A Long Winter
TIFF Film #6
A Long Winter is perhaps the film that has sat with me the longest since the credits rolled, it's a film that is so meditative and distant that I very much understand it being lost on people in the moment. And my immediate reaction to the film was this desire for a bit more. However, as the hours have gone by, this has left such a massive imprint in my head, much like a footstep in the winter snow.
Something that we have to contend with as human beings is the fact that we will never know other people's inner lives. Try as we must, and we may even get close, but we will never truly know what goes on inside somebody's head. There's a gorgeous line in the film, which, paraphrasing, is about how we can’t begin to comprehend what goes on inside our own heads, let alone another's. On the surface, we may look pristine like a fresh blanket of snow, but underneath lies complexities hidden to the naked eye.
There's a parallel drawn in this movie between the members of this family and their inner lives. A son who doesn't want life to change and is reckoning with his queerness, a mother who is unhappy with the choices that she made in life, a father who is harbouring resentment towards members of his family, a brother who decides to go to war instead of living at home. A lot of these things are unspoken. These four people lived under the same roof. Yet barely knew what was going on inside each other's heads.
It's a hard realisation as you grow older that you never really will get to truly know somebody, let alone your own family, the people who you are supposed to be closest to, how well do you actually know them? It’s a harsh reality to contend with.
Set amidst the backdrop of the isolated cabin that this family lives in, these thoughts feel more potent in their isolation. Life is made up of a compounding of choices, choices which can elicit change. This movie positions these characters in favour or in opposition to change. Fred Hechinger's character, unwilling to or unable to express his queerness and seeking for his life to remain the same, has this fear of change. His mother, desperately wanting, desperately having this desire to change, fuelled by the regret of choices she made in her past.
The film really isn't explicit in drawing these parallels. Instead, it leaves the viewer to come to these conclusions, in a way some scenes can be meandering and feel like they're meandering to what end? Conversations that perhaps don't feel like they have much to chew on. However, when they are acted by the performers that are in this movie, it's very hard not to be engaged in these scenes. Quite frankly, the entire ensemble is a standout, but in particular, Fred Hechinger just does so much with his subtle movements; you really felt this desire within him that he was suppressing and he was contending with.
It's also just a gorgeous film to look at. It helps that this film is set against the backdrop of just glorious locations. But the way this was shot and coloured, really focusing on deep shadows set against the stark whiteness of the snow, really enhanced this idea of our inner lives being shielded and cloaked in darkness, we only know people on the surface.
The film is about sacrifice. At the end of the day, we all give up something. Paths not taken, decisions made, regrets that form, but maybe like a vulture, we do have to dig beneath the snow every once in a while, show the shadows and the dark parts of ourselves, the things we keep hidden to truly be seen.