Snow Angels

There's a Blockbuster a block away from my apartment and about once a month they do a four for $20 DVD sale. I am unable to pass this up even though the inevitable time crunch happens and I have stacks of unwatched DVD's sitting around (a good portion of which are some random titles that I picked up to fill up my four). This is one step in a continual effort to get through the monstrosity.

This is an interesting film that, while engaging, ends up feeling sterile. The story follows two couples (one adult, on high school) in an unnamed town as they struggle to deal with changes in their lives and hold on to as much of their sanity as possible. For the first hour or so the film feels like any number of other independent films about 'ordinary' peoples' struggle with everyday life but at the half way point a tragedy befalls the characters that causes (at least two of them) to lose their grip on their lives. Its this part of the film that doesn't quite work for me. From the tragedy to what is meant to be a devastating ending I never became more than intellectually interested in the two main characters (played by Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsdale) which meant that when the climatic moment occurs I don't feel a sense of tragedy but more like an interested, yet uninvolved, third party. This is not to say that I wasn't engaged by the story's machinations, but rather the whole thing struck me more as a intellectual exercise in which I didn't feel any real emotional involvement. Since the ultimate success of these type of films is driven by how invested you are in the characters, Snow Angels inability to completely draw me in meant that it was ultimately unsuccessful in imparting the power of its story.

I don't want to make it sound like there is nothing to recommend the film, there's plenty. Its beautifully shot, and the way many of the scenes are composed reminded me of paintings and showed more artistry than a typical film. Also the film manages to catch the absurdty of high school marching bands in just a few scenes. Now while it may shock readers of this blog to know that such a charismatic, well rounded, and snappy dressing individual such as myself has any experience with marching bands, I must admit that I am intimitely aware of all their machinations (I even played in the Rose Parade one year). The film manages to capture the annoyance of the director, and ambivalence of the members, yet still give some sense of why the kids might actually participate even though on the surface they appear to mock it. Not an easy task. Additionally the film is generally well acted and put together and I was never bored which is more than I can say for other films of this ilk (I'm looking at you Rachel Getting Married).

So anyway if you're not as emotionally stunted as myself you may actually find the film to be a devastating portrait of lives being torn apart by tragedy, or at the least you'll see a beautiful looking piece of work with some nice scenes that unfortunately do not add up to the substantive whole to which it aspires.