Posted: 04/15/2005

Winter Solstice

(2005)

by William Furlong

Winter Solstice is the kind of movie that’s nearly a non-movie. It creeps and crawls its way through an overly familiar story featuring painfully familiar characters mumbling half-heartedly familiar dialog. At times I felt like I was watching deleted footage from some reality show—all the non-drama captured by the cameras deemed too boring for audience consumption. Sadly, the only thing consumed here was an hour and a half of my time.

The “story” follows Anthony LaPaglia as Jim Winters, (Winter—get it? Like the title! Sadly, this is as deep as the subtext goes.) a quiet landscaper and single father of two quiet boys. They reside in a quiet New Jersey suburb and enjoy long, quiet interchanges using as few words as possible. Gabe (Aaron Stanford) is the elder son, who works double shifts at the warehouse to save enough money to move to Florida. Pete (Mark Webber) is still in high school, but his mind is elsewhere. He’ll have to attend summer school again. Molly (Allison Janney) moves into the neighborhood and spices things up. No, not really, she’s pretty quiet as well. Her attempts to draw the Winter men out of their shells are often painful to watch, their reticence and her awkwardness eliciting the closest thing to an emotional response (discomfort) I felt until the end credits rolled (pure joy).

I suppose that writer/director Josh Sternfeld was going for an uber-realistic feel, a documentary vibe for the film, but the thing about documentaries is that they generally focus on a subject of interest. Winter Solstice failed to interest me in any way, from the plot to the characters to the camera work. I’ve seen, heard and felt it all before in dozens of other, better films. I applaud the actors for giving it their all with so little to work with, especially the hilarious Ron Livingston (Office Space), wasted here in a mere three scenes as Pete’s summer school teacher.

I’m all for using silence for effect and I normally welcome it among all the big, boom-boom base tracks of louder films, but here it was used to a fault. (For a wonderful, recent example of how to use silence in a film, see my review of Off the Map, or better yet, just see Off the Map.) I’m sure Mr. Sternfeld was trying to convey that stifling, drowning sensation to which the Winters men found themselves succumbing to by creating the same sensation in the audience. If so, he’s a genius. Still, between the painfully banal exchanges of dialog (“How’s it going?” “Good.” “Okay, see you later.”) I found myself almost hoping to hear the ring of a cell phone, the wail of a crying baby, or the boom-boom base track of the movie playing next door.

William Furlong is a writer living in Manhattan.

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