In neither the promotional description -- "a story of love lost and found....a heartrending portrayal of three couples in various stages of life" -- nor in some of the love letters disguised as reviews would a viewer have a sense of what an unrelenting and monotone descent into tragedy something as innocently and mysteriously titled as "Snow Angels" is. This is a film not to be watched but endured.
What is far more glaringly apparent and transparent is not the muted themes of age or love as much as it is the story of how problems do or do not work out, depending on where you fall in the food chain. These are not just couples distinguishably different because of their ages. Making an equal comparison to the a single, working class mother who waitresses at a family restaurant and the unstable, unemployed working class man she is married to the young boy she babysat and his parents who reside in quite a different social status with a remarkably different home, lifestyle and set of choices, is simply myopic.
At the end of day and the end of the film, there really is only one "heartrending" message in this bleak and didactic lecture on the "misfit toys" who populate the working class: that the "White Trash," single parenting contingent caught in the cycle of meaningless service jobs with no opportunity for real mental health and counseling intervention other than what comes in crisis as during an arrest) must dutifully accept the ineluctable Jerry Springeresque set of consequences they deserve and let the Greek tragedy of their lives run its course. Meanwhile, the affluent are afforded slow motion long shots and wide smiles and the fulfillment of their desires complete with the soundtrack and dramatic (stadium) lighting of a Hollywood ending.
Green's statement on class and consequences is either an intentional transmission or an inadvertently overt broadcast signal to the viewer. Whatever the case, I'd like to believe some other set of possibilities and some other message about the consequences of class than this film so subversively and dangerously proffers like a morality play.
What is far more glaringly apparent and transparent is not the muted themes of age or love as much as it is the story of how problems do or do not work out, depending on where you fall in the food chain. These are not just couples distinguishably different because of their ages. Making an equal comparison to the a single, working class mother who waitresses at a family restaurant and the unstable, unemployed working class man she is married to the young boy she babysat and his parents who reside in quite a different social status with a remarkably different home, lifestyle and set of choices, is simply myopic.
At the end of day and the end of the film, there really is only one "heartrending" message in this bleak and didactic lecture on the "misfit toys" who populate the working class: that the "White Trash," single parenting contingent caught in the cycle of meaningless service jobs with no opportunity for real mental health and counseling intervention other than what comes in crisis as during an arrest) must dutifully accept the ineluctable Jerry Springeresque set of consequences they deserve and let the Greek tragedy of their lives run its course. Meanwhile, the affluent are afforded slow motion long shots and wide smiles and the fulfillment of their desires complete with the soundtrack and dramatic (stadium) lighting of a Hollywood ending.
Green's statement on class and consequences is either an intentional transmission or an inadvertently overt broadcast signal to the viewer. Whatever the case, I'd like to believe some other set of possibilities and some other message about the consequences of class than this film so subversively and dangerously proffers like a morality play.