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HOME/Archive/Hubbs/Books/Obits/Shorts/Links/Contact Snow Angels
review by M.G. Wood They haunt you because they hold a very distinct place in your heart. Frozen in time, forever still in a photograph you hold in your mind. The first crush. The first broken heart that either opened you up or closed you down. This is what Annie meant to Arthur. Annie was Arthur’s babysitter. Now, Arthur (Michael Angarano) is a high school student on the verge of his very first full-blown romance with a new student in school named Lila (Olivia Thirlby). Arthur washes dishes at the same Chinese restaurant where Annie (Kate Beckinsale) waits tables. In the opening scene of David Gordon Green’s SNOW ANGELS, Arthur is smiling behind his trombone on the football field during band practice, while Lila smiles behind her camera. And then a gunshot echoes through the winter skies. A title card reads, WEEKS EARLIER. Sam Rockwell (CHOKE) plays Glenn. And when we first meet Glenn, he is anxiously primping and preening himself for his first play date with his 4 year daughter since his alcohol-induced suicide attempt. Annie left Glenn, we assume for his alcoholism. And now, Glenn is desperately attempting to win Annie back. It becomes very clear right off the bat that Glenn’s chances are very slim. Yet, newly armed with sobriety and Jesus, Glenn refuses to give up. Jump to the end of SNOW ANGELS, and we find Arthur sitting with his mother looking through a photo album, when his mother says, “It’s funny how you can always tell fake smiles in pictures”. As with every film David Gordon Green has made, there is something so uniquely authentic about each scene. Not a false or fake smile or emotion on display. Just to read the plot outline, one might assume SNOW ANGELS to be a melodramatic soap opera. But, it is with caution that you slowly but surely become swallowed up by the subtle power of simple story-telling. A gorgeous scene where Glenn wrestles with his 4 year old daughter in an attempt to have the perfect family photo taken before the faux background, as the white picket fence bends and buckles beneath their weight. Or the moving scene of Glenn dancing with two other drunks, one a hard-bitten middle-aged woman, the other a worn-out old black man; the three moving in a circle, swirling in a downward spiral to the muted horns and screeching guitars of the jukebox. And Annie and Arthur share a quiet moment in the kitchen of the Chinese restaurant, reminiscing about the babysitter days. Annie teasing Arthur about his adolescent crush. Their eyes meet silently for a moment, before Glenn arrives at the back door. What Glenn wants more than anything, is for Annie to remain unchanged. And in his own way, this is what Arthur wants too. But, it is this unnatural resistance. This unrealistic sentimentality. To prevent people from changing, in order that they may forever remain, frozen in hearts and minds, that trigger tragic and irreparable events, that give birth to ghosts. "Take the PINEAPPLE EXPRESS to Green-Ville"
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