mysterious Count Knotkers) and Klara's attraction to her father (who lusts after his other daughter), leading to duels and suicidal plunges galore. All this is shot in the style of an early German sonal film, complete with intertitles, crackly sound-track and 'hand-tinted' colour effects.- Written by Michael Brooke <[email protected]>

The geographical dead center of North America and the beloved birthplace of Guy Maddin, Winnipeg, is the frosty and mysterious star of Maddin’s film. Fact, fantasy and memory are woven seamlessly together in this work, conjuring a city as delightful as it is fearsome.

In Depression-era Winnipeg, a legless beer baroness hosts a contest for the saddest music in the world, offering a grand prize of $25,000.

After returning home to his long-estranged mother upon a request from her deathbed, a man raised by his parents in an orphanage has to confront the childhood memories that have long haunted him.

粘土动画。19世纪的奇幻世界，哥特式的童话，加拿大动画集大成之做。
没有一个家庭可以与Edison一家一样离奇。父亲是一位充满魅力的、超道德的、沉溺于女色的天才，已故的母亲被铸成了12米的金属复制品，小儿子的静脉里流淌着电流，大儿子和他的机器狗Pickle发誓要把整个家庭的秩序弄个天翻地覆。