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The Last Winter
It’s getting nearly as easy to immediately distinguish a film by Larry Fessenden as it is to determine that we are watching the apocalyptic visions of nature of Werner Herzog. We recognize Fessenden’s visual strategies as soon as the first frame begins: An uneasy, otherworldly camera that moves about in unbroken shots, inquisitively watching its human protagonists; unreliable narrators whose worst fears seem to manifest phantoms that may or may not be real; haunting music that serves as a road sign for a world otherwise consumed only by its own sounds and stirs; lingering shots of man pitted against the environment of his choosing and losing the battle. Fessenden has his own unique style that continues to develop and mature thematically with each new release. This is his fourth feature-length feature film; it is a horror picture like the others, and it finally takes the themes he’s been building to their inevitable, apocalyptic conclusion. The Last Winter concerns an isolated outpost overseen by Ed Pollack (Ron Perlman), who is trying to determine whether or not to bring heavier equipment in to start oil drilling; environmentalist researcher James Hoffman (James LeGros) believes that higher temperatures indicate melting permafrost, which means that the ice cannot support such weighty machinery. Naturally an oil driller and an environmentalist are going to be working at right angles: Both men are nice, educated guys who enjoy football and philosophizing; under any other circumstances, they might be friends, but in this case, they are too dedicated to their polarized idealisms to be pushed around by each other. Their jobs naturally draw a line in the snow that other members of the camp must choose between, which includes Abby Sellers (Connie Britton), who has shared both men’s beds, and Maxwell McKinder (Zach Gilford) who has an ambiguous encounter in the wilderness that leads to a disconcerting, personal paranoia. In the midst of this conflict, Maxwell’s paranoia grows contagious and begins to settle into the camp’s inhabitants. In typical Fessenden ambiguity, this fear derives either from miffed monsters or a bad combination of cabin fever and mass hysteria; we are never sure which of these two explanations is correct, because Fessenden creates a compelling case for either possibility. It seems that a herd of ghost-like creatures can be seen in the distance by certain team members during the late hours of the night; their real identity and their increasing animosity toward the visiting humans inform most of the film’s tension and particularly the terrifying third act in which the last surviving members must confront whatever it is that’s out there. On the other hand, Hoffman discovers that the melting permafrost might be unleashing a gas that causes hallucinations and temporary insanity, which might be where these ghosts are really coming from. But try convincing Maxwell of this, who claims he has seen these ghost creatures up close. The ambiguity is always real, but so is the terror; The Last Winter therefore plays out like An Inconvenient Truth meets The Shining meets The Thing, and before the film is over, it earns its rather bold title. Most of the action takes place within the confines of the small outpost, which consists of a few rooms and one tent that is a short distance from camp. Isolation is the key here, and it contextualizes the nervousness and almost desperation behind all of the characters’ eyes. It can be a maddening monotony to daily look outside your window and only see stretching into the horizon… nothing. Above all else, The Last Winter addresses this remoteness, in which contact with the outside world is limited to one telephone that only works about half the time. There is a conversation in the middle of the film where Pollack and Hoffman express their concern about the increasingly unstable Maxwell, but listen very carefully to what is actually said: They aren’t afraid for Maxwell, but for what Maxwell’s condition suggests about all of their fates. Ghosts are not required to haunt these characters; the landscape itself suffices. The film fits very comfortably on Fessenden’s brief but decidedly uncomfortable list of eco-horror films. His films always work on two levels: Establishing eco-themes and creating paranoid terror out of (in this case, literally) thin air. He has a clear urgency in his ecocritical ideas, which warn about man’s destructive practices against both himself and his environment. Even his semi-vampire film Habit (1997), though it took place in New York City, addressed a lonely man driven to alcoholic madness under the weight of a man-made city. Fessenden also understands the required fulfillments of a horror film, which he fulfills with more style and mood than any other North American horror director to emerge since the pivotal early work of George Romero and David Cronenberg. To accomplish the eco-theme, Fessenden features pointed, opinionated interactions between his various characters that express conflicting ideas about man’s role in nature. But the film does not rely on obvious exposition; these discussions sound like conversations that real people in these circumstances might actually have. The interactions serve as sign-posts and slowly reveal the nervous fears and apprehensions that none of the characters want to talk about; they eventually build up to the underlining terror that is first suppressed and before it eventually erupts in bursts of unexpected violence and ghostly encounters. Stylistically, The Last Winter places itself as a sort of sequel to his No Telling (1991), which concerned pesticides and animal experimentation run rampant, and Wendigo (2001), about a restless forest spirit as seen through the unreliable eyes of an imaginative boy. A scene at a dinner table seems so directly tied to a similar moment in No Telling that it plays as a continuation of that older conversation, with concerns about man’s interference in the arctic upgraded from the previously established dilemmas about unnatural farming. The existence of a forest spirit that may or may not be a hallucination derived from cabin fever is also the premise of Wendigo; it is certainly no coincidence that an Inuit cook here (Joanne Shenandoah) references wendigo by name. And the film clearly builds on visual ideas introduced in his previous works: In all his films, Fessenden employs unbroken takes from a probing, seemingly omniscient camera that watches the characters and their surroundings; until now, he has