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SNOW ANGELS
Written & Directed by David Gordon Green, based on the novel by Stewart O’Nan
Produced by Dan Lindau, Paul Miller, Lisa Muskat & Cami Taylor
Director of Photography, Tim Orr
Edited by William Anderson
Music by David Wingo & Jeff McIlwain
Released by Warner Independent Pictures
USA 106 min. Rated R
With: Kate Beckinsale, Sam Rockwell, Michael Angarano, Jeannette Arnette, Griffin Dunne, Nicky Katt, Tom Noonan, Connor Paolo Amy Sedaris & Olivia Thirlby

David Gordon Green’s genius is in portraying small-town life without a trace of Hollywood gloss, revealing surprising depth and beauty. His latest feature, Snow Angels, based on a book by Stewart O’Nan, is one of the best films about an intimate tragedy since Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter and Todd Field’s In the Bedroom. Like those dramas, Snow Angels reveals the subtle and heartbreaking ways that a devastating event can touch an infinite number of ordinary lives.

Green seduces the viewer with his trademark poetry – a landscape dappled with sunshine, complex but disarmingly loveable characters, and just the right dose of wit. Within minutes, I was invested in these people. I rooted for them, even when they ought to have been unsympathetic, and I cared how their lives turned out.

Fourteen-year-old Arthur (played by relative newcomer Michael Angarano) is an especially beguiling character. He’s dealing with his parents’ acrimonious separation and his first love. He also has a flirtation with his beautiful former babysitter, Annie (Kate Beckinsale). She is separated from her alcoholic husband, Glenn (Sam Rockwell), sleeping with her best friend’s husband, and raising a child on her own. The characters’ everyday, working-class lives intersect, inexorably transformed.

Readers of O’Nan’s novel will find that Green has made key changes in the plot and context of the original story. The film is a stand-alone piece, but Green’s atmospheres and character motivations remain true to his source material. The personae are so believable that it’s easy to forget that you’re watching actors giving performances. This riveting realism creates an emotionally-charged, sometimes traumatic filmgoing experience – the tragedies that shape Snow Angels feel personal to the viewer. Yet, the humor and sweetness in the character’s lives never waver. Green’s film is more redemptive and transcendent than O’Nan’s novel, but no less profound and beautiful – a small, quiet epic about love, forgiveness, and despair, set in a world that has rarely been captured with such gripping accuracy. Elizabeth Bachner
March 6, 2008