Snowflakes Keep Falling on my Head - 'Snow Angels' Review...
Director David Gordon Green scored a major popular hit in 2008 with the hilarious stoner comedy Pineapple Express, but it is the much smaller and much less widely seen Snow Angels that really shows his range as a director. The movie is based on the novel by Stewart O'Nan and is decidedly downbeat, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Many great films are downers, like Frozen River or Affliction or Buffalo '66, although Snow Angels never quite makes it up to par with films like those. It creates a realistic and convicning small town life full of real people instead of artificial movie characters, but there is something missing in the ultimate feel of it all.Kate Beckinsale and Sam Rockwell take center stage as a couple with a broken relationship and a rocky past, and the movie follows their lives as they interact with the lives of two other couples in the run-up to a tragic event that rocks the town.
The movie opens on the high school football field in the middle of band practice on a wintry afternoon. A sharp crack is heard in the distance which shakes the band members and the band leader out of something of a daze, as they cast their eyes around in wonder about what just happened. Then the movie cuts back to some time before that, and we begin to make our acquaintances.
Arhtur is a high school kid who has lately begun to take interest in a geeky but charming girl named Lila. They form the beginnings of the teenage romance even as Arthur's parents' marriage is disintegrating. He overhears his mother and father talking outside, where his father asks between puffs on his cigarette with what almost seems like genuine worry about how he can be expected to live his life when he's just not happy. Not long afterwards, another woman enters the picture.
Arthur works at a Chinese restaurant with Annie (Kate Beckinsale), who years earlier had been his babysitter and who now dispenses motherly dating advice, which is taken with a sour note given that she is in the middle of a painful divorce with her husband Glen (an outstanding Sam Rockwell). Glen is desperate to put his life back together after a long and difficult past involving alcoholism, violence, and attempted suicide. He wants to be a part of Annie's life and of Tara's, their daughter, but periodic outbursts give clues as to what things were like when they were together, and how far things have really progressed in his rehabilitation.There are a lot of storylines going on at the same time in the movie, although I found them pleasantly easy to follow. The characters are interesting enough and the performances are wonderful across the board, and it's easy to see real people in the movie rather than actors, which is imperative if we are to relate to them in any way. And since this movie hinges completely on the audience's ability to relate, this is definitely a good thing.
A lot of people felt that there wasn't enough of a binding force the bring the stories together, but to me it seemed that the movie shows three different relationships at very different points. Arthur's and Lila's is in the very beginning stages, Arthur's parents is at the point of breaking, and Annie's and Glen's is long since dead. The juxtaposition of the three different relationship timelines seems to accentuate the important emotions taking place in each of them, and when something like that happens, there are some lessons that can be learned about romantic relationships, even by people who have not experienced all of the different stages portrayed.Nevertheless, there is a definitely feeling that there are too many convincing characters that aren't given enough screen time. The problem with a movie like this is that when you have this many characters that are convincingly realistic, it's difficult for a movie to really do justice to all of them within a reasonable running time. The movie's final scene is pretty deeply depressing, but I'm giving the movie the benefit of the doubt. It's a downer for sure, but it's meant to be a downer, and even though it's not going to fill your mind with roses and happy thoughts, it's nice to see it succeed at what it set out to do.
The Bean Meter
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