Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		4.0

White Bird in a Blizzard Blu-ray Movie Review

Snow Blindness

Reviewed by Michael Reuben January 20, 2015

White Bird in a Blizzard is the second of ten novels (to date) written by American author Laura Kasischke, and if a studio had gotten hold of it, the result would have been a cookie cutter thriller inflated with artificial suspense and a letdown of an ending. Fortunately, the rights were acquired by the French producers who worked with writer/director Gregg Araki on his previous features Kaboom, Nowhere and The Doom Generation and who recognized in White Bird a story ideally suited to Araki's unique talents. Araki had only once before adapted a novel, Scott Helm's Mysterious Skin, which became one of the director's best films, featuring a breakthrough performance by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Kasischke's tale of a teenage girl coping—or rather, not coping—with the disappearance of her mother had a similar appeal for Araki, and he enthusiastically began writing a screenplay.

As it happened, Mysterious Skin was the first Araki film experienced by a then-teenage Shailene Woodley, who needed no further introduction when her manager sent her the script for White Bird. Woodley was then enjoying a newly heightened profile from her award-winning performance in The Descendants, but much like Gordon-Levitt when he made Mysterious Skin, she had been a working actor for many years and felt no pressure to grab the next job offered. White Bird was the first project that interested her after Descendants, because, she has said, few filmmakers put as much truth on the screen as Araki.

But Araki's "truth" may not be everyone's idea of a good time at the movies. The director has compared White Bird to American Beauty and The Ice Storm in its examination of the dark side of the middle class American family, but those films were told from an adult's point of view. White Bird explores similar territory from the perspective of a sexually precocious teenage girl who sees, knows and does much more than some viewers may be comfortable watching. (In the commentary, Araki describes how one scene caused a 1200-person audience at Sundance to go dead quiet, even though it's just two people talking, except that these two people shouldn't even be alone together.) Gradually the young protagonist, who considers herself worldly and beyond surprise, acquires a new understanding of both herself and the parents she has taken for granted, as children usually do, and she is shocked at how much she's managed not to notice, even though it's been right in front of her.

White Bird is the story of Katrina "Kat" Connor (Woodley), an only child who has grown up in a small town in Southern California, the daughter of Eve (Eva Green), a housewife, and Brock (Christopher Meloni), a salesman. Kat narrates the story as if it were a memoir, which allows her to jump fluidly back and forth in time, whether to the Seventies, when her parents first wed and acquired their home, or to when she was a little girl (played by the remarkable Ava Acres), or to the months in 1988, when she was seventeen, just before Kat came home one day to discover that her mother had vanished.

Eve's sudden disappearance is the mystery that winds through White Bird. As explained by the police detective, Scieziesciez (Thomas Jane), to whom Kat and her father make their report, hundreds of wives go missing every week. Many just walk out. As Kat describes her family to the therapist, Dr. Thaler (Angela Bassett), that her father insists she see, a troubled portrait of the Connor marriage emerges. Wed in a glow of youthful passion and enthusiasm, Eve Connor blazed through domestic life like the picture-perfect housewife in a TV commercial (there's a sequence of her cleaning and cooking that's shot with the artificial colors of a prime time ad), until one day she looked up and realized that she was bored and wanted something more. Exactly what she wanted she couldn't exactly say. She knew, though, that it wasn't marriage to Brock Connor.

As Kat matures sexually, she feels her relationship with her mother changing, although she doesn't understand why. (She tells Dr. Thaler at one point that her mother would often look at her as if Kat had "stolen" something from Eve.) The tension between mother and daughter becomes particularly acute when Kat begins dating Phil Hillman (Shiloh Hernandez), the dumb but studly boy next door whom Kat and her friends at school (Gabourey Sidibe and Mark Indelicato) initially mocked with the nickname "Garbage", until Kat's hormones kicked in and she began seeing Phil in a different light. Alternately accusing her daughter of behaving like a slut and parading herself in front of Phil in revealing outfits, Eve can't seem to decide whether she wants to set boundaries or violate them. In a detail that's almost too literal, Phil's clueless mother, played by True Blood 's Dale Dickey, is a blind woman who is unaware of anything beyond innocent high school dating. Kat's father seem oblivious, a smile permanently plastered on his face as he maintains the pretense that everything is fine under his roof.

Kat's reaction to her mother's disappearance, after she recovers from the initial shock, is a sense of relief, because she no longer has to contend with Eve's increasingly bizarre antics. Dr. Thaler gives her an expectant look that suggests the shrink is waiting for a different answer, but Kat insists she's fine. Newly emboldened, she expands her sexual horizons through a clandestine affair with a much older man whom she enjoys because, as she tells her friends, he's nothing like Phil (or her father). The only thing that troubles Kat are the recurrent nightmares, where she wanders through a raging blizzard searching for her mother, catching glimpses of Eve and sometimes hearing her voice.

Halfway through the film, White Bird leaps forward to Kat's college years. Eve has never returned, Brock is now dating a woman from work (Twin Peaks' Sheryl Lee), and Kat has a regular boyfriend named Oliver (Jacob Artist) who's pre-med at Berkeley. Normalcy seems to have been restored, except that it hasn't. Kat quarrels with Oliver in a manner eerily reminiscent of Eve's fights with Brock. On a visit home for semester break, Kat reconnects with old friends and acquaintances, and her nightmares resume. Only then does she finally admit to herself that there are things in her past, and in her psychic DNA, that she can no longer ignore.

