- On Christmas Eve, a fast-approaching winter storm pits a father's expectations of a reunion with his estranged daughter against the forces of his inner demons and Mother Nature.
- Lucy's coming to visit! A beat-up Christmas card from his estranged daughter galvanizes 70-something Lee Filsmyer, lifelong bellyacher and drunk, to try one more time. And squirrelled away in his northern Minnesota trailer home, Lee hasn't had to try for a long, long time. But now Lucy's coming! Now he's gonna quit drinking, clean up his filthy digs, and hunt down the social skills he left buried under a mountain of vodka bottles. What he isn't going to do - and never has done - is make any effort to improve relations with his deaf big brother, Punt. Punt lost his hearing in a hunting accident when the brothers were small, but it's Lee who never moved on. Not fifty feet away, in his own tidy, well-kept trailer, Punt's life is richer, sweeter, fuller than Lee's in every way. Which, no doubt, contributes to Lee's punishing need to demean his brother, ridicule his speech, berate him in public. The truth is, Punt led a much more productive life than his mean-spirited hearing brother. In fact, it's discreet handouts from Punt that allow Lee to pay bills, guzzle vodka, and carry on his squalid, grubby life. But now, Lucy's coming! And Lee needs Punt, if he's going to turn their trailer compound into the Christmas fairy tale he wants for his Lucy. With a Minnesota snowstorm rising, the brothers excavate old decorations... A blow mold nativity. A light-up snowman. Despite the growing blizzard, they chop down a tree, hang lights inside and out. At first, Punt is delighted by Lee's Christmas spirit. But the frantic pace, the mad mix of alcohol and shame, of memory and hallucination, of a snow-covered world without boundary or shape, combine to reveal the whiteout depths of Lee's illness. Lost in psychosis and delusion, his body imploding from decades of abuse, Lee realizes his daughter is driving through these massive flurries, and he propels himself into the storm to save her. Through banks of snow, walls of snow, he searches for her, the sound of a church choir just audible above the wind. "Do you Hear What I Hear?" There's her car! Or... Is it? Is there a car? Does the sound of an unseen choir really rise above the howling winds? "Do you Hear What I Hear?" Is this the final hemorrhage of a failing mind? Or a drunken old fool defying the odds.
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