A Long Winter Review: Striking In Its Stillness, Sometimes Stalled In Its Story

Quiet, pensive movies don’t always equate to gentle narratives, and Andrew Haigh’s A Long Winter is perhaps case in point. Set against a gorgeous snowy-mountain backdrop and centered on a family of four – mother Louise (Caitríona Balfe), father Lester (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), and brothers Mike (Fred Hechinger) and Tommy (Kit Connor) – the film opens with the idea that the departure of Tommy, who is heading off to war, will be the event that rocks this family.

Technically, that proves true, as it’s Tommy leaving that causes Louise to sink back into her feelings of loss and despair and try to find comfort in various wines and liquors. However, it’s the latter trouble with Louise that actually becomes the driving (and very dark) storyline of A Long Winter. Unbeknownst to Mike, who serves as the movie’s protagonist, neither these feelings nor the way in which Louise uses alcohol to cope are new; ultimately, he learns, this is the very same thing that happened when he had left previously. The truth had been kept from him to save him the pain.

Sadly, the decision not to tell Mike the truth didn’t spare him in the end. Not only does he learn of his mother’s difficulties with alcohol, but he’s thrown headfirst into this reality when Lester’s decision to pour out every drop of liquor in the house leads Louise to make the rash decision to leave the family home, just as a winter storm is about to hit. It’s there, in the deluge of snow, that she goes missing. The titular long winter is one in which Lester and Mike sit at home, largely alone, waiting to see whether they will eventually find her.

A Long Winter Brings Family Trauma To The Fore In A Narrative That Needs More Momentum

There’s no question that A Long Winter is visually stunning. The aforementioned mountainous terrain means that most shots incorporate a vast snowy landscape that, in other contexts, would seem like something from a vacation postcard. Even scenes that don’t feature the mountains are generally beautifully shot. This is equally true of moments before Louise’s disappearance, such as one in which the entire family dances happily together, to those that occur while she is still missing, including one in which Mike finds Lester strumming an instrument quietly in his room, clearly overtaken by grief.

…it is Hechinger who steals the show.

Such sequences are where A Long Winter really hits its stride. Haigh takes quiet, intimate family moments and reframes them through the lens of harsh truths about Louise’s unhappiness with her life, and, eventually, her disappearance. Within that is also a subtler, gendered commentary on the (often silent) ways that women suffered in the mid-20th century.

What truly gives these scenes their punch, though, are the stellar performances. While all key cast members – including some major names like Martin Freeman, who surprisingly plays a fairly minor role – shine in A Long Winter, it’s the two leads, Hechinger and Moss-Bachrach, who are particularly brilliant. Their father-son moments are consistently among the movie’s most compelling, and the tension between the two is, on more than one occasion, so great that it seemed like one might hit the other. (Generally, however, this isn’t that kind of movie.)

Yet, if it must be narrowed down even further, it is Hechinger who steals the show. Even in scenes when he is entirely alone, Mike is captivating. Hechinger perfectly captures his range of emotions and reactions, as well as the complexities around his growing attraction to men.

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