A Long Winter

From Viennale

Life in the mountains of Colorado in the 1950s still feels like a whole other era, the isolation and social norms of the previous century still present and correct. The titular winter has yet to arrive when Mike returns to his family’s mountain hut after giving up a farming job located a couple of states away, finding his mother depressed, his father angry and his brother itching to leave, having signed up to fight in the Korean War. Once he leaves, the parents’ strife doesn’t take long to explode, as the mother flees once her alcoholism is revealed to Mike, triggering a search immediately hampered by the first snowflakes of the season and an extended period of self- questioning on the part of father and son alike. Capturing the rural setting and its myriad restrictions with typically unostentatious precision and allowing Mike’s mental wanderings to push the perspective towards dream, Andrew Haigh crafts the portrait of a young man making sense of many things at once: his parents’ relationship, the workings of the community, his emerging sexuality and his unusual attachment to this place. Even in the coldest of seasons, warmth, clarity and their accompanying joy can make the ice crack. “I sure want spring to come, but sometimes I wish the winter would last forever.” (James Lattimer)