Snow Angels

'Snow Angels' is a movie based on a book by Stewart O'Nan. It is directed by David Gordon Green, and stars Sam Rockwell, Kate Beckinsale, and Michael Angarano. Rockwell and Beckinsale portray a recently divorced couple with a daughter, who were high school sweethearts. Angarano plays a teenager, who used to be baby-sat by Annie (Beckinsale). The movie follows the lives of several people, including Annie and Glenn (Rockwell), Arthur (Angrano) and his parents, and others as some relationships are built and others are destroyed.

The movie has a strong real-life feeling to it, thanks to great writing by Green and great acting skills by the cast. There are scenes where Annie yells at her child that may seem to be out of place at first glance, but are actually amazing true-to-life ways to express how sometimes parents can lose their tempers with their children. The scenes show how sometimes kids can try to push their parents' buttons, or play their parents against each other without even knowing it.

The acting is absolutely wonderful – the actors show a wide range, from joy to sorrow, and from humor to violent anger. There are times when you love and sympathize with the characters, and there are times when you hate them so much your blood boils – that's how strongly the audience connects to the characters. By the end of the movie, you feel drained, as if you just watched someone you love die.

There were times when the whole audience laughed together, and there were times when the whole audience grew silent in discomfort. The way that this movie consists of laugh-out-loud moments and moments when you just want to tear your heart out and break out a box of tissues is what makes it an outstanding movie. This movie doesn't even have to try to get its audience to love it. The script is chock-full of wit, life at its best and worst, and humor for every generation. The movie left me walking out of the BAM theater smiling and wishing I could watch it again, not wondering why I'd wasted over 10 bucks on a ticket.

The only problem I found with the movie was that its setting was a bit confusing. There were scenes where the characters used cell phones, and others where there were those record players for LPs. But other than that, the movie was flawless.

Beckinsale is at her best here, not only in looks, but in acting range. She took me on another world as I sympathized with her, felt angry at her, felt happy with her, and watched her as her character's story unfolded before my very eyes. This is one of her best movies, and to me it IS her best movie.

10/10, for sure.

Snow Angels is set in a small town in America during a non-specific time. There are few details that define or accentuate time and place. It could be any small town, USA, and for all we know, it could be the present. All we really know is that it is cold and wintertime. Directed by David Gordon Green, Snow Angels is a somber, affecting meditation on sadness and fate, based on the novel written by Stewart O'Nan. It chronicles two weeks in the life of the central characters, whose lives are all connected in some way.

The movie begins with striking images of winter, barren trees and snow. A high school marching band is rehearsing outdoors for the football game. They are lethargic and out of tune. Their instructor chides them, and we here the sound of what might be gunshots in the distance. Everything stops and the story goes back to two weeks prior, where the characters are introduced. We see Arthur (Michael Angarano) the high school student busing tables in a Chinese restaurant. He works with his older friend Annie, played by Kate Beckinsale, the newly separated mother who used to baby-sit for Michael when he was young. Annie gives Arthur a ride home when his mother forgets to pick him up. Arthur's parents, played by Jeanette Arnette and Griffin Dunne, are also going through a separation.

Later we meet Annie's estranged husband Glen, played by Sam Rockwell. Early on we learn that he has had problems with drinking and keeping a job and even tried to take his own life as a result of his life apart from Annie and the baby. Somehow, he survived the suicide and has become a born again Christian, but his stability remains uncertain. We also meet the new student Lila, played by Olivia Thirlby, who befriends Arthur. Lila is the outsider who takes photographs as a hobby. She is on the outside literally peering in, like the audience. Early on, she shows Arthur her photographs of the town. Since her family moves around a lot, she likes to take pictures of her first impressions of the new places she moves to. They are beautiful portraits, all black and white, mostly of them empty landscapes and snow. Coldness and alienation is a constant theme that wraps around the characters to a nearly suffocating extent.

Green's direction is deliberate and slowly paced. The camera rests patiently upon the characters, giving them time to grow and breathe. Even in awkward moments, as there are in the life of a teenager, and in the tension rising moments of the adults who are enduring emotional pain, the shots are long and deliberate, with a quiet, gentle soundtrack that does not try to manipulate or force the action. Green allows the dialog and the performances of the actors drive the story. There is no melodrama, just painfully sad realities.

Snow Angels has the feel of an independent film in its simple story-telling and without bloated production values or faux sentimentality or gimmicky performances. It feels like real life, real people in a real town. The only problem is that it's real, real sad. In fact, it's too sad. Despite the artful direction and nuanced performances, the film itself has little balance, nothing to contrast the heavy weight of angst that smothers the characters as well as the audience. Fargo, (1996), was a similar movie – a tragic tale of human failings, set in a vast, winter of emptiness. And yet, there were many contrasting elements which balanced the mood, such as hilarious dialog and mannerisms, a riveting, driving musical score and shocking, unexpected violence. Many aspects of that film were recognized for achievement in film-making and I believe it even received Best Picture at the Academy Awards. I would also dare say that this movie energized the careers of several of its little known actors and deservedly so, including Steve Buscemi, William H. Macy and Frances McDormand. But Snow Angels provides no such relief from its oppressive tone. I get the feeling that Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale needed an immediate retreat to a warm, tropic island after making this picture, (or at least a few sessions of therapy), and through no fault of their own. Their performances are great, but the movie, over all, leaves you with the need for immediate cleansing or escape, to anywhere that's warm.

"Snow Angels" starts off as a fairly conventional, angst-ridden indie drama about life in an American small town, but the movie turns into a profoundly moving work after an unexpected tragedy strikes the community.

Director David Gordon Green's screenplay (co-written by Stewart O'Nan) focuses on two disintegrating marriages - one belonging to Annie and Glen Marchand, and the other to Louise and Arthur Parkinson - and the effect the breakups are having on the children and extended families. The people in both groups already seem profoundly unhappy with their lives, but when an unspeakable disaster occurs, things go from bad to worse for all concerned.

"Snow Angels" features insightful writing, sensitive direction and a profound sense of place and season (it takes place in the deep, dark days of a Midwestern winter, though the film itself was filmed in Nova Scotia). It's not an easy movie to watch at times - its emotions wrenching and its characters' weaknesses all too human and recognizable – but excellent performances by Kate Beckinsale, Sam Rockwell, Michael Angarano, Jeanetta Arnette, Deborah Allen and Griffin Dunne, among others, make it worthwhile viewing.

The underlying novel and this film stole my planned novel! I live in Northeast Pennsylvania (the film is set in Southwest PA). I'm one of those who threaten, promise, etc., to write a book someday but probably never will. But my main idea was to write about one of the ancient defunct communities that dot the old coal and oil regions of the state.

SNOW ANGELS does a great job at depicting lives in such communities. Especially during that part of the year when the landscape is barren and suicides spike. The profound sense of hopelessness is evident in many of the characters. Those without resources fall into profound despair. Those better off look into themselves. The result is always tragic or counter-productive. Only youth sees promise, has hope, etc.

The film was far from perfect: Rockwell and Beckinsale's story line so dominates that the lives of the other characters become almost a distraction. I doubt that's what the author intended. The climax pays off in intensity but is predictable. But the acting and script are exceptional as is the pacing and mood. For those who think the film lacks plot, the simple depiction of setting and life are story enough.

SNOW ANGELS is a absolute gem! It is an example of a small scale indie that is as near perfect as I could have imagined. All throughout the movie, I was reminded of a line from the poet W. B. Yeats…………"things fall apart, the center will not hold." The film is a complete recreation of this concept in visual terms. With the exception of the two young high school lovers, everyone's worlds in SNOW ANGELS is slowly but surely disintegrating, and ultimately it gets very dark. But all along the way it is so beautiful. The acting is superb, the photography is compelling, and the editing technique, I found, was expert, continually dramatizing the story by powerful visual cuts. I don't know why some reviewers have complained about Kate Beckinsale's beauty as being out of place in the film's setting, a criticism that makes no sense whatsoever to me. She is wonderful in the film and seemed so right for the part. The fact that she has a very natural beauty only enhanced her role both realistically and symbolically. Sam Rockwell's performance I found extraordinary. His past roles have always reflected a broad range and the character he plays in this film may well be one of his very best. This is a movie that carefully and honestly dissects dysfunctional lives in a small, insulated world. What was so amazing to me was the film's ability to create a combination of a storyline being so very sad and bleak while at the same time that storyline's expression being so beautifully and artistically realized. Also, I don't know when I have seen such a honest exploration of young teenage love as the portraits Green draws of the young boy and girl, Arthur and Lila. The two young actors are marvelous as well and their relationship gives the film the necessary lift above and beyond the despairing tragedy of the story.