Snow Angels (DVD)

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Earlier this year, Warner Bros. announced they were dissolving their two independent production arms, Warner Independent Pictures and Picturehouse. I can only guess the studio wants to concentrate on making money rather than financing any more possibly iffy propositions. It's a shame, really, because these divisions have produced any number of fine films. Nevertheless, you can't blame a business for doing its own business.

I mention this because Warner Independent Pictures helped with the 2007 release "Snow Angels," a small film from writer-director David Gordon Green ("All the Real Girls," "Undertow," "Pineapple Express"), based on a novel by Stewart O'Nan, which WB opened in limited release and which barely made over $100,000 at the box office. The real question, though, is whether "Snow Angels" deserved its fate. The filmmakers certainly constructed the film well, shot it professionally, and got the best acting possible from their performers. However, if my reaction to it is any indication, I can understand why audiences didn't exactly flock to see it.

It would appear that the filmmakers (and the novelist) intended the story as a slice of everyday life. They lead us to this conclusion by using the same montage of ordinary small-town events--people coming and going at the post office, construction workers digging up a street, etc.--to bookend the film's central conflict. If this is so, then whose everyday life is it? The incidents in the story are so dismal, so dreary, so bleak, it's hard to say they represent many of us. Perhaps the filmmakers intended the occurrences of the story as satire, exaggerations of life's misfortunes, to remind us that into each of our lives some calamities must fall. If this is so, then why make it all so glum and depressing? (David Lynch did something similar in "Blue Velvet," but he made a film that gripped us in other, exaggerated ways.) The fact is, "Snow Angels" is not a movie the filmmakers meant for easy, pleasant entertainment; they clearly meant it to enlighten us with a message. Fair enough. Yet they present the message rather ambiguously and leave us with practically no clear message at all.

In a small, middle-class town of the 1970s, we see a teenager witnessing the lives of the adults around him falling apart. The men, especially, in his life behave immaturely, and in contrast he behaves maturely. So, we've got a youth acting like an adult and adults acting like children. So far, so good. But I would ask, To what point?

The teen is Arthur Parkinson, played sensitively by Michael Angarano, who would also do a good job in "The Forbidden Kingdom" a year later. Michael's parents (Jeannetta Arnette and Griffin Dunne) have separated, the father selfishly seeing another woman for reasons he cannot explain. The father wants to get back together with Michael's mother, but he's still seeing the other woman. Meanwhile, Michael's old baby-sitter and co-worker at a Chinese restaurant, Annie (Kate Beckinsale), has just left her husband Glenn (Sam Rockwell), an emotionally disturbed former alcoholic who tried to take his own life and has resumed drinking while simultaneously getting religion. He, too, wants to get back together with his ex-wife, but Annie, understandably, won't have him back. At the same time, Annie has taken up an affair with the husband (Nicky Katt) of her best friend (Amy Sedaris). As these adults are fighting and trying to sort out their lives, Michael has fallen for a new girl in school, Lila Raybern (Olivia Thirlby), another sensitive soul like Michael's own.