Now on DVD: The winter of our discontent

Snow Angels
Review by Nathan Weinbender

David Gordon Green’s “Snow Angels” is a movie that buzzes with tension and importance. It begins with two gunshots, heard off in the distance, and then works backward until we discover the origin of those shots, and the personal history behind them.

As the picture plays out, its conclusion seems foregone, but Green pulls back the layers of his story, and of his characters, until we are completely mesmerized: This is not a film about who kills whom, but rather about what motivates the crime and why it eventually occurs.

It’s also an intriguing snapshot of helpless, hapless people struggling to make amends in their life, desperately trying to keep the dark secrets of their past from leeching onto the present, about how an isolated event can send ripples through a community, striking everyone nearby like some kind of emotional shrapnel.

The movie, based on a novel by Stewart O’Nan, is set in a small, presumably East-coast town in the middle of winter. It is, we assume, present day. We peek in on a world already in progress, meeting characters that are either disintegrating before our very eyes or who are picking up the pieces of their broken lives.

One such soul is Annie (Kate Beckinsale), a single mother who works as a waitress at the local Chinese restaurant. Her ex-husband is Glenn (Sam Rockwell), who was a drunkard and an abuser, and who has stopped drinking and has embraced Christianity in an attempt to win back Annie’s affections.

They have a young daughter, whom Glenn sees once a week. He’s sweet and accommodating to the girl, but there’s always a quiet sense of unease whenever we see them together: He does not seem quite stable enough to have children entrusted to him.

We’re also introduced to a high school sophomore named Arthur (Michael Angarano), who is sweet and awkward and plays trombone in the marching band. He begins to fall for the new girl in school, Lila (Olivia Thirlby), who wears retro horn-rimmed glasses and is enamored with photography—in a town where everyone is more or less the same, she’s a breath of fresh air. They kiss near the bleachers at the football field, and she tells him that she loves him. He says he loves her, too.

But Arthur may not understand what love truly entails, considering the state of his parents’ dissipating marriage. They shuffle around the house and sullenly ignore one another; when his father (Griffin Dunne) announces that he’s leaving for work—he teaches plant biology, and he observes fungus samples as if he can relate to their existence—his mother (Jeanetta Arnette) doesn’t bother looking up from her frying pan.

These lives begin to intersect, and we draw nearer to the truth behind those gunshots. A lesser film would have focused on the crime, would have treated this material like a whodunit, would have been overbearing and aggressively melancholy, but “Snow Angels” has been written and directed by Green and performed by its cast with a grace and an intelligence that keeps it from pounding us over the head with symbolism and grief.

In a film filled with good performances, Sam Rockwell, one of modern cinema’s most underrated actors (see him in the overlooked “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind”), is particularly superb. It would be easy to embody Glenn as a nutcase, but Rockwell’s work here is subtle and haunted. He plays Glenn as a man who has rehearsed everything he says and does but still can’t get it right.

When he suspects that Annie may be seeing someone, he is devastated, but carefully watch Rockwell’s mannerisms, very faint but very effective—how he attempts, and fails, to overcome his grief, to exhibit a resilient visage, and how that devastation quickly evolves into a silent fury behind his eyes.

David Gordon Green is only 33 and has five features under his belt, all very different—take, for instance, his debut, “George Washington,” another small-scale portrait of adolescence and death, and compare it to the antics his most recent movie, the stoner comedy “Pineapple Express.” Green has already proved that he’s one of the most talented and interesting filmmakers working outside of the Hollywood system today, but “Snow Angels” is his best film yet—it’s assured, mature and difficult to shake.

Movies like this are often referred to as “downers.” Some will find its depiction of small-town turmoil too pessimistic. The film deals with weighty issues, but it does so in a thoughtful way. It is a downbeat, somber picture, but it is in no way nihilistic toward its characters, nor dishonest in how their fates play out.

These characters exist on a set of fixed points—there may be a glimmer of hope at the corners of their lives, but we know that their destinations are likely to be disappointing. “Snow Angels” is certainly not an easy film to watch, but it is a haunting, expertly-crafted film, and one of the best of the year.

Grade: A-

Directed and written by David Gordon Green. Based on the novel by Stewart O’Nan. Starring Kate Beckinsale, Sam Rockwell, Michael Angarano, Jeanetta Arnette, Griffin Dunne, Olivia Thirlby, Nicky Katt and Amy Sedaris. R; 107m.