May 2006

Winter Passing is quite similar to most indie films; it takes a tragic moment or section of a life and sticks that moment under a magnifying glass. Here is a very somber film with a slight silver lining at the end. Well drawn out characters with the two leads, Don Holdin (Ed Harris) the dad and Reese Holdin (Zooey Deschanel) the daughter, allowing very little attachment or love and the window dressing characters, ex-Christian rocker Corbit (Will Ferrell) and ex-infatuated student Shelly (Amelia Warner), alluring more to the audience. The premise of cold harsh reality and one big pity party for a woman who lives in New York trying to make it as an actress, but has a more literary poetic heart. She is confused and unsure of herself and disappointed in what she leads as an existence that should be a life and blames her self-indulgent parents. Throughout she slams her hand in drawers to feel real pain and yells silently poor poor pitiful me as she snorts coke, sleeps with any semi-warm body and drones along a cold and wintry existence.

Towards the end the audience is expected to feel as if winter has passed, but the only warmth we are provided with is the sun shining on her father’s face and her commitment to a relationship and her own piece of art, life. No security blanket or true sense of warmth is provided and, even though, we know there is a happy ending we’re not sure if all ties have been mended, but that maybe the point we are suppose to get from it. The point that life is still tragic at moments and there is no mending true tragedy that has loomed for so long in your own mind, but you can find little spots of warmth and bask there for a while.

Winter Passing
3 Stars

Winter Passing is a film that, either, you’ll get it or you won’t (I liked it, but if you want a different perspective check out the original theatrical review here). There is a certain type of relationship or bond that is formed with the characters and a level of acceptance to their lives and how they have chosen to handle what has been handed to them or they have created all of their own accord. Some of the audience may have experienced such things as conflicting true pain to just be reminded what it really feels like or disliking your parents to the point that you never return unless provoked by money and your own curiosity.

Zooey Deschanel does a wonderful job as the unhappy daughter of two authors and Ed Harris pulls out his typical topnotch performance and portrays the drunken self-pitying father/author who notices only himself and his partner’s replacement in Amelia Warner’s character. Amelia’s character was a student of his and found a home and a person or rather persons to look over, clean up after, feed and nurture. Will Ferrell plays an ex-Christian rocker with a huge block of mental simplicity on his shoulders. Will pulled off a hell of a performance that wasn’t his overbearing comedic, but rather a soft and gentle comedic relief in a film that could use a little more Will just to keep the audience from wanting to slit their wrists before it was all over with.

In the beginning there is the cold harsh city, a girl trying to get a gig in a play and a kitten. Reese (Zooey Deschanel) is living a cold and dry existence going from one audition to her job as a bar tender and home to bang her uncaring and cold fling. She has rescued a terminally ill kitten that she later drowns in the East River and only returns home for money. A publisher has offered her a very miniscule fortune for her mother and father’s love letters, so she can publish them. Reese didn’t even return home for her mother’s funeral after she took her own life and has had little to no communication with her father. She lives such a shitty existence and she blames her parents, 2 self-indulging authors who showed very little attention to her and each other through out her childhood. Reese, not able to get past having to self-sooth and comfort as a child, she spends most of the film bitter and angry towards her childhood.

Knocking on her own front door and being confronted with Corbit (Will Ferrell) and his bodyguard like tactics to keep her father, Don (Ed Harris), safe from prying reporters, fans and publishers, Reese is shocked to see that others are living where she had grown up and her father is hiding out in a bottle of whiskey and the garage. It’s the dead cold of winter and everywhere you look it’s cold and dark, such a dreary existence for all. Corbit is a light that Don had found sleeping on his couch one morning and left him there. Corbit spends his time mending things around the house, wearing eyeliner, pretending to rock out and guarding Don.

Reese confronts her father in the diminishing light of the garage, looking at the piles of typed papers laying around and wondering if he is writing cohesive again or just rambling to exhaust his demons. Curious to why her father has taken on a shallow attachment to characters like Corbit and Shelley. Shelley was a student of Don’s; she idealized his writing abilities and showed up one day after another and another, until she became his caregiver and the woman of the house, if you will. She cooks, cleans and takes care of Corbit and Don, but there is always the mystery of whether or not Don and her are lovers in Reese’s mind.

Reese begins to fall down the proverbial rabbit hole, sleeping in her old room, roaming around her childhood home wallpapered in books, climbing the family gallery stairs and encountering weird moments of golf and an outdoor bedroom. She starts to snoop and dig through old boxes and trunks throughout the house and in the garage, looking for the love letters her mother had left behind for her. Finally she asks her dad if her mother had left anything behind that he should pass on, the letters are finally uncovered. Reese hides by a bank and reads through them, loving at first then turning to cold, she sees a glimpse into her mother. Shelley appears to give us a quick over view of how the letters play out, helping to explain a little behind the mom’s suicide.

Don has bouts of screaming fits and disturbing silences at the dinner table, never to speak out of his true feelings until Reese confronts him and even then you never get a true grasp on what really happened here and why, but you do know that he truly loved his wife and she had only truly thought of herself.

Throughout the journey Reese discovers herself with a little help from Corbit and Shelley and decides to burry the love letters in the backyard and turn in her father’s latest novel instead. The ending is supposed to be comforting, but it never truly closes the book on the story. Reese goes back to New York to act in her own play and finally commits to a life and partnership. Her father is seen out walking in the snow with the sun shining on his face and that’s it. Happy ending or not, it’s life.

I would say give Winter Passing a shot. It’s comforting to see that somebody else’s life is fucked up too and others suffer and find some form of appeasement in the end. It’s a keeper for those who relate to the story or the circumstances and a renter to those who have perfect little happy lives. It’s not a popcorn watching feel good film; its life sometimes cold harsh and real and other times comforting with plenty of mashed potatoes.