The Reel Review
After occupying Soviet troops deport her family from 1941 Lithuania to a prison camp in Siberia, a 16-year-old aspiring artist must dig deep to maintain hope and find the will to survive. Bel Powley, Lisa Loven Kongsli and Jonah Hauer-King star in this 2018 war drama loosely based on Ruta Sepetys’s 2011 best-selling young adult novel Between Shades of Gray.
The heartbreaking premise alone is enough reason to watch Ashes in the Snow, which clearly has good intentions. But despite the solid production, the story itself is a little flimsy. We get to know very little about the family’s backstory other than a few flashbacks to sunnier (and happier) times, and oddly enough, while all the Lithuanian prisoners speak English, the Russian soldiers speak Russian. While it makes it easier for English-speaking viewers to follow the narrative, authenticity is sacrificed in the process.
There’s also the romantic drama issue between Lina and Andrius. Granted, the story is told from the perspective of a teenager, but the tone doesn’t meld well with the somber story. Even so, Ashes in the Snow is a solid enough film, just because of the subject matter and solid performances from Powley (A Small Light) and Kongsli (Force Majeure) as her mother Elena.
REEL FACTS
• Norwegian Lisa Loven Kongsli appeared as Amazon warrior Menalippe in 2017’s Wonder Woman, reprising the role later that year in Justice League.
• Sophie Cookson, who starred as Roxy in 2014’s Kingsman: The Secret Service, appears in the film as Ona, the woman on the train with a newborn infant.
• Five years after Ashes in the Snow, Bel Powley received SAG and Critics’ Choice nominations for her performance as Miep Gies, the friend who helped Anne Frank’s family go into hiding during Nazi Germany’s WWII occupation of Amsterdam, in the miniseries A Small Light.
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