Three Winters (2022)
Directed by Michael Koch
Anna (Michèle Brand) and Marco (Simon Wisler) live in a small village in the Swiss Alps and are in love. Alpine farming is hard labor and everyone has to do their part, be it herding cows, mowing the grass high in the mountains or stemming huge boulders out of the way. Everyone knows everyone, the entire community being quite curious about Anna’s and Marco’s future together. When they finally tie the knot and Marco gets diagnosed with a brain tumor, we’re shown how much their love can endure.
The pacing is deliberately slow and the movie is full of still frames that are held for a protracted amount of time. It opens with a shot of a rock, which we watch, while life goes by slowly, setting the mood for what’s to come. This deliberate stillness is underpinned by a very minimal soundtrack (Tobias Koch, Jannik Giger, Chor Luzern) and a rich soundscape of nature sounds and especially breathing, which is emphasized to a sometimes uncomfortable degree.
The body, in general, is at the forefront of the movie. Before we see his face, we see Marco doing physical labor, then we switch to farmers sitting around a table and discussing how hard he can work and joking about him not drinking alcohol. Physical fitness determines your value, as a member of this society and his bulky frame is juxtaposed with Anna’s petite figure several times. As soon as Marco gets sick, the world around him gets desolate, with him sharing little to no scenes with others, except Anna. The acting both from Brand and Wisler is terrific, them conveying a bigger range of emotions through touch and looks, than the sparse dialogue.
The movie is structured like a Greek tragedy with an extradiegetic choir standing in breathtaking alpine scenery, singing you into the next act with thematically appropriate Swiss folk songs. The years serve as act dividers and the seasons set the mood, sending the protagonists on a journey not unlike the one of Orpheus and Eurydice.
All in all, Drii Winter is both a sweeping Greek tragedy and a meditative piece on love, death and the value of a person.