Winter in the Blood is the sophomore effort from twin directors Alex and Andrew J. Smith, who first gained notoriety more than a decade ago with their debut feature The Slaughter Rule. Now the brothers are taking on James Welch‘s prolific novel, set in the badlands of Montana and following Virgil First Raise (Chaske Spencer).
We find Virgil in a disheveled state on the ground — he is bruised, battered, and still intoxicated from a night of hard drinking. Virgil shuffles back home only to find that his wife (Julia Jones) and his cherished childhood rifle are missing. Our lead heads into the local town and attempts to piece his memories together with guidance for a curious white man (David Morse), who offers him their convoluted history. Haunted by his father and brother’s death, we follow Virgil on a surreal journey to escape his past.
Winter in the Blood is an appropriately sentimental ode to a way of life and location that is given little cinematic attention. We have all seen numerous tributes to New York, Los Angeles, and other more notable cities, but rarely do we see a celebration of the badlands; all too often it’s where we see characters marooned, an inescapable inhabitable wasteland where they go to die.
The Brothers Smith do a wonderful job of capturing the area for what it is. Just like anywhere else, it’s a place where people struggle to live a life and find peace, but there is an immense beauty in a landscape unblemished by skyscrapers, pavement, and corporate redundancies. The duo capture the area in a way that displays what it clearly a long standing affection for it.
Unfortunately, the film’s structure is comprised of a collection of discombobulating vignettes from the main characters past and present, leading to a lack of cohesion. This is largely due to the fact that it maintains a strict loyalty to the perspective of the main character; he is consistently intoxicated, haunted by his past, and without a foreseeable future. As an audience we are forced to stumble through his frayed reality.
Virgil is such a fascinating character on paper as a man without a people. His grandmother was said to have laid with a white man, making him mixed race and alienating him from both the Caucasian and Native-American communities. That alone is a great starting point for a journey of exploration into his own identity. However, with a wayward plot and a flat performance by Spencer, the existential questions raised go largely unanswered.
Winter in the Blood is now in limited release.