Friday, March 7, 2008

by Ari

I have to agree with Lons on Snow Angels, the new David Gordon Green drama with Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale. It's a film with a few tremendous performances and a few powerful moments, but it's also pretty uneven and tedious at times. It's a bit of a surprise considering how finely constructed his previous films are, but maybe that has to do with the number of characters vying for screen-time in this story. I haven't read the novel by Stewart O'Nan, but the way the film mixes together the different subplots never really works. Whenever it seems to be building the suspense or emotion, the film suddenly cuts off that development by showing us something that seems insignificant to the larger issues at play. I liked Michael Angarano's character, Arthur, and his relationship with the sweet new girl at his school (Olivia Thirlby), but it's basically its own film and completely separate from the real drama of the story. That would be the material with Glen (Rockwell) and his wife Annie (Beckinsale), a relationship that takes a tragic turn and builds to the most emotionally complex and haunting moments of the film. It's certainly an interesting film by Gordon Green, but it's also his most problematic.