never directly stated who this perspective belongs to. The Last Winter finally provides the clue to which the other films pointed: Fossil fuels, we are told, are literally created from animals dead for thousands and years, and their ghosts might finally be rebelling in their unrest. The arctic, then, which is deadly beyond the human encampment, is transformed into the largest haunted house in the movies. With his number of theatrical releases only totaling to four films, Fessenden has yet to make a bad one. His best—indeed, one of the best movies I’ve ever seen—is Habit, which is so sly in its ambiguity that we don’t know for sure until its final reel that it only pretends to be about one thing when it is really about something else completely. It is the perfect combination of his social ideas and gripping, vague horror. No Telling works more because of its style than its heavy-handed theme, and Wendigo, his least-successful film, is effective for exactly the opposite reason—the film’s theme of a little boy’s experience of the world is far more engaging than the unconvincing third act in which monsters finally start appearing. For a while, I was afraid that The Last Winter, which begins vaguely and quietly plays up the paranoia of its characters, was working on the same level as Wendigo and that the third act would again be disappointing. While this film indeed does follow the same general structure and finally features clear-cut monsters in its final scenes, I found myself elated and terrified rather than distracted. The Last Winter does a better job than Wendigo preparing us for the menacing phantoms, because it saturates the film with the constant possibility of their pending attacks; it also features far more convincing special effects that better heighten the notion that these creatures could just as easily be hallucinations as real ghosts. By the time we get to the fantastical elements in the end, the build-up in suspicion and paranoia have been so smooth that it is a seamless transition into the absurd, instead of producing the jarring effect of Wendigo. What I appreciate the most about The Last Winter is the respect that Fessenden pays the environment in which he surrounds his piece. Alaska, with its barren desolation, is not a gimmick but rather a realistic environment for the kind of theme being addressed. This is the third film I have seen in 2007 to take place in the desolate, northern regions of Alaska (the others are the typical vampire thriller 30 Days of Night and the superior Into the Wild), but it is the first to play by the state’s rules without a shred of Hollywood gloss or idealized romance. It is refreshing to see a character fall through ice and into a frozen lake, for example, and witness knowledgeable people respond with the correct training. And instead of bringing in other typical fears like vampires into the mix, Fessenden is content with letting the isolation of the North Pole generate its own legitimate scares. Countless shots allow the characters to simply inhabit this barren, quiet wilderness; some of the film’s most effective moments are when Fessenden allows humans to fill a frame that otherwise stretches into an expanse of white in every direction. At least you can stake a vampire; the North Pole’s icy death stretches on forever. Fessenden doesn’t treat this terrain as a stranger, but has rather familiarized himself with its nuances and environment. He accurately portrays it as the scariest place on Earth to encounter restless spirits, madness, or both. If I have any reservations about The Last Winter, I suppose that it rests in the expectations I have personally placed on Fessenden as a filmmaker. Wendigo was my first encounter with his work, and though I thought it was somewhat disappointing, I instantly recognized Fessenden’s skill behind the camera, which combined Hitchcockian twists and Cassavetes-styled improvisation. No Telling continued to confirm to me that he is a gifted director, and Habit utterly knocked my socks off and instantly elevated Fessenden to my list of young American filmmakers with unparalleled talent (along with Paul Thomas Anderson, Darren Aronofsky, Spike Jonze, Wes Anderson, Sofia Coppola, and David Gordon Green—a hell of a list, if you ask me). The Last Winter, which is skillful and cinematically accomplished, further explores the themes that clearly obsess Fessenden, but I do not think it represents clear progress as a filmmaker. I miss, for example, the naturalistic acting quality of his previous three films; while all the actors are fine here in their roles, none of them progress with the joyful realism displayed in his other works. No moment here seems as intimate as the quiet interactions between farther and son in Wendigo or the arguments between best friends in Habit; most of the time, the characters in The Last Winter feel merely like standard performances required in a horror movie. And while the special effects are convincing and well-placed, I hate to think that they might be a sign of Fessenden’s work shifting into the standard Hollywood system, when his greatest cinematic strengths best reveal themselves in shoe-string budgets and conspicuous simplicity. I shudder at the possibility of his minimalist talents being wasted on an exercise like 30 Days of Night, which was a troubling strike against its talented director, David Slade (of Hard Candy). The Last Winter suggests elements of compromise, and Fessenden is simply too talented to give in. But on its own terms, this is a very good movie. It is thought-provoking and terrifying in about equal proportion, and it is skillfully directed with an almost agonized tone recognizing that global warming and oil drilling make for good subjects in a horror movie, but only because of humanity’s folly that created them in the first place. Hoffman, the environmentalist, philosophically sums up the heart of the film’s ideas, and indeed, the problem that we’re currently facing as a species, with a simple, chilling proposition: “Why do we hate the earth that nourishes us? And why wouldn't nature destroy us, like a host fights off a parasite?” The question might be rhetorical, but it suggests the most Inconvenient Truth of all. Cast: IFC Pictures presents a Glass Eye Pix production. Directed by Larry Fessenden. Written by Fessenden and Robert Leaver. No M.P.A.A. rating; contains intensely scary sequences, brief sexuality, gore, and language. Running time: 101 minutes. Original United States theatrical release date: September 19, 2007. |
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