Hazel’s Heart is a moving masterclass in minimalist filmmaking

MPAA Rating: Not rated at the time of this review
Reel Rating: 4 out of 5 reels

In the age of smartphones and GPS, getting lost on your way home is at worst a minor inconvenience. But in early 20th-century North Dakota, it could cost you your life.

Unfortunately, Hazel (Madelyn Dundon) must learn this the hard way. Her true story, which unfolds in less than twenty-four hours, is a powerful witness to the central tenet of Christianity, told in an unflinching but beautiful manner.

Hazel probably thought she was cursed, beset by constant difficulties. She has an unspecified physical disability, which makes her slow and awkward. Her father writes this off as laziness, chastising her at dinner for not finishing her chores. She also suffers socially and emotionally. Growing up in rural North Dakota in the 1920s, she attended a one-room schoolhouse with the children of the entire town, learning 10th-grade math next to six-year-olds. She is bullied and mocked while the teacher ignores her plight.

Fortunately—or so it seems at first—class is cut short one day when a sudden blizzard hits the area, and everyone is sent home.

Hazel’s father arrives after the storm has already engulfed the building with his covered sled, loading up Hazel and her two young siblings, Emmet (10) and Myrdith (6). While packing the sled, the horse takes off, leaving him behind. Assuming the horse knows the way back home, he manages to trudge through the snow back to his cottage, only to discover the children never returned.

In fact, the horse went in the opposite direction and got stuck in a snowbank. By this point, it is a total blackout with temperatures dropping dangerously low. Hazel wisely decides it’s best to stay in the covered wagon, which provides some measure of shelter, and wait until morning, struggling to keep her brother and sister warm and positive in the meantime.

This film, which employs minimal art direction and locations, nonetheless does an impressive job of capturing a time and place that feels ancient despite being just a century ago. There are no cars, electric lights, or plumbing. Only a few people have telephones, which stop working the moment the weather goes foul. Clothes are made by hand. Yet only two years later, my own grandmother was born a few hundred miles east.

It was a time when humans were still at the mercy of nature, and Hazel’s family could indeed all die in a few hours if something wasn’t done. What these people lacked in technology, they made up for in grit and the bonds of a strong community. When the town learns of the situation, they immediately form a search party the next morning, despite visibility still being almost non-existent. Tethered to one another, they grope through the snow until the children are found.

It is when the chips are down that people reveal their true character. When Hazel must save her siblings from death, her heart and character are made manifest. She begins by making sure the canvas of the shelter is intact, and her siblings are well covered. She then plays games and tells jokes to keep them awake. “You must not go to sleep,” she insists repeatedly. When her brother becomes indignant, she encourages him and apologizes for the situation. She tells them to pray and put their trust in the Lord.

When the canvas breaks and the children start to grow colder, she gives them her coat as a blanket and uses herself as a shield from the storm. Her hands slowly become frostbitten sticks as ice creeps over her torso. In the morning, the townsfolk manage to find the wagon, now buried in snow with Hazel still clinging to the front, keeping her siblings alive.

Her silhouette, with arms spread wide, is unmistakable in its imagery.

Hazel’s Heart is a masterclass in minimalist filmmaking. There are only a dozen actors and a few props. Nearly half the film takes place in a space the size of a living room couch. Yet every second is fraught with tension as Hazel faces challenge after challenge, and the ending is a beautiful expression of the central Christian virtue that “there is no greater love than a man would lay down his life for his friends.” Hazel wasn’t weak or lazy. She was strong beyond anyone’s comprehension, and her sacrifice can now justly be remembered.

• Hazel’s Heart is available on digital on December 23rd. Official trailer: