So I watched Winter Passing.
Meet Reese (Zooey Deschanel), a young actress living in New York. Her career, just like her life as a whole, is not going well, so when she is approached by a literary agent about a series of letters once exchanged between her father and late mother, both highly celebrated writers, the estranged daughter decides to return. Upon arriving at her Michigan family house, Reese finds herself in what seems like a bizarre parallel universe: the place is inhabited by two strangers named Shelly (Amelia Warner) and Corbit (Will Ferrell), while her father Don (Ed Harris) writes and sleeps in the garage, only returning to the house to have dinner and demolish the bedroom by playing golf in it. Not wanting her father to know that she only came for the letters, Reese moves back into her old room and has to learn to adjust to what seems to be her new "family".
The first twenty minutes or so focus entirely on Reese's life in New York. With her unkempt hair, bare face and heartbreakingly empty eyes, Zooey Deschanel’s character is the image of a young woman’s depression: confused, lost and forlorn, she tries to act tough, but constantly tiptoes along the edge of despair.
Returning home at first does not do her any good either: the house, held up by mountains of books and Shelly’s good intentions, reeks of torment and hopelessness, and in the garage Don slowly, but painfully drowns himself in Bourbon and grief over the recent death of his wife.
The film is set in late autumn and early winter, and you can feel the cold. It's a calm movie, one that rarely ever raises its voice, and yet it cuts as deep as the cold on a crisp November morning. In some parts, it aches.
It was early October and university courses were just starting. I was nineteen years old and had just moved into my first own studio flat. Something had gone wrong with the phone company, so for the first month, I was without an Internet connection. To pass the time I went to the local library once or twice a week to pick up DVDs. That's where I found a copy of Winter Passing.
From the very first time I watched it, this film spoke to me. I think it's very well made in terms of cinematography and soundtrack; I would recommend it to anyone just for the atmosphere, and of course the acting. (If you dislike Zooey Deschanel and/or Will Ferrell because you think all they can do is silly comedy, I urge you to watch this.)
It's painful, though, and I can understand it if some people think it over-the-top painful. However, in that month of October when I was nineteen, I felt that I got this movie, and that this movie got me. I had just gone through the worst summer of my life thus far, and had just started to learn the meaning of solitude. This story at that time lined up with my life, and it's been part of my life since.
Watching Winter Passing has become somewhat of a ritual for me. There are candles, tea, chocolate and at least one tangerine (for the smell; you just need the smell of tangerines at this time of the year). Even though the painful parts don't speak to me as much as they used to, it takes me back to those first weeks of living alone, during those first weeks of autumn, when I was in the process of climbing out of a dark void of my own. Watching it makes me strangely wistful and optimistic at the same time.
I'm glad this movie exists.