- Content: “Mixed Marital Drama, with a Nice but Understated Ending”
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What You Need To Know:
MIDWINTER BREAK is a slow-moving but engrossing, well-acted character study of a long marriage. The scenes are understated, but the third act ratchets up the dramatic conflict and concludes with a touching, hopeful final scene. However, MIDWINTER BREAK doesn’t really resolve the married couple’s personal issues and differences. The wife’s longing to use her Catholic faith to “make a difference” is left hanging, as is the husband’s atheism and personal self-loathing. MIDWINTER BREAK also has some foul language and an implied bedroom scene. So, MOVIEGUIDE® suggests extreme caution.
Content:
Strong mixed pagan worldview, set in an increasingly secular and sad world, where an elderly devout Irish Catholic woman married to an elderly devout Irish atheist man with a fondness for whiskey almost decide to get divorced during a four-day vacation to Amsterdam, but a poignant memory of them leaving Ireland for Scotland with their miraculous newborn son in tow still binds them together, plus elderly woman admits to another elderly woman that when she was pregnant and was accidentally shot during a nearby gunfight between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland she prayed to God that if her baby lived and she lived too, she would devote herself to God for the rest of her life, but woman now feels she didn’t fulfill the promise as strongly as she could have and is looking to do that now that she’s closer to death, and the woman has told her husband she believes her and her baby’s survival was a miracle, but the husband adamantly refuses to believe that, and he tells her that Christianity or Catholicism (it’s unclear which) is the greatest deception ever created (ironically, neither the woman’s faith nor the man’s atheism seems to give either of them much joy, though she seems happy enough in church);
Three obscenities (including one “f” word) and five light profanities;
One image shows young pregnant woman lying on her back on the ground with blood on the left side of her stomach where a bullet passed through her but both woman and baby survive though woman couldn’t have any more children, and there are images of that day with a bottle of milk breaking and the woman apparently falling down, sounds of gunshots ringing out, and images of people running, plus married couple visits a museum of Anne Frank’s life and death, with some tasteful images of the Holocaust;
Implied marital sex during a night and morning bedroom scene in a hotel room, plus there are some light references to prostitution as the married couple take a walk through Amsterdam’s red light district;
Partial upper and rear male nudity after man slips in bathtub and his wife helps him put on a robe;
Husband doesn’t get very drunk, but he does like to imbibe openly and furtively his Irish whiskey at home, in hotel rooms and on trips, and the married couple one night share a pint and a whiskey at a lively pub in Amsterdam;
No smoking or drugs; and,
Husband admits to his wife in one scene that he hates himself when he drinks but the movie doesn’t explain the statement any further than that or resolve it other than a scene where the husband promises his wife that he will stop drinking or drinking so much if she doesn’t seek a divorce (“I can change,” he tells her), and wife will spend a night at the pub with her husband but he refuses to come with her to church, so their relationship seems to be a bit lopsided though it’s clear there’s some strong love between them deep down within them.
More Detail:
MIDWINTER BREAK is set in an increasingly secular, and sad, world. It stars Lesley Manville as the wife, Stella, and Ciarán Hinds as Gerry, the husband. Act One shows Stella going alone to mass at her local Catholic Church during Christmas, while Gerry sits at home reading, drinking whiskey, listening to music, and falling asleep. That, apparently, is their routine.
During that sequence, the movie inserts a flashback where 40 or so years ago, Stella is accidentally shot during a gunfight between Protestant and Catholic factions that suddenly breaks out near a park where Stella is walking. The bullet goes through the left side of her abdomen. Baby and mother survive, but Stella and Gerry decide to leave Ireland and move to Glasgow, Scotland.
At Christmas, Stella surprises Gerry with a four-day holiday to Amsterdam. Gerry is pleasantly surprised, and they visit Amsterdam in February.
In the city, Stella becomes interested in a hidden section of Amsterdam where a lay sisterhood of persecuted Catholic women established a sanctuary from Protestant persecution. Gerry accompanies her on the first day she visits. However, when Stella wants to visit another day, Gerry doesn’t go. Instead, he wanders the city, visits a record store and ends up at the local Irish pub they found the first evening.
All this brings out a hidden conflict between Stella and Gerry. He’s a stubborn atheist critic of all religion. Meanwhile, she’s tired of his frequent drinking, even though the movie never shows hm drunk. She’s also tired of his disdain for her faith. So, Stella tells Gerry that she thinks it might be best if they sold their flat and got a divorce. Can they save their marriage?
MIDWINTER BREAK is a slow-moving but engrossing character study of a long-time marriage that’s suffering a sudden breakdown. The third act ratchets up the dramatic conflict and concludes with a touching, hopeful scene that celebrates new life and displays the biblical notion of marriage where two people become one flesh.
However, all the scenes in MIDWINTER BREAK are rather understated, without much really strong emotive power. Also, the movie doesn’t resolve all the married couple’s personal issues. For example, the wife’s longing to use her Catholic faith to make more of a “difference” in the world is left hanging. Also left hanging is a statement by the husband that, as he drinks, he’s plagued by feelings of self-hatred. No further explanation is offered for this self-loathing. If you’re going to bring up something as monumental or dramatic as that in your dialogue, you have to give viewers and readers more of an explanation, elaboration or some context. Finally, although MIDWINTER BREAK ends with a slightly touching and hopeful last scene of an enduring marriage, the last scene still seems a too anticlimactic and, again, doesn’t really or fully resolve any of the conflicts driving the married couple apart. Thus, MIDWINTER BREAK has a mixed pagan worldview with Christian AND humanist content.
There’s another little piece of dialogue in the movie that’s rather annoying and anticlimactic. In one poignant scene, Stella and Gerry briefly debate her Catholic faith versus Gerry’s obstinate atheism and hospitality toward faith. At one point, Gerry asks her why can’t she just accept “my truth” and have her own truth, and leave it at that? Stella never really answers Gerry’s question. So, his question just hangs there, unresolved. Even more bothersome, however, is that the idea of My Truth versus Your Truth is an inherently irrational and nonsensical idea that’s often brought up by atheists and agnostics who are ignorant or inexperienced with philosophical debates. There’s actually no such thing as “My Truth” versus “Your Truth.” The idea of Truth is definitionally totally objective and not subjective. Linguistically, rhetorically, rationally, psychologically, and pragmatically, Truth is a proposition or conclusion, a declarative statement, that is either True or False. For example, Christianity is either True or False, and God either exists or He doesn’t exist. So, Stella’s Christian faith and Gerry’s atheism cannot both be true, though they both may be false. There is no My Truth and Your Truth. There is only THE Truth, and Truth is objective, transcendent, eternal, and true for everyone. It exists and corresponds to Ultimate Reality, whether or not you personally believe it.
Finally, MIDWINTER BREAK also has some brief foul language and a bedroom scene that implies the married couple have a satisfying night of marital bliss. So, the problems between Stella and Gerry seem to have nothing to do with physical incompatibility.
That said, the last scene saves the movie from being a total downer. Even so, MOVIEGUIDE® advises extreme caution.