Araki has tinkered with the ending of Kasischke's novel in ways that leave a few unanswered mysteries about motivation (I cannot be more specific without spoilers), but the changes ensure that the focus remains on Kat and her growing understanding of who she is and where she came from. Shailene Woodley's work here is even braver and more emotionally demanding than her celebrated turn in The Descendants, and not just because of White Bird's explicit sex scenes. Woodley has to convey Kat's development through major life transitions without the benefit of a reliable adult voice to provide an outside perspective, because all of the adults are either suspect or uninformed. Kat begins as a smart but surly teen who merely plays at being a grown woman (bragging to her friends about her sexual exploits, pretending to her therapist that she's unaffected by the loss of her mother), and she ends as a young adult who is beginning to see her parents as flawed, damaged individuals trying—and tragically failing—to get by from day to day. What Kat will do with that new-found knowledge is the open question posed by the film's ending.

The rest of the cast is equally impressive. Eva Green's portrayal of Eve Connor is terrifying, as Green charts Eve's descent from a hopeful newlywed to a resentful household gorgon who's a hair's breadth from insanity. Christopher Meloni conveys with every gesture Brock Connor's defeated befuddlement at how he managed to lose first his wife and now his daughter. As Phil, Shiloh Fernandez is appropriately difficult to read, with a vibe that vacillates between sweet and creepy.

White Bird in a Blizzard Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Throughout his commentary, Araki praises specific lighting effects achieved by cinematographer Sandra Valde-Hansen, who also shot Kaboom, and who seems capable of providing whatever stylized light the director requires. Information about the shooting format was not available, but post-production was completed on a digital intermediate, so that Magnolia Home Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray was presumably sourced from digital files.

A devoted fan of classic Hollywood, Araki likes to give his imagery texture and depth, and he routinely composes shots formally, with characters at opposite ends of the frame. Although he's a stickler for accurate period detail, Araki chooses his colors for mood, not realism. The Seventies flashbacks have a neon-and-polyester artificiality (and the clothes are awful), while the scenes in the Eighties and early Nineties have richer, shinier colors. Some of the nightime scenes suggest the influence of David Lynch and Frederick Elmes in their use of shadow in Blue Velvet. The Blu-ray image is detailed, crisply textured and richly saturated, so that Araki's careful use of color to distinguish different time periods (and also to distinguish memory from current events) is easy to follow. Blacks are solid, and gradations of black are well-delineated. White levels are also accurate, which is essential for Kat's snowy dreams.

Magnolia has provided a high average bitrate of 35.88 Mbps. As a result, compression issues, banding and other artifacts were nowhere to be seen.

White Bird in a Blizzard Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The film's 5.1 sound mix, encoded on Blu-ray in lossless DTS-HD MA, gently modulates between Kat's voiceover narration and the various environments in which the story is set. Most of these locales are relatively quiet, but occasionally there's a loud one (e.g., the local dance hangout where Kat and Phil first make a romantic connection). As in a Hitchcock film, an occasional sound effect of special importance is sometimes amplified for attention, such as the impact of a kitchen utensil being wielded by Eve Connor or the hum of an appliance. As in most Araki films, however, the major sonic component, other than dialogue, is the musical accompaniment comprised of classic Eighties tunes by such bands as Depeche Mode, Cocteau Twins, Talk Talk and Tears for Fears, plus original scoring by former Cocteau Twins guitarist Robin Guthrie and Harold Budd.

White Bird in a Blizzard Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary with Director Gregg Araki and Actress Shailene Woodley: The director and star largely stick to the nuts and bolts logistics of shooting the film, and their commentary is filled with interesting detail about locations, sets and the sequence of filming. Araki also discusses some of the changes he made in editing, including replacing the original opening (included in the deleted scenes) and several other deletions and rearrangements. He also discusses his musical choices.



• Deleted and Extended Scenes (1080p; 2.39:1; 9:31): The five scenes are not separately listed or selectable. Araki discusses most of them in the commentary, including the original opening and a final therapy session between Kat and Dr. Thaler.



• Interview with Actress Shailene Woodley (1080i; 1.78:1; 6:10): Woodley describes working with Araki, especially how he helped her prepare to play a teenager of the Eighties.



• Interview with Director Gregg Araki (1080i; 1.78:1; 8:07): Araki covers important ground missing from the commentary, including the history of the project and how Woodley was cast.



• AXS TV: A Look at White Bird in a Blizzard (1080p; 2.39:1; 2:51): This typical AXS TV promo has been created by combining excerpts from the Woodley and Araki interviews with the film's theatrical trailer.



• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2.39:1; 2:08): I think this trailer gives away too much, but the film is so rich in psychological detail that there is still more to discover.



• Also from Magnolia Home Entertainment: The disc includes trailers for The Two Faces of January, Frank, V/H/S: Viral and Honeymoon, as well as promos for the Chideo web service and AXS TV. These also play at startup, where they can be skipped with the chapter forward button.



• BD-Live: As of this writing, attempting to access BD-Live gave the message "Check back for updates".

White Bird in a Blizzard Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Araki is famous for celebrating the exhilaration of youth, but his achievement in White Bird is to recreate that sense of reckless abandon while, at the same time, conveying the doubts and uncertainty that routinely tug it back to earth. Depending on your age, you may be left with a sense of relief that you'll never have to go through that again. Of course, since the film is a female story told with uninhibited sexuality, a common male reaction may simply be, "Wow, Shailene Woodley (or Eva Green) is hot!" That's understandable, but one shouldn't overlook the bigger picture. Gliding along the surface of people—and of life itself—may be fun for a while, but you end up tripping over things you didn't even know were there. Highly recommended.