What is a Winter Movie?

Time to ponder once more

My brain has felt heavy lately and has put me in a contemplative mood, and I thought now would be an interesting time to have a companion discussion to something I mused about earlier. Months ago, I discussed what an autumn movie might entail. Some of the ideas I sorted through involved depictions of the season as well as the symbolic significance of that time of year.

A lot of similar ideas can be applied to winter movies.

Winter has been meeting me viscerally lately, with the sharp wind hitting my face and the ice throwing off my footing when I’m outside. I lose feeling in my cheeks, and my fingers become stiff when I forget to wear gloves. The early nights greet me with snow, sometimes gentle flurries, and sometimes blizzards. My lungs sting when I inhale the cold air.

Winter is often associated with the winter holidays, and a lot of holiday movies might also be considered winter movies. In my view, this isn’t a one-to-one equivalence, though. One way to determine whether or not a movie is a winter movie could involve seeing whether or not the film depicts the visual associations of winter: the snow, the condensed exhalations rising from people’s mouths, the bodies bundled with scarves, hats, and mittens. Not every part of the world experiences winter with these elements, but I think these elements do loom large in many people’s popular imagination when thinking about winter.

Many winter holiday films also have these visual elements. A few that come to mind immediately are the first two Home Alone films, Elf, and The Polar Express. But, not all holiday films have these elements. One that I can name off the bat is Iron Man 3. As much as I like that movie, I don’t consider it a winter movie, even though it takes place around Christmas and even though snow appears in a few scenes. It has too few of the visual elements of winter. Also, it’s mood is clearly that of a summer blockbuster. There’s tons of frenetic action and a solid amount of humor.

That brings us to the question of what exactly is a winter mood.

There are a lot of things that the dark and the cold, which are associated with winter, conjure. One thing I think about is the fragility of the human body and therefore of the delicate nature of human life. Freezing temperatures are dangerous if not met with the proper preparation. Therefore, maybe a winter film deals with how fragile life is. One that comes to my mind is Anatomy of a Fall, which I’ve discussed earlier in this space. That film takes place in snowy landscapes, but even if it didn’t, I would still consider it a winter movie due to its focus on a death and the trial surrounding it. The whole film is seeping with sorrow and confusion, as a sudden death is brought to trial and deemed a murder by one side and an accident or a suicide by another. In such a shocking, sudden way, so many lives are upended.

On the topic of death, winter is also seen as the time in which everything in nature has died or is asleep. Many animals are sheltering from the cold or have left to spend time in warmer climates. The trees are barren, devoid of leaves. If winter is associated with death, then perhaps films that meditate on death might be winter films. This is yet another reason why, I think, Anatomy of a Fall is a winter film. The weight of the death at the film’s center is heavy, and there’s so much grief in the wake of that loss.

The ideas of death and loss, though, have different forms. There is bodily death, and there is also death of faith, belief, conviction. I love Ingmar Bergman’s works, and a lot of his films can be winter films, I think, whether or not they take place during winter or in snowy landscapes. The Seventh Seal is about finding meaning in the face of death. Persona is about, among many themes, the loss of self or the loss of a particular understanding of the self. Fanny and Alexander is about death as the absence of life. The titular children’s world changes after their father, the head of a theater company, dies and the stepfather who arrives to fill the role of the deceased is a cruel, severe man. The world that he brings, Fanny, Alexander, and their mother into is stark and devoid of joy or happiness.

There are other ways in which films can meditate on death. One is through the genre of the murder mystery or investigation film. I also think these films have a second resonance with winter. A massive element in many people’s popular imagination is the association of daytime with morality and nighttime with the lack thereof. There are quite possibly many reasons for this, among them being that throughout much of human history crime has been done more often at night due to the cover that darkness brings. Therefore, because winter is associated with longer nights, and night is associated with moral darkness, a winter film could grapple with thematic darkness. A lot of the films of David Fincher, another one of my favorite filmmakers, could possibly be seen as winter films. Even beyond his superb crime thrillers, Seven and Zodiac, his films such as The Social Network and Fight Club give me a wintery feeling because they focus on characters of questionable morals.

However, darkness and cold don’t have to be associated with death or danger. Though my spirits are low in winter due to the low temperatures and lack of sunlight, I have often thought that the conditions are good for contemplation. When the weather is nice, there is more to grab one’s attention: the gleam of sun, the colors of flowers, the sounds of animals in nature. In the winter, when there are far less of these, one is stuck with one’s own thoughts more. The thoughts seem clearer and sharper, like shards of ice.

I mentioned before how art strives to tell the truth and to bear witness. Therefore, if winter is associated with sharpness of thought, maybe all movies and all art have a bit of winter in them. Still, though, films arrive at truths about life in a variety of paths. No one path is better than another, but maybe a film is more wintery if it more starkly and unflinchingly grapples with its subject. A film that comes to mind in this regard is the 2011 film Shame, which focuses on a man trying to manage his sex addiction. It’s a bleak, stark film, and while lead performers Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan give amazing performances, this is a film I am always reluctant to rewatch because of how heavy and unflinching it is.

This discussion so far has seemed to suggest that winter is primarily associated with sadness, grief, loss, and sharpness of thought. While these don’t sound like the most upbeat things, I do believe that, in the right amounts, they are important aspects of life. Also, it is the way in which we respond to these things that is also important. When the snow falls, we wear our coats. When the temperature dips, we wrap ourselves in a blanket. When darkness falls, we turn on the lamp. As much as winter is about difficult conditions, it is also about finding comfort and warmth despite those conditions. I therefore think plenty of films that can be seen as winter films would fall in the same category of the comfort film that I have described earlier.

I will wrap this discussion with a brief mention of Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar. It is a film about humanity desperate to survive among the stars when Earth is dying. The main characters go to the far reaches of the universe and face extreme physical conditions, from glacial terrains to mountainous tidal waves to shifting dilations of time. Through it all, though, the protagonists’ spirits persist, and the film is a celebration of human love and community. It is a cosmic illustration of the warmth of the human heart and how it can survive in the face of the most severe and stark circumstances.

What are some films that you think of as winter films or that you associate with this holiday? I would love to hear from you, dear readers!