Winter Solstice

i viewed this film at the premiere on the Paramount lot. My thoughts ... placid on the surface but it had this continual bubbling beneath that serves to create this underlying tension and anxiousness which make you wonder ... where is this story going? thin on plot, yet masterly made .. the director was able to extract superlative performances from EVERY cast member which made this film work. This film is subtle and many aspects will be lost on most. This won't be a box office success but will pay for itself ($1m budget), it is a fantastically crafted piece and is in essence, a beautiful film. well done anthony la paglia for doing this low budget film and for giving such a fantastic emotional and well balanced performance that rubbed off onto all.

Quick physics analogy here. (although I hate the discipline!) Imagine a family consisting of three forces pulling in opposite directions. What's gonna happen? Whatever exists between them is gonna start to show cracks, right? Well, even if this little scientific postulation of mine turns out to be incorrect, it still handily applies to the meditation on grief that "Winter Solstice" offers. If they were united as a group, they would be much stronger, but with the huge space vacated by a missing figure, they become a ship without a rudder.

Fans, like me, of Lapaglia, Stanford or David Gordon Green's "All the Real Girls" should definitely come away from this with some food for thought. There are echoes of "In the Bedroom", too. Admirers of any mentioned will be pleasantly acquainted with the pace this film moves at as this is not a work for those who like their cinema to run loud, obvious and at a mile a minute. If low-key indie musing is your thing though, then I would suggest you check it out. It's content not to milk its material for moments of angst, so there are few showy moments for the actors. Suppressed anger is the main vent for hidden depths, so it could have been more 'raw', but taken together it nevertheless builds to something that is genuinely affecting.

"Winter Solstice" is a quiet, almost all-male counterpart to "Imaginary Heroes," dealing with the same theme of family grief, and was even filmed in the same town of Glen Ridge, NJ.

Debut writer/director Josh Sternfeld perfectly captures the inarticulatelessness of working class guys, particularly in father/son and brother/brother interactions.

Anthony LaPaglia as the landscaper dad and Aaron Stanford as his restless older son add to the minimal script with on screen charisma. It's sweetly charming how absolutely clueless they are in their lack of communication with the women who are attracted to them, but Allison Janney and Michelle Monaghan are overly understanding minor characters in their intersections with the dad and older son, respectively. I presume this is to emphasize the hole in their lives caused by the absence of the mother.

The problem is that without either more intervention by the women or the alcoholic violence of Sam Shephard's male family explorations, authentic looking and sounding guys hanging out together don't do very much or resolve issues. Pretty much the only plot point is the older son's gradual decision to leave --though I was surprised he has LPs to pack up--and how the other characters react to that.

It was nice to see Brendan Sexton again, more filled out, but he looked distractingly like the younger son played by Mark Webber so that I was confused at first that he was the best friend not the brother.

John Leventhal's intricate guitar playing on his original score is almost distractingly good. The song selections are beautiful sounding, though not particularly illustrative.

Saw the film at Tribeca, and was very taken with it. So few films show normal, non-violent life to be as dramatic and as sweet and as hurtful as it really can be. This film does. The acting is terrific. The direction stays out of the way of the actors and the story. A young man has a hearing impairment, for example, but this is never called attention to or made maudlin use of--it's just there as part of the family's reality. Same with the missing mother. That's part of the back story, and no one is going to spend minutes explaining it to the audience, you just enter into the family's life as it goes on. Every moment is entirely believable, and usually, touching as well. I am afraid it may not reach many viewers, since it has not sex or violence to speak of, just the truth of family life.

What happens when a spouse dies? There are no tender flashbacks in this film showing the husband and wife in their marital bliss before the wife dies. This film is about what happens afterward. Even five years later, the reverberations are being felt by the husband and his two young adult sons.

Keep your expectations realistic, and this film delivers. In a key scene, a high school history teacher asks the class, "Why did the Mongols turn back when they were poised to roll up Europe like a carpet?" Pete, the younger son, seems to know, but doesn't care to answer. The teacher offers to let him out of class (a makeup summer class) if he can answer.

Pete finally takes the bait: "Their leader died and they didn't know what to do." There you have it. Does the filmmaker do any more to explain what troubles this family? Yes, but you have to put the pieces together yourself. He doesn't make it hard; he just doesn't grind it up and put it in a baby food jar.

The film builds to some very touching scenes that explore the impact of loss on the three remaining family members. If you're interested in exploring how real people deal with the real issue of loss, you'll find something here.

The ending comes before you want it to, sure. There are no easy answers offered by the conclusion, but that's the way life is.