White Bird in a Blizzard (2014)

What if you came home one day to the news that one of your parents went missing? Would your reaction depend on how close you are to each other? If you were close would you be scared, anxious, and emotion? If you were not close, would you be indifferent and just accept the fact that your parent just suddenly disappeared and be unaffected by them leaving? When it comes to movies dealing with the subject of a parent abandoning a family the kid(s) are usually left emotionally scared and damaged from abandonment issues. That is the typical road movies take but White Bird in a Blizzard goes a different way. It goes with a girl be unaffected by her mother’s disappearance.

            Kat Connors (Shailene Woodley) was seventeen when her mother Eve (Eva Green) up and disappears one day in 1988. She came home to find her father, Brock (Christopher Meloni), sitting at the kitchen table, staring blindly ahead of him. He tells Kat that her mother has not come home and cannot be found. Kat asks about calling the police but Brock says he does not want the police to come around and have the neighbors in their business. He says that they  go to the police station in the morning.

            Months go by. Kat sees a therapist to discuss her family life and her mother no longer being around. She seems unaffected. She explains that her parents had a lot of issues and were not very loving. Eve used to be a good mother. Kat loved and adored her when she was little. Then all the sudden began to change into someone different like someone going through a midlife crisis or a personality disorder. She just snapped. Kat also tells the therapist that she has these dreams where she is driving through a snow storm or walking in a blizzard and she sees her mother calling for help.

            Years later Kat comes home from college for a week long break. She hears small things about her father from her best friends and her ex-boyfriend. Now Kat really starts to question all the events that lead up to the day Eve left.

            The cast was great. I watched this mostly to see Eva Green. As of this writing I have seen two episode of the show Penny Dreadful in which Green is the star. In just those two episodes I was totally floored by her acting. I cannot get over how fearless she seems with her acting. She was given crazy things to do in Penny Dreadful and you can tell she just went for it she was all in. Green was the same was in this movie. Something went wrong with Eve and Green went all out to show that. What I like about Green is how her face always has a touch of evil and insanity in it. Maybe that is why she was so good in her scenes and so convincing. Shailene Woodley I am not too crazy about but I enjoyed her in this. I like how she played the character’s indifference yet still see some impact of her parents’ loveless marriage and Eve’s disappearance. She is as if Kat wanted to care yet at the same time did not. Woodley played that perfectly.

            My summary of White Bird in a Blizzard is not the best. There are so many details I do not want to give away and if I had tried you would be even more confused. The narrative jumps around through the years to explain how and why Eve disappeared. I thought the story was great. I liked how it was not typical. Kat and her parents were not close. You can see there was really no love between any of them. The whole time I was thinking that Eve defeinitely left because she was just pissed with the way her life was going. Honestly if I was spoken to like she was by daughter and I had a husband like Brock I would have left too. I felt like you could not blame Eve for leaving for the way she was spoken to by Kat and had a husband who did not fight back or charge. But you can see that something was mentally wrong with Eve. As I said she just seemed to snap. She snapped out of boredom her whole life was just too uniform. When the real reason why Eve disappeared is revealed it was something I was not expecting I was actually surprised. The direction really brings out the greatness of the story. There is no bullshit with it much like there is no bullshit with the story. Both are raw and uncomfortable. I like feeling a little uncomfortable or unsettled with a story and the direction, to me that indicates everyone is doing their job perfectly. White Bird in a Blizzard is movie I recommend seeing. It is not a drop what you are doing right now and go watch it movie but it is a movie that is worth taking the time to watch.

            I would just like to give a shout out to my wonderfully incredibly awesome friend Emily for telling me about White Bird in a Blizzard. She is a huge Shailene Woodley fan and watched the movie twice in one week. Emily my dear thank you very much for the suggestion.