Snow Angels (2007/I)

Director:

David Gordon Green

Writers (WGA):

David Gordon Green (screenplay)
Stewart O'Nan (novel)

Release Date:

11 September 2008 (Greece)

Genre:

Drama | Romance

Tagline:

Some will fall. Some will fly.

Plot:

A drama that interweaves the life of a teenager, with his old baby sitter, her estranged husband, and their daughter.

Plot Keywords:

School | Flashback | Snow | Restaurant | Small Town

Awards:

3 nominations

Cast

Kate Beckinsale	...	Annie Marchand
Sam Rockwell	...	Glenn Marchand
Michael Angarano	...	Arthur Parkinson
Jeannetta Arnette	...	Louise Parkinson
Griffin Dunne	...	Don
Nicky Katt	...	Nate Petite
Tom Noonan	...	Band Leader
Connor Paolo	...	Warren Hardesky
Amy Sedaris	...	Barb Petite
Olivia Thirlby	...	Lila Raybern
Gracie Hudson	...	Tara
Brian Downey	...	Frank Marchand
Carroll Godsman	...	Olive
Daniel Lillford	...	Rafe
Deborah Allen	...	May Van Dorn

MPAA:

Rated R for language, some violent content, brief sexuality and drug use.

Runtime:

107 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

SDDS | Dolby Digital | DTS

Certification:

USA:R | Singapore:NC-16 | Netherlands:12 | Australia:MA | Norway:15

Filming Locations:

Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada

Company:

Crossroads Films

Trivia:

David Gordon Green, who would end up directing the film, first worked on the script for another director. After 3 years, this other director moved on to other projects and Green was approached by the producers to make the film.

Goofs:

Anachronisms: The movie takes place in the early to mid 1970s. Peter Gabriel's song "Sledgehammer" is used by the school marching band. The song was not released until 1985 on Peter Gabriel's album, "So".

Quotes:

Arthur Parkinson: She used to babysit me when i was younger, for years. She used to let me stay up til past midnight. I had a crush on her. I used to drop my toys on the floor. She'd have to bend down, pick them up, I could see right down her shirt. She stayed over once, my parents went out of town. And I saw her naked. I took my moms little make up mirror, tilted it under the bathroom door, watched her shower. She was beautiful.

Movie Connections:

References Top Gun (1986)

Soundtrack:

Sledgehammer

Superb

David Gordon Green is the most talented and consistently excellent American director to emerge this decade, making a splash he has yet to equal with "George Washington" in 2000, and gaining further recognition with the acclaimed, painfully true-to-life relationship drama "All the Real Girls". Sadly, his follow-up to "All the Real Girls", the outstanding "Undertow" failed to register with critics, and "Snow Angels", although better received, came and went without causing much buzz. Green's first major studio job, stoner action-comedy "Pineapple Express" was a big hit, and taken along with his unrelentingly grim "Snow Angels" shows the director attempting to move past his small-scale independent films which initially garnered so much acclaim for him.

"Snow Angels" is another drama from David Gordon Green, true, but it is also still different from his other films in the sense that it is his most tragic film and also his most narratively-focused (his previous films were far more lyrical). Here he's also dealing with sorts of characters he only touched on previously, and it's also (if you don't count his collaborative effort on "Undertow") his first screenplay adapted from another person's work. I have not read the novel "Snow Angels", but I doubt there is any detail, no matter how painful, which Gordon Green didn't unflinchingly transfer to the screen.

Although I enjoyed "All the Real Girls" a lot, I found that whenever the film was not focusing on the two leads it lost its edge and became a rather mundane, typical sort of film, with few truly interesting characters aside from the main two. "Snow Angels", perhaps partially due to it being an adaptation, doesn't fail to create interesting (although certainly not sympathetic) characters out of every last major player in this film. The story connects a teenager who is falling in love, his former babysitter, her estranged husband, and their daughter in an involving, focused narrative which is never exactly unpredictable but is always absorbing and deeply, deeply affecting. It's not an enjoyable film, exactly (at least the final hour isn't), but it is hypnotic, it is stunningly, stunningly well-directed and photographed by David Gordon Green and frequent collaborator Tim Orr, respectively (there are certain shots which are too beautiful to put into words), and I was absolutely transfixed for the entirety of this film.

Another film in what Nathan Lee (formerly) of the Village Voice terms the 'familiar turf of the Small-Town Midwinter Tragedy', which Lee insists the film transcends, "Snow Angels" is right up there with "The Sweet Hereafter" and Paul Schrader's "Affliction" (I was even surprised to find that Russell Banks wasn't the author of the novel this was based on), and for my money better than those two films. I quite like the Small-Town Midwinter Tragedy as a sub-genre, so I'm not going to say that this doesn't fall under that label, but I will say that "Snow Angels" achieves a sort of real, honest drama that can only come through true insight into the characters (in an interview with the Onion A.V. Club Gordon Green stated that this was a very personal project, and it shows), and a real understanding of them. In that sense it goes far beyond most tragedies (the vast majority are shallow, miserable, soulless tearjerkers, no matter how far back in history you look), and although it's unpleasantly dark and grim, there is humanity to the film, mostly observed through the young couple in love (these scenes are somewhat reminiscent of "All the Real Girls", only without the complications), which really elevates this beyond your typical downbeat film, as ultimately devastating and depressing as it is.

The film would be nothing without the performances, and as someone who couldn't have cared less for Kate Beckinsale before seeing this, I now think this was easily the best female performance of the year so far. If the Academy didn't require extensive lobbying for a film to get a nomination, Beckinsale would almost certainly be up for Best Actress come early 2009. The rest of the cast are excellent too, in particular Sam Rockwell, who may annoy a lot of viewers with his performance in this film, but it is absolutely necessary for the character to work, and is eerily reminiscent of someone I used to know, and all the more effective for it.

I don't want to see this film again for a long, long time, and in this case that's a good thing.

9/10