“Gardens fall apart very quickly. You have to take care of them,” says Jim Winters (Anthony LaPaglia), the landscaping single parent of two in Josh Sternfeld’s new film Winter Solstice, a Sundance Film Festival Screenwriter’s lab pick. But in the Winters’ case, it’s the family, not the garden, that needs tending.
In this brooding Garden State meets Two of a Kind film, .Jim, a widower who still wears his wedding ring, struggles throughout the film to maintain a relationship with his two sons, Pete (Mark Webber), a hearing-impaired high school student, and Gabe (Aaron Stanford), who works chopping vegetables in a kitchen in their suburban town.
The film beautifully explores the challenges each one of these three men discretely faces while coming of age, and the effects their failed attempts at growth have on the already rapidly disintegrating, testosterone-charged family. When women suddenly enter the picture, things begin to take a turn for the better. Molly Ripken (Allison Janney, of The West Wing), a middle-aged house-sitter, begins making waves in Jim’s mourning habits by moving into the neighborhood. And Stacey (Michelle Monoghan) is supportive as Gabe’s girlfriend.
These women serve to weave the backdrop for the Winter family’s emotional drama. While they force the Winter men to be truly honest with one another, the saga is ultimately not about them. Neither does it really concern Mr. Bricker (Ron Livingston), Pete’s summer school teacher, although he too contributes to the Winters’ progress as tries to motivate Pete.
What Winter Solstice ultimately asks the audience, in the words of Pete’s high school secretary, to simply “think about life.” The film’s dialogue is not overpowering, leaving the viewer to ponder this message through cinematographer Harlan Bosmajian’s examination of the faces, gestures, emotions, and brooding of each intensely portrayed character over a background of gorgeous spring and summertime views of small-town New Jersey.
It is all set to a relaxed, guitar-intensive sound track, featuring Iron and Wine, whom everyone heard in the background of—surprise—Garden State.
The aftertaste of the film is not unlike the smell of freshly shoveled earth, wet and rich, with a tinge of rusting, metallic, somehow refreshing discomfort. Winter Solstice’s digging up of buried familial emotions leaves you brooding, with the strange realization that leaving some relationships behind can actually help you feel alive.
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