{"id":748,"date":"2026-09-05T02:30:02","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T02:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/05\/a-long-winter-review-andrew-haighs-moody-drama-set-on-a-farm-in-the-rockies-in-the-early-50s-is-a-sweeping-act-of-cinematic-storytelling\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T02:30:02","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T02:30:02","slug":"a-long-winter-review-andrew-haighs-moody-drama-set-on-a-farm-in-the-rockies-in-the-early-50s-is-a-sweeping-act-of-cinematic-storytelling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/05\/a-long-winter-review-andrew-haighs-moody-drama-set-on-a-farm-in-the-rockies-in-the-early-50s-is-a-sweeping-act-of-cinematic-storytelling\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018A Long Winter\u2019 Review: Andrew Haigh\u2019s Moody Drama, Set on a Farm in the Rockies in the Early \u201950s, Is a Sweeping Act of Cinematic Storytelling"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tOne definition of great cinematography is pretty pictures that move. On that score, \u201cA Long Winter<\/a>,\u201d the majestically moody new drama written and directed by Andrew Haigh<\/a> (\u201cAll of Us Strangers\u201d), more than qualifies. It\u2019s set on a remote farm nestled high in the Rocky Mountains in the early 1950s, and the images \u2014 of jutting peaks and plunging valleys, of endless stretches of pine, of the craggy frosted grandeur of it all \u2014 are vivid enough to carry you away.<\/p>\n

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\n\tYet the real definition of great cinematography is when a filmmaker, working with a bold camera artist (in this case, Andr\u00e9 Turpin), frames the images so they don\u2019t just dazzle but lure <\/em>the audience, unfolding the action with a shimmering inquiry and suspense, as if each shot were another sentence in the story it\u2019s telling. That\u2019s the way \u201cA Long Winter\u201d works. Based on a novella by Colm T\u00f3ib\u00edn, it\u2019s a film austere enough to risk alienating its audience, yet once you get onto its wavelength you stay right there<\/em>, inside the movie\u2019s world.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor a while, \u201cA Long Winter\u201d is so authentically homespun that you may feel primed for a kind of art-house Laura Ingalls Wilder experience. In a stately, creaky mountainside farmhouse, Mikey (Fred Hechinger) and Tom (Kit Connor) are adult brothers who sleep in beds right next to each other. They have a caring and respectful relationship that feels pre-media enough to seem downright exotic. But Tom is impatient with their sedentary lives, raising chickens and rabbits (which they sell for their pelts). He\u2019s about to leave for Army service in Korea. Mikey, by contrast, says he loves this life \u2014 the tranquility of it, which he finds comforting. He left for a while too (to go to Idaho), but ultimately came back. As the two have dinner with their parents, the taciturn Lester (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) and the radiant Louise (Caitr\u00edona Balfe), the movie shows us what it\u2019s like to feel protected by an old-world American family coziness.<\/p>\n

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\n\tIt\u2019s soon apparent, though, that there are dark clouds\u00a0adrift in this clan. Loise, vibrant but tense, gets through her days by drinking wine. She tries to hide the extent of it, but Mikey \u2014 the last one in the family to know \u2014 has now figured it out. Early on, he and his folks pile into their ancient wood-sided Ford station wagon, riding down the mountain to the small town nearby, in order to purchase supplies. The town looks depressed (there\u2019s a condemned movie theater that still has \u201cThe Snake Pit,\u201d from 1948, on its marquee), but there\u2019s a life to it, and Mike observes his mother having an afternoon drink and then lying about it.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s the deception, of course, that\u2019s the red flag. Lester has always known about her drinking, but the moment has come (not the first) when he decides to intervene. Back home, after a heating-oil delivery (which is also a wine delivery), he throws out all of Louise\u2019s cheap rotgut wine. He has decided, with a puritanical insistence, that he\u2019s going to heal her by making her quit the booze cold turkey. But she\u2019s having none of that; she feels like she needs the drink to survive. Caitr\u00edona Balfe acts with the impacted fervor of someone who\u2019s caught in a life she chose but no longer wants. She\u2019s trapped. And so, without her crutch, she leaves \u2014 just like that. As the first winter storm is coming. Is she seeking alcohol or death? Maybe both.<\/p>\n

\n\tWith Louise suddenly out of the picture, we may think that the movie has lost its most interesting character. And maybe it has. \u201cA Long Winter,\u201d set over the following three snowbound months, turns into a family drama of morose and foreboding mystery. Mikey adores his mother, problematic though she is. His father, on the other hand, is a piece of work. Ebon Moss-Bachrach seems to have been put on earth to play men who are total pills, and here he gives us the scowling, mustached, man-of-few-words frontier version. Lester and Mikey, engaging the local police, along with some relatives, begin the process of searching for Louise, but she has vanished with such eerie completeness that for a while I thought \u201cA Long Winter\u201d might turn out to be a ghost story \u2014 one that starts with an hour of realistic exposition.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s nothing supernatural about the movie. In a way, though, it is<\/em> a ghost story. Louise \u2014 the presence of her absence \u2014\u00a0hovers over the wintry landscapes like a figment of loss and guilt. Her story, we realize, is tragic, but part of what makes it wounding is that the movie doesn\u2019t demonize. Moss-Bachrach\u2019s Lester, who originally came from New York City, is a stern taskmaster who wanted to be a farmer and wooed Louise over from the other side of the mountain; he thought the life they\u2019d lead would be magical. But she grew disenchanted with it; she began to yearn for the middle-class life she saw in her Cosmopolitan magazines. And he couldn\u2019t handle the disappointment of her unhappiness. So he clamped down. And she drank up. The movie fills in the backstory of this slow-motion trauma in a way that feels wrenchingly lifelike. Only it\u2019s Mikey who now bears the burden of it.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cA Long Winter\u201d is somber and placid yet told with such quiet confidence that it gets its hooks in you. The film is really about how Mikey discovers his inner life. An early scene, in which he makes eye contact with a young cop in town, is the tip-off \u2014 that Mikey is attracted to men. And what\u2019s dramatic about this is that having grown up on a remote mountain farm in the 1940s, away from almost any remnant of civilization, Mikey has zero context for his erotic yearnings. He\u2019s not even spooked by them (as we might expect him to be). Instead, Andrew Haigh, who has made such potent dramas of queer life (starting with \u201cWeekend\u201d), uses this story to craft the rare portrait of gay consciousness that feels rooted in an Edenic innocence. As Mikey, Fred Hechinger gives off young Tobey Maguire vibes, and the movie uses that aura with compelling poignance.<\/p>\n

\n\tLouise, in all her flaws, was Mikey\u2019s link to love. Now his link to love is that young officer, and the pictures he sees in his mother\u2019s magazines, and the young man who comes to live with them as a cook and housekeeper \u2014 Jimmy (D\u2019Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai), a biracial Native American, who is stoic and solemn enough to suggest a Kenneth Anger fever dream. You could say that there\u2019s a \u201cBrokeback\u201d feeling to it all, with homoeroticism suffusing a period piece set before those feelings had been allowed into the culture. But \u201cBrokeback Mountain\u201d was a fully realized love story. \u201cA Long Winter\u201d is never consummated in that way. As the winter fades, and the vultures come, the movie points to something else: how a mother\u2019s end could be the bridge to her son\u2019s beginning.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One definition of great cinematography is pretty pictures that move. On that score, \u201cA Long Winter,\u201d the majestically moody new drama written…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[757,756],"class_list":["post-748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-film","tag-hollywood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}