Black Snow

Marcos and his wife Laura are left to handle the affairs of Marcos' father after his death. This includes burying his father's ashes next to one of Marcos' brothers, Juan, and finalizing the approval to sell a large plot of the family's land to some Canadian firm. All this falls to Marcos because his sister Sabrina is in a mental hospital, and his other brother, Salvador, has lived alone in a cabin on the plot of land to be sold for the last 30 years. Finalizing the sale is going to require going out there and confronting Salvador, as well as the past, something Marcos really doesn't want to do.

There is one surprise reveal that isn't much of a surprise, related to Juan's death and Salvador living out there. I'm sure you can guess. There are some other aspects to it, on the other hand, I didn't suspect. They make it much darker, and Salvador's fate that much sadder.

Everyone is telling half-truths, everyone is keeping secrets. Because it's easier, they don't have to confront unpleasant facts about themselves or the ones they care about. In Marcos' case, he may have been living the lies so long that he really believes them. It's hard to tell. He tries so hard to avoid the issues, and in light of things Laura learns, it's hard to take him at face value.

At the very end, after Laura's made a decision, the film ends with her looking directly at us. Which I didn't grasp the meaning of. She had done that a few minutes earlier, but it turned out she was seeing an image of Marcos as a younger man in her mind (the movie shows glimpses of the past frequently, and sometimes moves between past and present seamlessly). Is she seeing someone else, or asking us to keep the secret with her? Making us complicit? Man, that's bullshit.

The awkward nature of the conversations between Salvador and Marcos feels very real. Marcos trying to play for sympathy, rebuild some sort of connection with the brother he's basically forgotten, and Salvador not having any of it. It's obvious he just wants to do the task and wash his hands of it. The whole time you can see Salvador waiting for something from Marcos, and Marcos continuing to seemingly dance around it, feign ignorance or faulty memory. So Salvador makes it difficult on him. He responds a little better to Laura, who is genuinely interested in Salvador. He's her husband's brother, part of her new family. She wants to know about him, and learn more about Marcos as well. Her curiosity feeds into a growing doubt about Marcos as she sees new sides of him.