As On We Go Drowning / Down We Go Away
Snow Angels / John Williams
At 32, David Gordon Green is five years younger than Paul Thomas Anderson and six years younger than Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach. The fact is worth noting, not because Green has calcified an aesthetic and turned himself into a mini-industry like the other three, but because he hasn’t. He still has the room (and time) to become the best director of his generation.
Snow Angels is not the movie that gets him there, but it features all the qualities that make him a candidate for the position. Based on a novel by Stewart O’Nan, Angels is set in an unnamed snowy place. The book specified small-town Pennsylvania, but the movie’s locale feels even chillier and further removed than that — Maine, maybe.
Annie (Kate Beckinsale) and Glenn (Sam Rockwell) are a separated husband and wife who have a toddler daughter. Glenn desperately wants Annie back, but his erratic behavior and inability to hold down a job ensure that, at best, she will only pity him. Arthur (Michael Angarano) is a local high school student whose parents are separating for vague reasons having to do with his father’s emotional distance. Arthur and Annie work at the same restaurant, and she was his babysitter years ago. With the narratives thus linked, Green moves between them.
O’Nan’s novel proves to be difficult source material. I haven’t read the book, but it’s easy to imagine the dispiriting fates of these characters more effectively conveyed with access to their interior lives. Most critically, the difficulties between Arthur’s parents (played by Griffin Dunne and Jeannetta Arnette) are underdeveloped, making their domestic strife seem minor and flat. This puts even more weight on Annie and Glenn’s relationship. Their glum, mismatched, tragic union isn’t easy to believe — Beckinsale gives a fine performance, but she’s miscast. She’s simply too beautiful, less like the prettiest girl in a go-nowhere town than a Disney princess trapped in an alternate reality. (By contrast, Zooey Deschanel was an ideal fit in All the Real Girls, lovely but imperfect.)
Lacking for earthly support, Glenn turns to religion and develops an unhealthy relationship with God, who becomes just another unhinged voice in his head. Rockwell is terrific as an epic loose cannon, binge-drinking to blunt his inner pain and then bloodily boxing a frozen tree trunk when he finds it not blunted enough. As the movie progresses, Glenn becomes increasingly comical and frightening, those traits merging when he’s seen praying beside his bed in longjohns, then turning to shout for his mother, like a combination of Charlie Brown and Norman Bates.
Green does what he can with the cold main story, but it’s a subplot that he orchestrates with perfect pitch. Arthur slowly falls in love with his friend Lila (winningly played with massive geek-appeal by Olivia Thirlby, last seen as Juno’s best friend). Their relationship feels genuine, and the warmth of it saves Snow Angels from the more uniform, deadening fatalism of films like House of Sand and Fog and A Map of the World.
It’s Green’s sensibility that lingers. As in his debut, George Washington, and All the Real Girls, the director lovingly establishes a sense of place. He’s sharply attuned to the visual cues of a geography’s character, here captured in a snowblower on a church lawn, the bleachers at a high school football game, and birds flying low over a lake’s icy surface. Green’s not interested in matching track suits or frogs raining down from the sky. He may be drawn to the darker corners of this world, but it’s this world. We’re lucky to see it through his eyes.
John Williams lives in Brooklyn. He’s a freelance writer. He blogs at A Special Way of Being Afraid.
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Comments
Paul Thomas Anderson, Wes Anderson=level directing ability with an emphasis on realism instead of artistic quirk and an accurate presentation of non-metropoltian life?
Ok so I'm there.
Posted by: twig at March 13, 2008 2:37 PM
Sounds like it'sworth seeing just for the Sam Rockwell performance. Nice Decemberists reference too.
Posted by: jbrader at March 13, 2008 2:41 PM
maine is close.
it was filmed in nova scotia.
Posted by: celery at March 13, 2008 2:46 PM
i'm a big david gordon green fan. i was living in georgia when he filmed undertow over in savannah, and the film captures the weirdness of the backwoods low country perfectly, and is one of those films that truly makes you uncomfortable and squeamish without the plot being overly developed. so good.
Posted by: bree at March 13, 2008 3:27 PM
Greatreview. Greatgreatgreat! I love Sam Rockwell and I've heard nothing but good about this flick so I'm totally gonna go see it and like it and re-read your review and realize I even like it more and fanfuckingtastic references and all that hullabaloo... For reals... Nice Job!
Kay, now not to pull any attention away from this flick or this review, but I was skimming down the... the friggin' uh... I think it was the "Rosemary's Baby" thread and just kinda browsing and granted, now the thread seems a little dead but somebody, well actually a group of people were uh... (..gottaremembertobreathe, gottaremembertobreathe..) somebody had made a mention about Zombies riding (...pleasegodbuddhagodtopusletitbetrue...) giant mutated rabbits? Is this true? ANSWER ME GODDAMIT! Is there a movie that... Ha. Hahahahahaaaaa... Okay, April Fools! Hahaha... I get it. So I pretend to be Michael Bay on a couple posts, somebody calls me on it, contacts everybody else and gets a discussion going about something that has no... has no business being a movie... Because that would be far, far too awesome.
