Director: Andrew Haigh
Writers: Andrew Haigh, Colm Tóibín
Stars: Martin Freeman, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Kit Connor
Synopsis: Set high in the mountains, fall comes to an end and a family prepares for the long winter ahead.
A filmmaker’s trademark can elevate a multitude of different genres and stories. Andrew Haigh is a filmmaker who utilizes restraint and delivered exceptional results in All of Us Strangers. However, in his latest film, A Long Winter, it sort of drags the film along, keeping the two diverging paths within the film’s narrative sluggish. We, as viewers, can appreciate what is being said here, but how we get to its conclusion is slow and left me exasperated. A Long Winter feels long and cold – much like the title suggests – which is unfortunate as there is a lot of interesting stuff to dig into, but by the time the viewer can sit with it all we have is the discarded remains of plot and body.
A Long Winter follows the aftermath of tragedy and how a father and son come to terms with said loss set in the backdrop of 1950s Colorado. The father, Lester (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), has a complicated history with his neighbors and the tragedy works as a bridge to connect him back to his community. The son, Mike (Fred Hechinger), is bright-eyed and naive to the world around him, but in the midst of this tragedy he is digesting his own feelings of affection to other men which would be controversial to the times. The winter is oppressive and isolating, much like the feelings and emotions of the main characters.
Andrew Haigh is a filmmaker who exercises restraint to allow room for the film to speak for itself rather than moments or dialogue. In this film, the exercise is pushed to the limit. At moments where restraint is exercised the result is something visually and mentally compelling. Dream sequences that don’t outright annunciate its motive result in stirring emotional moments. The momentum within is meticulously drawn carefully like the string of a bow. But by the end of the film, the string is slowly released to its starting position. While this sort of filmmaking can be done to incredible results, this specific instance leaves the viewer frigid.
The film operates with two parallel story lines for most of the film until it merges together into something about release and emotional freedom. How we get to that point is not pretty, however. We see these two points emerge and, once the overarching tragedy in the film concludes, the remainder of the film sort of meanders until it lands on the main point of the film. Then once the main point becomes the primary focus it does very little to keep the drive going. Hechinger plays a really good and really shy individual, and you’d be hard pressed to find someone else to nail a role in the way he does here. Moss-Bachrach also plays a hardass with a lot of skeletons in his closet that he’s keeping sealed tight incredibly well. But despite that, the overall plot within the film doesn’t serve them or their work well.
One element that I do appreciate about A Long Winter is how thematically layered it is. It’s abundantly clear how each element within the film– the winter, the tragedy, and the setting– plays into the fact that a gay man of the time would be suffering. The writing on the larger scale, and the purpose within is incredibly pieced together and the impact is well done. The restraint and lack of forward progression is the point, but with all of this being said, the point lands with little weight. I won’t argue that the content isn’t arranged well, but there seems to be a disconnect between the context of the themes and the execution of the plot.
Frustratingly, A Long Winter suffers from a lack of body. Nothing that lurches into the viewer, and pulls something out of you. There are moments of psychological analysis and suppressed urges with Hechinger’s character, but it simmers to the surface and stays there – nothing less, nothing more. The restraint keeps a film that could’ve been a little more to being an inoffensive and piece of cinematic mishmash. How we see the characters and the tribulations they go through are so bogged down that the film has already made its own conclusions before we the viewer can make our own. Sure, it’s a stylistic choice, and it’s not the filmmaker’s objective to make films for the audience, but we aren’t being let in at all to make our own interpretation.
I hate to write a review where the setting is winter, and I use a bunch of adjectives that can be commonly associated with cold. It isn’t an attempt to be funny, but I can’t really describe it any other way than Andrew Haigh leaving his viewers on ice with A Long Winter. There is little personal flair, the film is tightly written, and it is inoffensive. By the time this review is edited and posted, I will have forgotten about this film. There is a lot to enjoy with A Long Winter, but not enough to rise it above the sludge of mediocrity. In the end, A Long Winter is a film whose death is a death by a thousand restraints.
