The Winter Guest (1997)

Amazing!
This movie was amazing. Very well written with great scenery and amazing acting. A must see for anyone!

Only the adepts will get the secret.
Four sets of characters represent life's span. The time is Winter; weather, sea, and lives are frozen. Two mothers cope with loneliness. The older faces aging and infirmities, while her daughter wakes to widowhood, her husband having just died. Two children, schoolboys, worry about puberty and breaking away from mothers; two crones, ride busses to funerals, helping the deceased to be "re-membered"; two adolescents discover Eros, with its complications. The dialogue is short and staccato. The pairs assault each other like domestic couples cooped indoors too long. The Scottish brogue is cold and sharp as the ice and stone in the landscape.

The breathtaking beauty of the photography, set in a Scottish coastal village on the North Sea, features light on ice, rock, and snow. The frozen firth is an ice sculpture, blanketed in fog. In a stone sewer, the boys find two living kittens discarded in a box. The mother gropes along a rock wall and slips on cold steps; the adolescents tumble in snow and throw snowballs to attract attention.

Life and warmth are hidden under blankets and clothing. The characters bundle in coats; one wraps herself in a curtain drapery; and the rescued kittens are concealed in the boys' warm jackets. There is trouble with the furnace, so even the house is cold, but warm water penetrates the cold. Two characters take hot baths; feet are washed in a warm-water basin.

Miraculously, light and love penetrate each of these lives. There are more kinds of love than the male-female love of the widow for her husband or the young girl for the redheaded youth. The two mothers reaffirm love and need for each other as the younger decides to renovate her house, rather than flee to Australia. The most troubled schoolboy discovers he can walk into the unknown with his wee, miracle-of-life kitten in his jacket front. Unknown to him, his faithful pal is right behind, with the other kitten near his breast. The crones take pleasure in eating sweetmeats after a funeral (Mikhail Bakhtin's observation about a carnivalesque aspect of funeral rituals). One crone vows to take care of the other and they hobble along their ministry keeping the spirits of the departed alive.

The secret of this radiant film, the restrained action, and constricted dialogue, will be missed by most in the audience. Only adepts will get the meaning hidden in jackets and coats, like shoots and bulbs under snow. The winter guest is not the teenage girl visiting a boy whose mother is out, nor the chirping mother intruding on her widowed daughter. The date February; it must be February 2nd. The film is a Scottish "Groundhog's Day" movie. Without anyone knowing, or doing anything, the darkest quarter of the year slipped away and the spring quarter arrived. Vitality will come to every heart. It is quickening under the surface, as the warming water breaks winter's grip.

Only the adepts will get the secret.
Four sets of characters represent life's span. The time is Winter; weather, sea, and lives are frozen. Two mothers cope with loneliness. The older faces aging and infirmities, while her daughter wakes to widowhood, her husband having just died. Two children, schoolboys, worry about puberty and breaking away from mothers; two crones, ride busses to funerals, helping the deceased to be "re-membered"; two adolescents discover Eros, with its complications. The dialogue is short and staccato. The pairs assault each other like domestic couples cooped indoors too long. The Scottish brogue is cold and sharp as the ice and stone in the landscape.

The breathtaking beauty of the photography, set in a Scottish coastal village on the North Sea, features light on ice, rock, and snow. The frozen firth is an ice sculpture, blanketed in fog. In a stone sewer, the boys find two living kittens discarded in a box. The mother gropes along a rock wall and slips on cold steps; the adolescents tumble in snow and throw snowballs to attract attention.

Life and warmth are hidden under blankets and clothing. The characters bundle in coats; one wraps herself in a curtain drapery; and the rescued kittens are concealed in the boys' warm jackets. There is trouble with the furnace, so even the house is cold, but warm water penetrates the cold. Two characters take hot baths; feet are washed in a warm-water basin.

Miraculously, light and love penetrate each of these lives. There are more kinds of love than the male-female love of the widow for her husband or the young girl for the redheaded youth. The two mothers reaffirm love and need for each other as the younger decides to renovate her house, rather than flee to Australia. The most troubled schoolboy discovers he can walk into the unknown with his wee, miracle-of-life kitten in his jacket front. Unknown to him, his faithful pal is right behind, with the other kitten near his breast. The crones take pleasure in eating sweetmeats after a funeral (Mikhail Bakhtin's observation about a carnivalesque aspect of funeral rituals). One crone vows to take care of the other and they hobble along their ministry keeping the spirits of the departed alive.

The secret of this radiant film, the restrained action, and constricted dialogue, will be missed by most in the audience. Only adepts will get the meaning hidden in jackets and coats, like shoots and bulbs under snow. The winter guest is not the teenage girl visiting a boy whose mother is out, nor the chirping mother intruding on her widowed daughter. The date February; it must be February 2nd. The film is a Scottish "Groundhog's Day" movie. Without anyone knowing, or doing anything, the darkest quarter of the year slipped away and the spring quarter arrived. Vitality will come to every heart. It is quickening under the surface, as the warming water breaks winter's grip.