Young Paul has a secret world, a place in his mind where he can escape the drudgeries of the here-and-now. It's a place where he feels welcome...a place with snow. Gradually, he is drawn further, deeper into his frosty dream world, and his growing detachment worries those around him. They don't understand his uncommunicative behavior, because they aren't aware of his secret snow...snow which is now overlapping reality, BECOMING reality...at least for Paul.
Paul, frustrated by his mother's whiling concerns and ceaseless badgering, finally reveals to her the reason for his widening distance. He tells her about his secret snow, and the comfort it brings him...and that he hates her. He rolls over in bed, and the wintry isolation welcomes him back...
"...and with that effort, everything was solved, everything became
all right: the seamless hiss advanced once more, the long white wavering lines rose and fell like enormous whispering sea waves, the whisper becoming louder, the laughter more numerous. "Listen!" it said. "We'll tell you the last, the most beautiful and
secret story-shut your eyes-it is a very small story-a story that gets smaller and smaller-it comes inward instead of opening like a flower- it is a flower becoming a seed-a little cold seed-do you hear? We are leaning closer to you..."
Gene Kearney's 17-minute black-and-white adaption of Conrad Aiken's subtle horror masterstroke is lovingly true to its source material, and overseen with an artful eye. The story advances with the creeping pace of a dying hearbeat, elegantly italicized by chillingly austere camerawork, relaxing narration, and George Kleinsinger's mournful, sussurant score. Kearney understands and shares Aiken's vision, and he limns it here judiciously.
It's widely agreed that SILENT SNOW, SECRET SNOW is an intimate potraiture of a young man touched by schizophrenia or Aspergers. I'm of the mind that Aiken may be suggesting something more. The afore endued closing paragraph of the story may be inferring that our minds are vulnerable to external influences of an intangible, supernatural, perhaps even demonic nature. Soothing, beckoning voices from the world beyond, coercively pulling us ever inward, away from love and mutuality, and into a lonely prison of the mind.
All said, this is a laudable and unduly sidestepped effort, and arguably the sincerest adaption of a nimbly penned and achingly personal paragon of the written word. 7.5/10.
