Based on the acclaimed novella by Colm Toibin, A Long Winter speaks loudest in its silences. The sparse, achingly beautiful vistas of its quiet mountainside setting match the tenor of its storytelling, which is also filled with long pauses and unspoken truths. Indeed, we spend a lot of the film waiting for people to actually talk to one another, to address the issues that have been broiling under the surface for years, decades even. But it’s only when they have no other choice that they begin to confront their lives and the reality of the people they love. For some, this physical and emotional silence may make A Long Winter feel slow or difficult to connect with. There’s probably one point or another where most viewers may long for the editing to be a bit snappier. But it also has an emotional elegance that makes it spellbending
Mike’s world, as the dutiful older son of a farming family in the isolated mountains of 1950s Colorado, is quiet and predictable, but ultimately happy. Or at least that’s how he’s always viewed it. But when his younger brother (Kit Connor) leaves to enlist in the Korean War, unspoken grievances and long-ignored problems within their household boil over. Although everyone had always seemed to get along well enough, Mike’s awareness of his family’s dysfunction grows when his mother (Caitriona Balfe) suddenly disappears into the cold Colorado wilderness, leaving him and his father (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) behind – when he can be ignorant of it no longer.
Fred Hechinger, who’s made a name for himself with much broader performances like the one he delivers as a syphilitic Roman emperor in Gladiator 2, is wonderfully understated as Mike. He’s the kind of character so warm and gentle and endearing you can’t help but root for him, as his comfortable, predictable world is ripped from him – first as his younger brother joins the army with no real plans to return home, then as the truth about his parents’ reality becomes clear to him. And Haigh and Hechinger collaborate to imbue the character with an elegantly expressed queer longing. First through his fantasies about the local police officer who helps investigate his mother’s disappearance and later with his quietly tender relationship with Jimmy (D’Pharaoh Woon-a-Tai), a young Indigenous man who joins their household to help with the cooking and cleaning in her absence.
A Long Winter is filled with gorgeous, stark mountain landscapes that Andrew Haigh luxuriates in. It’s easy to see how they could be both a paradise and a prison, peaceful and stifling in equal parts. (There are moments when Haigh is unable to tear himself away from the beauty of the vistas he’s created, which are undeniably breathtaking but can occasionally become repetitive.) The grandeur of the scenery is counterbalanced by the quieter moments of the film that carry the most impact. The gentle connection between Jimmy and Mike as they lie in their too-small twin beds, the way that Louise holds her younger son’s face in her hands on the eve of his departure.
But the secrets that exist within the family unit create another sense of isolation – they’re not honest with themselves, let alone each other. We can hardly blame them for that, since they don’t so much as lie to one another as they completely lack the ability to express their emotional needs, or even to fully understand them. What remains is a fragile, frigid peace, once filled with loneliness and resignation threatening to crack into a thousand shards with the force of an errant step onto too-thin ice on the brink of thaw.
Directed by Andrew Haigh
Starring Fred Hechinger, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Caitriona Balfe
Runtime 119 min
Language English