Yeah, yeah "Snow Angels" - genuine, strife, I GET IT - I'll see it Mr. Williams - you had me at "calcified an aesthetic mini-industry" okay?
Please, no more... no more leg-pulling. Does a zombies riding giant rabbits film exist? Please don't fuck me around here. I'll rent it and you'll never have to hear from me again. I'll just... I'll just go my separate way and listen, I'll just be gone... No hard feelings or anything, okay?
Kick ass review Mr. Williams - seriously though... I will check this out. Have a wonderful afternoon, sir.
Posted by: Skittimus Maximus at March 13, 2008 3:50 PM
Hahaha...Skittimus...not the zombies bit...but Night of the Lepus is about killer mutated rabbits...
The discussion devolved into Pissboy arming TK's zombie army with mutated rabbit mounts.
Posted by: Shadows of Dakaron at March 13, 2008 3:54 PM
And clearly we need a visual, Skittimus.
Posted by: boo at March 13, 2008 3:58 PM
We really do Skitt...sweater vested zombies riding mutated killer rabbits? The awesomeness is too much to bear.
On topic, I adored All the Real Girls-Green has such a sense of style, every frame is like an elegy to rural life. I'll definitely be checking this out.
Posted by: Julie at March 13, 2008 4:01 PM
This movie sounds like a mixture of "The Good Girl" and "Little Children".
Posted by: Pookie at March 13, 2008 4:17 PM
God damn, All the Real Girls was beautiful and heartbreaking.
Posted by: Kevin Longrie at March 13, 2008 5:06 PM
I love Sam Rockwell, and I just saw All the Real Girls for the first time, *and* Olivia Thirlby is my new girl crush, so I'm totally there.
Posted by: Mimi at March 13, 2008 5:55 PM
You mean this DOESN'T feature Kate Beckingsdale aka whore, getting banged at least three times by the male lead while her hubby ...ahem..."directs."
Then what's the GOD..DAMNED point of this?
Posted by: BarbadoSlim at March 13, 2008 7:47 PM
Green also directed the upcoming Pineapple Express, which from the trailer (which I have watched about 20 times) looks absolutely hilarious.
Posted by: shera at March 13, 2008 8:04 PM
Despite the glowing (and well written) review, I still have no interest in seeing this movie. I was going to ask where the review title came from ('As On We Go Drowning / Down We Go Away') because it was on the tip of my tongue, but jbrader answered my question. I am so ashamed. I listen to the Decemberists way too much and I still couldn't place the lyric (even though I could hear the tune in my head). Thanks J
Posted by: the_Wakeful at March 13, 2008 9:31 PM
it was filmed in nova scotia.
Posted by: celery
Everything's filmed in Canada anymore. I looked up the location for the Maya Angelou-directed family film Down in the Delta and damned if it wasn't filmed in Toronto! Sure looked like the American South. On the other hand, when X-Files had an episode supposedly set in Florida's Okeefenokee Swamp, it was obviously shot in the far north. We have cypress trees and Spanish moss in our swamps, not pines and ferns.
Posted by: Matt at March 13, 2008 11:20 PM
I'll watch anything with Sam Rockwell in it.
Posted by: Spork at March 14, 2008 8:37 AM
Tell me the sweater vested zombies have hornrimmed glasses while they're ridin the mutated rabbit mounts? And when one says mutated rabbits, are they talking like Jackalope-type rabbit, or "Watership Down" type rabbit? Because honestly, I would fear the WD rabbit more, I think. Or maybe a WD rabbit crossed with one of those rats from Secret of the Nimh. Scary fuckers.
Yeah, I completely wantto see this movie for the Sam Rockwell aspect. I have roommate that loved the Underworld movies, but she's not really right in the head.
Posted by: Captain Steve at March 14, 2008 10:30 AM
I've been waiting for ages for this movie to come out. It's not yet out in Canada though, which seems kind of ridiculous since it was filmed here.
Posted by: IamKateness at March 14, 2008 12:17 PM
Bahaha, are those for real up there?
Posted by: Leacock at March 15, 2008 5:23 AM
Decemberists!
... for once I get a review title lyric reference ... gonna go read the review now ...
Posted by: Claire at March 15, 2008 10:53 PM
I agree that this film isn't the step that takes David Gordon Green officially to the next level but it's a step in the right direction, not a misstep.
As you note, the casting of Beckinsale is a terrible choice, I was just blinded by her beauty so often, she simply just wouldn't fit in that town. She noted that Rockwell called her beautiful once and that it charmed her. A woman like that would be used to that by now in her life, she's most likely been the most beautiful person in the zip code for as long as anyone around has known.
I found the teen plot line to be absolutely touching and a breath of fresh air in young romance. Remembering my high school relationships, they were often tender, thoughtful and playfully sexual, which is portraited here with great subtlety and skill. It captures the excitement of young love perfectly.
As always, I'm anxious to see more from him. Good review, John.
Posted by: ADP at March 24, 2008 3:49 PM