Snow Angels finds David Gordon Green grasping at straws, clearly eager for a chance at meaty melodrama, but simply incapable of restraining his whimsy-tooth or even of constructing full and meaningful characters whose actions one can comprehend, much less believe. Again, Green proves himself an excellent director of actors: both Kate Beckinsale and Sam Rockwell offer great turns in their otherwise unremarkable roles, and there are at least a half-dozen smaller roles that could easily warrant more screentime. But the film’s story seems to overwhelm Green’s sense of narrative and tone, and what begins as a characteristically idiosyncratic look at small town life, adults in relationship hell, and the various kids who get snagged in the middle soon devolves into pointless misery and violence with little warning or import.
And this is a shame, because Green’s quirkiness — for lack of a less condescending designation — always seems to have worked on me: in the beguiling, if derivative George Washington, in the gentle, sensitive-boy-baiting All the Real Girls, and even the maligned, oddball odyssey of Undertow. That film represented a decisive new beginning for Green, with its more adventurous sense of narrative and copped ’70s cinematics, and Snow Angels is a clear attempt to forge ahead with these new themes and styles (as seems his next film, The Pineapple Express, albeit in a rather different way). But Snow Angels, based on Stewart O’Nan’s novel, never manages to decide what type of film it wants to be. Its first half is devoted to Green’s usual quick-study of offhand character mannerisms, but these are soon found to be too glib and indistinct to sustain the cataclysms of the film’s final hour.
Most negative reviews I’ve read of this film — of which I guess this is one — point to the film’s miserablism as its downfall. Some, by extension, further note the downbeat nature of all American films these days, just as they did when — boo-hoo — the last crop of non-cheerful Oscar nominees was trotted out. Frankly, Snow Angels aside, I’m okay with this state of affairs. There’s nothing — nothing — I like less than a film that blithely serves up a happy ending it has failed to earn. Also, I actually like movies that successfully make me miserable. It’s always satisfying to be told that this is the worst of all possible worlds — indeed, Schopenhauer would agree, and he’d tell you that this is what art is for and why it’s so important. But Snow Angels doesn’t even manage to earn its miserable ending. It fails to construct characters and situations plausible enough to be pitiable, and so one wonders why such an absurd comedy ends with such po-faced histrionics.
Bring on the stoner comedy, DGG.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Warner Independent Pictures 35mm Print
01 Apr 2008 12:05 AM | Submit Comment