Winter in the Blood (2013

Virgil First Raise wakes with a shiner and a hangover in a roadside ditch on the stark but beautiful plains of Montana. As he rises to face the day he sees a vision of his father lying dead at his feet. Impossible– his father froze to death in a snowdrift years earlier. Virgil returns home to find that his wife, Agnes, has left him. Worse, she's taken his electric razor and his beloved rifle. Virgil sets out to find her– beginning a hi-line odyssey of inebriated encounters, sexual skirmishes, and improbable cloak-and-dagger intrigues with the mysterious 'Airplane Man'. Virgil's quest also brings him face-to-face with childhood memories and visions of his beloved, lost brother Mose– some glorious, some tragic. Only when Virgil seeks the counsel of an old, blind man named Yellow Calf, does he grasp the truth of his origins and begin to thaw the ice in his veins

Directors: Alex Smith, Andrew J. Smith
Cast: Chaske Spencer, David Morse, Gary Farmer, Julia Jones, Dana Wheeler-Nicholson, Lily Gladstone, Richard Ray Whitman, David Cale, Casey Camp-Horinek, Alex Escarcega, Joseph Grady, Saginaw Grant, Yancey Hawley, Kendra Mylnechuk, Michael Spears, William Otis Wheeler-Nicholson, Ken White




Winter in the Blood is a hauntingly beautiful film that is true to the lyrical and unflinching spirit of James Welch's classic 1974 novel of Native American life.
Virgil First Raise (Chaske Spencer) wakes in a ditch on the hardscrabble plains of Montana. He stumbles home to his ranch on the reservation only to learn that his wife, Agnes (Julia Jones), has left him. Worse, she's stolen his beloved rifle. Virgil sets out to find her, beginning an odyssey of inebriated intrigues with a mysterious "Airplane Man" (David Morse), a beautiful barmaid, and two dangerous Men in Suits. His quixotic, modern-day vision quest moves Virgil ever closer to oblivion, until he discovers a long-hidden truth about his identity. But is it too late?
Shot in the badlands of Montana, directors Alex and Andrew Smith have crafted a gorgeous heartbreaker of a movie, a revisionist Western where the Indians are the Cowboys, set to a high lonesome soundtrack by Heartless Bastards that includes new songs by Robert Plant, Black Prairie, and Cass McCombs.

Extras:
- Deleted Scenes
- Interviews
- New Frontiers (making-of documentary) IMDb
- Podcast interview with the directors
- Trailer



IMDb

I found this to be quite a sad film to watch. I felt real bad for the main character who went through hell looking for his wife probably abandoned him while also having to deal with his painful past. Imagine what he had to go through! But I don't think the film went into enough detail as to why his wife left him.

Anyways.. I think the title 'Winter in the Blood' is appropriate for this film in the metaphorical and allegorical sense. The words 'winter' and 'blood' go hand in hand in that 'winter' denotes the cold hard reality of what the main character had to go through in the film while 'blood' symbolizes the deep trauma he experienced while encountering those mysterious forces.

But I found it especially hard to take early on when one of those boys shot at the hawk and seriously injured it! It was real heart wrenching to see that because it is a very bad omen for one to shoot at a hawk in any Native culture! I think that one incident eventually caught up to the one who shot the hawk. Of course, it's hard to say what kind of problems he would have had when growing up but my hunch tells me that it all stemmed from the hawk shooting. The kids' grandma then gave them both heck for doing that. I cried throughout that sequence because it was so sad!! Anyways… this one gets a 7 out of 10.
~ BigLaxFan94




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