"The cycle of grief has its own timetable. Until that cycle is honored and completed, we are moving along life's path with an anchor down," Ann Linnea has observed in Deep Water Passage. That perfectly describes the family of three in this beautifully crafted film written and directed by Josh Sternfeld. In a society that wants everything to be done efficiently and speedily, there is little patience with those who grieve too long and don't pull themselves together within a year's time.
Jim Winters (Anthony LaPaglia) is a landscape gardener who lives in New Jersey with his two adolescent sons Gabe (Aaron Stanford) and Pete (Mark Webber). They have still not come to terms with the death of their wife and mother five years ago in an automobile accident. These males are unable to express emotion and refuse to use the words "I love you" even though familial bonds tie them together. A dangerous mixture of anguish, loss, anger, and resentment has driven them apart, and no one seems to want to heal the wounds that are hurting them.
Gabe decides to leave town and move to Florida. He has a job and a girlfriend (Michelle Monaghan), but neither is enough to hold him any longer. His younger brother Pete (Mark Webber) wears a hearing aid and is doing poorly in school. He is smart enough but seems to lack any drive to perform. He spends most of his time shooting buckets on the basketball court. Soon he will be starting summer school.
Jim tries to reach out to his sons but they are clearly rebelling against the restrictions of home and fatherly authority. Jim keeps to himself and is upset whenever kindly neighbors try to set him up with women. Then Molly Ripkin (Allison Janney) moves in down the street to housesit for a friend and take a three-month break from her work as a para-legal. In return for Jim's loan of a dolly, she invites the whole family over for dinner. The night is ruined for the widower when neither Gabe nor Pete show up. In an angry response, he drags the mattresses from their beds out on the front lawn and locks them out of the house for the evening.
There are many magic moments in this slow-moving and sensitive drama about the small incidents in our lives that signal change is underway. Jim sees Molly at a local gathering spot in the evening and invites her into his truck. He hesitates and then tells her about his wife's death. This sharing with a person outside the family is very cathartic for him, and in response Molly shows a nurturing side of herself that is just what he needed. At summer school, Mr. Bricker (Ron Livingston), a history teacher, surprises Pete by giving him a chance to take the rest of the day off if he gives the right answer to a question. It proves to be a wise move, giving this rebel a fresh slant on himself. And in one of the many poignant moments around his departure, Gabe opens the door of the place where he works and sees his girlfriend waving farewell in the distance. She is too sad and hurt to speak to him personally.
Winter Solstice is an engrossing film about the renewal that comes in its own good time to a family that has spent a long time mourning the loss of a loved one.
