Best movie of this year hands down!

Absolutely Fantastic

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

In rural Quebec, drunken Bruce (Thomas Haden Church) accidentally kills a man during a snowstorm with his snowplow. He hides the body and drives away into the woods. He wakes up to discover his machine is stuck in the snow. As he tries to get his machine out, the paranoia and his guilt starts to drive him mad. Flashbacks reveal that the dead man was Bruce's house guest Paul (Marc Labrècheas). Paul tried to commit suicide and keeps trying to take advantage of Bruce's generosity. It becomes obvious that this is more than a simple accident.It's an interesting performance from Thomas Haden Church. Paul is an off-putting character and Marc Labrècheas is good. It is still a tiring movie where everything is so serious. The movie grinds down the audience. I have no particular rooting interest in Bruce. His struggle is not compelling and his 'friendship' with Marc is questionable. I guess a drunk is likely to make stupid decisions.

Although I thought this movie got a little tedious and that some of the plot elements didn't quite add up, I still found that it pulled me in right from the start and kept me intrigued throughout.It's basically a two person film with the fine actor Thomas Haden Church leading the way and starring as Bruce. He's been drinking heavily since his wife died a year before, while living in the Canadian wilderness. However, his livelihood as a snow plow driver has been shut down, as his license has been revoked for driving drunk and crashing into a restaurant.Marc Lebreche, as Paul, is the other major player here, and rather than write too many spoilers here I'll just say we learn a lot more about him as the film progresses. I can say that the movie opens with Paul running desperately through the snow covered streets of the town, while Bruce is shown driving his snow plow in a snowstorm with very poor visibility. Suddenly, we see the plow crashing straight on into Paul.Through flashbacks, we'll eventually learn how these two men got to the opening scenes, and it is quite a journey we're in store for. We'll also see what amounts to a wilderness survival story and a slow descent into madness, which, as mentioned can get a little tiresome, but still kept me quite engrossed.I thought this was quite a good effort for a directorial debut from Emanuel Hoss-Desmaris, who also co-wrote the script with first time screenwriter Marc Tulin.Overall, I felt this film had its' limitations, but I still found it to be an intriguing and engaging watch.

Why are all these reviews tip toeing around the fact that this is a bad movie? Anyone who has lived even one season in the winter here would know about several fallacies of winter existence. I just kept praying that Darwinian justice would take out this man. Who falls asleep in a blizzard, outside, and wakes up the next day with nothing more than a little cough? Who hides out in a small detached garage, with no heat, instead of just waiting on the porch for the family to come home? For that matter, what fool would store glass bottles of beer in an unheated garage for a whole season? What character would attempt suicide, in front of a store, by running a hose from the exhaust to the inside of a car? That was blatantly stupid for three reasons; 1.) Newer model cars just don't poison like they used to. Look it up. Oh, that's right, apparently there are no fact checkers anywhere near this script. 2.) What suicidal person would park themselves in front of a supermarket, and choose this rather obvious method to kill themselves? 3.) The easiest, and least painful way to kill yourself in winter is...in the freaking snow. Hypothermia is then your friend. (This is also a problem with the main character's brilliant idea to torch himself later on in the movie...it just doesn't jibe with the location. Let's face it, self immolation is a pretty grand suicidal gesture, usually done in front of people, to bring commentary on the cause they're trying to promote!) The main character also doesn't have a fundamental grasp of basic survival skills in the beginning of the movie (like... how to build a lean to when trapped outside, or, how to use ice and snow to your advantage by sliding bulky items - like three large gas cans, along behind you as opposed to throwing them in front of you, or, how hiding out in your house is probably a better idea than tramping through the snow. So, he goes from being this idiot one day to building himself a snow cave the next, (man height, with only a snow shoe to dig with. Yeah right, he's going to be able to dig down four feet in the dead of winter, with a snow shoe, when he doesn't even have the sense God gave a goat) the next. Even when he is a "1000 miles away from the nearest human" he manages a walk to the café to store up on two burgers, brew, and gas. Finally, driving away in the murder victim's car, when he knows he's a suspect after reading a newspaper article about it? This movie just really doesn't work. You can make excuses all you want (oh, it's really just a black comedy, or, it's an existentialist movie, whatever). Really, it's just what it looks like; a bad movie, based on bad "facts".

"It's the cursèd cold, and it's got right hold till I'm chilled clean through to the bone" and yet, like the main character in "The Cremation of Sam McGee," the protagonist of "Whitewash" plods on, putting one foot in front of the other, stumbling from misadventure to misadventure, somehow managing to sustain the dim glow of life that really has no basis to exist in the midst of all this freezing indifference: (again from 'Sam McGee'): "The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in." The human spirit strives on, perhaps pointlessly. As Hamlet asks, "What should such fellows as I do crawling between heaven and earth?" In "Whitewash," the meaningless response is: freeze our butts off, that's what. Or, a fellow can build an igloo and sit in the middle of it and talk to himself, explaining his guilt and victimization to the uncaring frost vapor in front of his face. The only way "out" is death, but perhaps that's a "cop-out," a betrayal of the spirit. After "saving" him from suicide, Bruce later "helps" the dishonorable Paul find that "out," and Paul's smiling corpse attests to the macabre victory of his release: "I could swear to God he was smiling," which is reminiscent of Sam McGee: "And he wore a smile you could see a mile . . . " This is one of those movies that starts out with a bizarre incident and then, by means of a series of flashbacks interspersed through the narrative, explains how that critical mishap came-to-pass. This always confuses me at first, until I realize what's going on. In this case, the narrative tapestry develops into a solid work of art. The threads in this tapestry are grounded by a brilliant and unusual soundtrack, much of it original to the film, credited to Serge Nakauchi Pelletier. Indeed, it is so unique that it at times seems to be defining its own genre: "arctic ambient." The "whitewash" cinematography is so cold and relentless that the mood gradually permeates the bones. Brrrrrrrrrrrr! And what pitch-perfect understated acting! Thomas Haden Church's lonely monotone soliloquies keep himself meager company throughout the film, and his deadpan delivery is perfect for the role.I cannot find any fault in this film. It's lean and mean and doesn't waste any strokes. It stands by itself in its essential cinematic niche. It's "classic," in a word. Hooray for director Emanuel Hoss-Desmarais and everyone involved.