Winter Passing (2006)

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

An earnest attempt to adopt both literary and highbrow cinematic techniques into an indie story, Winter Passing reminds one of the state in which American cinema has found itself over the last decade or so. To categorize broadly, there are the main-stream, box office extravaganzas with huge budgets, casts, advertising campaigns and hopes. On the flip side is a film like this; personal, introspective, rough around the edges, yet still not altogether coherent and meaningful.A film like this depends even more so on its actors and writing than more grand movies due to its lack of polish and refinement. Often, this can still lead to an effective experience, but here under writer/director Adam Rapp's embalmed oversight, much of the story suffers from a case of severe underplaying. Zooey Deschanel, a marvelous actress, maintains her ethereal beauty and her doe-like eyes continue to draw us into her soul. Yet, in many scenes she seems to be subdued in not being able to fully express herself, allowing for a somewhat uneven and stilted performance. Ed Harris gives the film's best performance as a once-brilliant writer on the verge of total collapse after the death of his wife and Will Ferrell shows once again the full capabilities of his range with this subtle, nuanced performance to go alongside his much broader roles of Ron Burgundy and Ricky Bobby.Though most of the actors do rise above the material, the material itself is often too cluttered and uneven to maintain the audience the whole way through. Several sequences serve little to no purpose of the overall plot, including one early thread which serves as the entire reason for the story, only to be dumped by the end of the film for supposed "artistic" purposes; i.e., ambiguity serves as a great excuse for unconvincing writing. Some characters remain constant, while others seem to be strung along by the plot as if they were puppets. Essentially, Rapp seems interested only in arriving to his abrupt and rather unsatisfying conclusion, seemingly to show us how far everyone has come. Everyone, that is, except for the audience.

Oh gosh. How boring; how slow. This film has too many characters, hence the plot is hard to fathom. I sat waiting for something to happen. Anything to lift the pace above the turgid dirge which surrounded everything.. No suspense. No mystery. No laughter. No joy. I must take issue with those reviewers who praised Zoey Deschanel and her acting abilities. I disagree that she performed well. This lady cannot act. She delivers lines as if she is reading them. Her tone is a monotonous drawl. Her timing is awful. She consistently speaks as soon as the other actor finishes. The idea that she can come up with such pithy and witty comments without pausing to reflect on the statements made by others is not credible. And what a terrible whiny accent she has. She could learn a lot from the other lead female actor, Amelia Warner, who puts feeling, sincerity and intelligence into the role of Shelley.I watched it till the end but it totally failed to hold my attention or win my interest.

Ah, another tale of a lost, disaffected young person that fruitlessly tries to fill their empty life with empty sex and drugs, and the family dynamics that led them to become that way. You know how these stories go. By the end, there's always some kind of acceptance and catharsis, and the characters end up with better relationships than when they started. Since most family dramas begin and end in somewhat the same manner, it's that middle journey that makes or breaks them, for me. How and why do the characters change?Winter Passing largely skips right over the how and why. For 90% of the movie Zooey Deschanel's and Ed Harris's characters are one way, and then in the last ten minutes they are suddenly completely different. I was so confused that I went back to check and see if I had unknowingly missed some crucial plot points or character development, but I hadn't. The viewer is actually expected to believe that these characters undergo profound and drastic changes as a result of about two brief conversations and a hospital visit. It's like they took a vague idea of a plot, and then filled in the runtime with melancholy gazing out of windows and lots of slow cigarette smoking. As for the other two main characters, they never really contributed anything of substance to the story. I suppose Amelia Warner's character was included to provide some initial friction for Reese and offer her another insight into her father's personality, and she looked so beautiful doing it that I'm willing to cut her some slack. But Will Ferrell's character was completely unnecessary. All he did was add forced quirkiness to a movie that absolutely did not need it. It didn't even fit the tone, and his sub-plot was a pointless way to pad out the running time.I didn't hate Winter Passing, I just thought that its story needed a lot more thought, focus, and fleshing out. It feels incomplete. Family drama is among the most character driven genres, and they just don't work well without strong and well-defined character arcs.

It was in focus. It had intelligible sound. It wasn't too long. Main character kills a kitten by putting it in a gym bag and throwing said bag into the Hudson river (in winter!). Strange choice. Too bad it went downhill from there. Let's see, downtown, kind-of-hot junkie girl goes back home to rescue JD Saling- oops, I mean her fictional recluse author Dad. Turns out Dad's been writing in secret, buried his book in the ground. Junkie girl digs up book, sells it for lots of money - oh, no, that's would have happened in real life - she read said book, likes it, blah, blah, blah.Boooooorrrrrriiiiiinnnnnngggggg. After 45 minutes, I started using the fast forward button. It was much less boring 1) at 4x speed and 2) without dialog.