From a trove of buried silent-film footage unearthed in Dawson City in 1978, documentarian Bill Morrison has assembled a wide-ranging work of nonfiction meditation, one that considers the history of the remote Yukon territory where Dawson City is located, the nature of film stock, the discovered films themselves, and the historical context within which they were made. I wish his canvas had not been quite so vast; at two hours, long sections of this feel like tenuously connected detours. Yet there are moments in which the experimental use of the silent footage, combined with Alex Somers’ atmospheric score, has a hypnotic lull. At one point Morrison, who also handled the editing, creates a montage of silent sequences involving hallways and doors. As a result, what were likely mundane transitional shots in their source movies are given a poetic mirroring effect. When it’s working like that, Dawson City: Frozen Time is an act of resurrection and transformation, a reminder that even our most casually discarded images can hold a certain magic.
