Adapted from the novella of the same name by Colm Tóibín, long winter Providing the perfect glacial venue for Andrew Haigh’s trademark restraint. This intense two-hour drama set in the Colorado Rockies tells the story of a crumbling family in the 1950s, as young adult Mitch (Fred Heckinger) returns after months away to discover that his mother Louise (Caitriona Balfe) is leaving his stern father Lester (Ebon Moss-Barker) for good. As she wanders through a blizzard, the two men are left to fend for themselves, and family secrets and lingering tensions slowly surface until the ice mercifully melts.
We first see Louise through Mickey’s eyes as the sensitive youngster returns to their secluded home. He’s clearly attached to her, although she seems to prefer his brother Tommy (Kit Conner), who is about to leave to fight in the Korean War. Mickey’s point of view is limited and incomplete by design, and Haigh uses it to slowly uncover the unpleasantness hiding beneath the family’s staid exterior. Mickey comes back from farm work one afternoon to find Louise breaking a glass, which leads him to learn about her alcoholism – something everyone, including his father and brother, seems to be aware of.
When Louise finally rises to leave, these harsh truths are further revealed as Mitch is forced to understand and internalize these reasons over the cold months. A boy longing for his mother, a man growing in independence—both as a closeted gay youth and as a bachelor who can barely cook or clean—McGee’s relationship with the gruff patriarch Lester is defined by Louise’s absence, which in turn forces him to see his father, and ultimately himself, through her eyes. The more he learns about her misfortune (through the whispers of others—including her brother, played by Martin Freeman), the more slowly his understanding of the world tilts.
As the snow thickened, authorities gave up the search for Louise, but Mickey was less pessimistic. Every day throughout the winter, he travels as far as possible from the family cabin with his father’s new live-in cook and helper, Jimmy (Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai). Questions about Mickey’s orientation are never directly confronted, but Jimmy’s radiant presence and Mickey’s lingering gaze push him further into uncertainty. Regardless of whether Lester knows or suspects anything about his son, his wife’s absence makes him hostile to the younger men in his life, making him a physical and emotional handicap.
The film’s conclusion is deliberate. Mickey gradually loses hope of ever finding Louise, without a clear turning point to focus his grief. Along the way, his coming-of-age story is particularly tricky. He and Lester are unable to articulate their respective pain, which manifests itself in animosity between father and son, but he doesn’t follow a strictly linear path. Some days are bad. Others are better. Some are filled with vivid dreams and visions between the beauty and cruelty of snow.
These forces may also be pushing and pulling at each other deep inside Mitch as he slowly tries to reconcile the painful truth about his mother with his responsibilities to the family farm and his prospects as a young man with, theoretically, his entire life ahead of him. The world around Mickey and Lester is slowly modernizing, but they live willingly in the past, with all the country charm and emotional savagery disguised as stoicism, which Haig and cinematographer Andre Turpin turn into an enveloping fabric of deep shadows and warm fire.
plot long winter Simple perhaps—it’s the story of two men waiting for the seasons to change—but it’s also a film transformed by delay and denial, as the fear of new revelations brings with it the possibility of unknown places, feelings, and experiences. By a critical moment, Mickey fully understands the implications and wishes his winter of uncertainty could last forever, because the lingering unknown is all he knows.
He lives on the edge of adulthood, but to actually step into that chasm—either acceptance of oneself, or unchangeable tragedy—is the scariest thing in the world. It was much easier to simply lie in the snow and accept the biting cold. This is what makes long winter It’s so compelling as Mitch no longer has a choice and must move forward to deal with life’s biggest inevitables: loss, heartache, and the feeling of leaving behind all familiar comforts, whether they take the form of four walls or the imperfect people we love.