Aftermath
When Harry Garrett accepts a commission to paint a portrait of Lindsay and Michael Davenport, neither he nor his clients have any idea of the journey they are about to embark upon. The inspiration for a new film by Oscar-winning director Caroline Link (Nowhere in Africa, 2003), Aftermath is based on a true story of lives put profoundly asunder and of the power of the creative process to begin to put them back together again.
The film, A Year Ago in Winter, was an official selection of the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival and won Bavarian Film Awards for Best Director and Best Young Performer (Karoline Herfurth) in 2009. It was also nominated for Best Picture of the Year in the German Film Awards of 2009 (the equivalent of the Oscars), as well as for Best Actor (Josef Bierbichler), Best Editing and Best Music. It won the award for Best Music and a second place Silver Award for Best Picture.
A Year Ago in Winter (Im winter ein jahr) film trailer
Excerpt
Harry Garrett waits.
He stands at his two-story wall-to-wall window, hands clasped loosely behind his back, and stares out at the endless rush of people on the turnpike, hurrying from their homes to their jobs, from their jobs to their summer vacations, from their vacations back to their homes again, breathless, exhausted, hungry for more, gobbling up their lives, and he waits.
Harry hates this more than most anything. Maybe, he thinks, because it seems he's done little but wait for the past three years. Counting his footsteps, counting the stairs, humming the same annoying tune over and over again. But if he's honest with himself, he has to admit that in fact he has been waiting much of his life.
Sometimes he thinks it all goes back to that afternoon in his boyhood. It was a gloomy November day, that time of year when the entire world seems to be withdrawing. The birds had gone. The leaves had gone. The sun had retreated behind a permanent wall of gunmetal grey.
He was waiting for his mother to pick him up from his piano lesson in front of the Methodist Church where his teacher was music director. He'd had his lesson in the basement, where he usually sat uneasily on the fringes of weekly youth fellowship meetings, and afterwards his teacher had come out of the church with him, locking the door behind them, and hurried off down the street, turning to wave then turning back again to shoulder into the cold.
Harry shifted his weight from foot to foot, shifted his music from mitten-less hand to mitten-less hand, blowing hot breath on the other. A few half-hearted snowflakes drifted around him like lint. He looked up at the glowering sky, wishing that the sun would come out for just a moment to warm him, then he noticed the warm yellow light in the barbershop across the street.
He wondered if maybe he should wait there, to get out of the cold. There were people there, and fragrant powders, and steam hissing from the heating pipes. But what would he say when he walked in? Would they be mad if he didn't get a haircut? Would they laugh at him? They were laughing now; would he get the joke? Shy and awkward, watchful at ten, Harry decided maybe it would be better just to wait; his mother would be along, in time.
Hunching his shoulders in his too-big coat, he looked up at the sky again and in that moment, to his surprise, the clouds pulled apart and he was suddenly bathed in warmth and light. The light didn't cover the rest of the street, just the corner where Harry was standing, as if life itself had reached out to him and said Harry. Here, have some.
It's a parable that Harry has carried with him ever since, without entirely knowing it, like a secret talisman in his pocket—a vague but comforting assurance that if he's patient enough, if he just stands on the corner long enough, the skies will open up and offer themselves to him again, fulfilling the promise of all that life seems to hold just beyond his reach.
The Writing & Filming Experience
This was not an easy novel to write. From start to finish, maybe six or seven years. Besides the darkness of the subject matter, I had problems with structure, I had problems with pace, problems with point of view. And then, when it was done, I had problems with getting it published. But my agent managed to get into the hands of Caroline Link and Caroline optioned it for a film in advance of publication, a very unusual situation.
And so it came to pass that once upon a cold February, Caroline flew in from Munich, the producer flew in from Istanbul and his associate flew in from LA and we holed up in a hotel suite in Boston for a couple of days, hashing the story out. For a guy who spends much of his time locked up in his basement talking to people who don't really exist, it was a compelling experience. Here were three other people all talking as if they knew these people too.
Originally the film was meant to be done in Hollywood with English-speaking stars. They tried Ralph Fiennes, Edward Norton, Willem Dafoe and others. They even tried Keanu Reeves, for some reason, but they couldn't get the names they wanted in the timeframe they had. So Caroline made the decision to do the film in Germany—where, as she puts it, her name alone can get a film produced and she can hire whomever she wants. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2008 and the book followed soon thereafter.
Press Clips
(For an extended list of press clips, with links to the full stories, look under 'News and Musings')
"Impeccably written and performed, A Year Ago in Winter is a sophisticated and resonant examination of the human condition."
— Goethe-Institut Australia
"Caroline Link's first film in seven years is an elegantly-woven portrait of a family in crisis after the suicide of an 18 year-old boy and the steps which occur on their way to healing. Never overly gloomy or downbeat, A Year Ago In Winter is nevertheless a contemplative piece which doesn't provide easy answers for its characters' dilemmas."
— Screen Daily
"A Year Ago in Winter explores not dissimilar territory to that classic of post-traumatic angst Ordinary People. Then as now, we are allowed access to the confused emotional lives of a family attempting to move on in the wake of great loss. The film may be in German and the psychiatrist replaced with a wry portrait painter, but the psychological strain is every bit as present, real and compelling."
— Hour (Montreal)
"By choosing a small-canvas, downbeat drama as her long-awaited follow up to Oscar-winning arthouse goldmine Nowhere in Africa, German writer-helmer Caroline Link defies expectations as deliberately as A Year Ago in Winter's rebellious heroine does. When grieving mother Eliane (Corinna Harfouch) commissions a portrait of dead son Alexander (Cyril Sjostrom) and troubled dancer daughter Lilli (Karoline Herfurth), the painting process ultimately catalyzes emotional healing for mother and daughter—and for conflicted middle-aged artist Max (Josef Bierbichler). Based on the American novel Aftermath, by Scott Campbell, the narrative recalls Robert Redford's Ordinary People."
— Variety
