Small-town poetry doesn't mask the madness in 'Snow'

Small towns are often romanticized and sentimentalized in the movies, turned into fantasies of goodwill and overly fond memories that sometimes make the homey visions of painter Norman Rockwell look like the works of a cynical satirist.

David Gordon Green's "Snow Angels," however, takes the opposite course. It's nastier and more realistic, though, in the end, almost as poetic. There's a weird blend of melancholy and madness in this movie; Green plunges us into a doom-haunted, nerve-jangling family drama that suggests a soap opera veering into tabloid pathology and horror.

But even as the violence and trauma begin to mount up here -- even as central character Glenn Marchand (Sam Rockwell), a gun nut and Jesus freak with a bent toward sado-masochism, begins to go crazier and crazier over beauteous, wary wife Annie (Kate Beckinsale) -- the movie keeps a core of gentleness. Glenn may be one of the two or three worst humans Green has portrayed in his small-town epics, and this may be one of the director's saddest stories, but still, compassion is never fully absent from his canvas.

The source here is a novel by Stewart O'Nan, and the story is told in flashback after an introverted teenager, Arthur Parkinson (Michael Angarano) hears two gunshots while the bandleader rants at his outdoor school band practice. Who? Why?

The strands of the past gather. Thirty-ish knockout Annie is a longtime crush of Arthur's, and what happens to her, Glenn and daughter Tara (Grace Hudson) in the flashback runs parallel with Arthur's own sweet flirtation-romance with fellow high-school outsider Lila (Olivia Thirlby).

Meanwhile, Green shows us, again, some truly dysfunctional families. Arthur's folks fall apart -- thanks to dad Don's (Griffin Dunne) roving eye and mom Louise's (Jeannetta Arnette) fed-up exasperation. The mis-union of Glenn and Annie goes far more awry. Obsessed with power and redemption, but even more, with Annie, Glenn grows more and more deranged as he spies on and rashly interrupts his ex-mate's adulterous affair with local ladies' man Nate Petite (Nicky Katt), the offhand seducer-husband of Annie's salty coworker friend Barb (Amy Sedaris).

That's the setup. Green ("George Washington," "Undertow" and "All the Real Girls") gives it to us with his usual mix of toughness and sensitivity. He's a director attracted to melodramatic subjects with a kink of violence, but he's also a rhapsodic observer of small-town life and alienated youth. In a way, Glenn -- who survived a suicide attempt and now misperceives himself as somehow blessed by God -- is a childish, murderous fallen angel, thrust out of paradise and his emotional immaturity into adult passions that consume him.

As Glenn keeps trying pathetically to reconcile with Annie, driving her further and further away in the process, you watch him with horror tinged with weird sympathy. He's a small-town monster, one easy to spot, and bringing Jesus and God in on his madness heightens the terror.

Beckinsale and Rockwell are both magnetic actors and great, strong screen presences, who, in this case, act to irresistibly compel (Beckinsale) and poisonously repel (Rockwell) us in every scene. She's an independent beauty; he's a crazy bully, cloaking his tyrannies in a cliched perversion of Christianity. Beckinsale, as usual, garners almost instant empathy. But how you react to the film depends on how Rockwell hits you.

I thought he nailed the character. Rockwell gives us a variant on the boyish insanity Anthony Perkins incarnated in Norman Bates in "Psycho," though he isn't as likable. Glenn has that soft crooked smile, those wounded eyes, that bent sense of a man-child about to erupt. He chills you.

Angarano's Arthur, meanwhile, in the less-successful part of the movie, gives us a more typical teenage audience-surrogate, like Tobey Maguire in "The Ice Storm," but not as deep. His story, while sometimes touching, pales before the demented romance of Glenn and Annie.

The novel "Snow Angels" is set in Pennsylvania in the '70s, but the movie, laid in the present, has no specific locale. (It was shot in Nova Scotia.) The film's wintry backgrounds, somber forests and deceptively peaceful waters are almost as lyrically rendered as the Southern climes of Green's and cinematographer Tim Orr's other films, but you don't quite feel the same intense connection. There is a strong link to these people, however. Watching this harsh, but very human, tale of mad love, you get a sense of the real underlife of some small towns, non-urban peace hovering on the lip of chaos.

"SNOW ANGELS"

Three Stars

Starring: Kate Beckinsale, Sam Rockwell, Jeannetta Arnette, Michael Angarano, Griffin Dunne, Nicky Katt and Amy Sedaris

Directed by: David Gordon Green

Based on the novel by Stewart O'Nan. A Warner Independent Pictures release. Rated R (language, brief violence and sexual content). 106 minutes.