(Three) Holiday Movies for These Long, Woeful December Nights
Easy, I keep trying to tell myself. For who among us makes it through the long, cold nights of December not that much more battered and bruised?
-Facebook post I wrote the other day and then a minute later deleted.
At this time of year, in particular, all around I can see struggle. I see it in the pale and exhausted faces of shop workers and cafe baristas. I see it in my university students and colleagues, I see it in my family and my friends. I journaled the other day that I know I am doing better than years past because this year at this fraught time, I am not so utterly alone in my struggles. I can see it around me. What a difference that makes.
John Lennon sang mournfully of having to hide your love away. For me it’s more often been sadness I’ve felt the need to hide away. I think it’s because my father found it too hard to bear, in himself, I imagine, and thus as well in his children, or at least in me, his son. As such I’m someone who tends to do sad behind closed doors, or when I am alone, which so often means, with art. With the headphones in my ears, with the novels in my hands or with the movies in my basement or, much more rarely now, the movie theatres in my town. Even my favourite comedies almost always requires a good dose of pathos. My favourite album of the last few years is the 1971 Marvin Gaye masterpiece What’s Going On? (if you only know the song and have never discovered the album - oh man!), thirty-five minutes of the most gorgeous pathos and woe, care and beauty. I have ever been comforted by Miles Davis’ muted trumpet as I’m sure I’ve mentioned umpteen times before in previous blog posts, and the story that opened literature to me, as it has for how many others, was via the solitary and often misanthropic adventures of one very famous prep school boy (his sister is Phoebe Caufield). Is it any wonder then that any hopeful or humane movie that mires me sincerely in the human struggle before letting me see the light is the kind for me.
So despite feeling totally gassed and spent and out of juice (shall I find a few more expressions for tired?), I thought I’d like to share a little sad but hopeful holiday-time fare.
THE OBVIOUS ONE:
It’s a Wonderful Life — a classic for a reason. But I continue to proselytize it year in, year out because I think too many balk at its age and reputation for sentimentality. It may be be sentimental but it’s also a movie that plums the depths before it comes up for hope. Whilst also managing to be a superb comedy, a brilliant political commentary (I think of Potterville often as I see Ontario premier Doug Ford’s “strategy” that has allowed pot shops, three to a block, on any major street block of Toronto), and one of the great love stories in movie history. (Oscars be damned; it’s the ones that people return to for decades that hold the answer.)
2. THE ONE WITH TOBEY MAGUIRE?
My wife was mildly horrified when I told her I was going to show my thirteen-year-old daughter The Cider House Rules. This because of one particular subplot involving an extremely taboo and disturbing topic. As one who learned so much about the through book and film myself, I thought, why not my daughter as well (it’s not as if the film is promoting the horror that it so humanely deals with). Anyway, it was such a deep pleasure to watch the movie with her. Want to talk about not making them like they used to? Can you name a single movie that came out this year or even in recent years that puts in the budget, the cast and the score (that melancholy score!) to adapt a great (John Irving-at-his-prime) novel (he adapted it himself and imho very deservingly got the Oscar (not always damned, apparently) for the task) into a film fit for a big screen. For those of us grown tired of television with beginning middle but no sense of an end, or television that might even include a great soundtrack but that doesn’t mean its music matches its visuals (The Bear The Bear The Bear) - this one is the kind they really don’t much make anymore. Sigh.
In case you have forgotten, or if you never knew the cast includes: Tobey Maguire when casting the very young(-looking) man as the lead of a prestige film made perfect sense, Michael Caine, Kieran Culkin and Charlize Theron before she became a superstar.
A story with sweep and heft, with weight and meaning, surprise and much wonder. It’s beautiful to look at, wonderful to think about and chockfull of of characters you care deeply about.
3. THE ONE FROM LAST YEAR
Critics adored Alexander Payne’s Sideways, the Paul Giamatti movie about two guys going to wine county for a last hurrah before the one gets married. It’s one of those movies I somehow just didn’t connect with the first time. I didn’t walk away aggrieved or anything I just thought it was seriously overrated. I had that problem with Wonder Boys too (speaking of pitch-perfect Tobey Maguire performances ). I now consider these movies to be classics. The same goes for Alexander Payne’s second movie with Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers; not sure you can call it a follow-up 19 years later. But again it’s a movie of great fun, pathos and depth. Three lost and broken souls who do not(!) want to be stuck spending the holidays together. Rich like a great play. Gritty like a 70s drama. Funny ilke only Alexander Payne can be .. amongst the pain and the heartbreak.
It was made to be rewatched on the holidays. And I kind of balked at that on first viewing. I didn’t when I watched it again just a few months later and I honestly can’t wait to watch it again, with whatever family member I can convince to join me.
These three movies, while they are not Elf (great as that is), they are not obscure French New Wave cinema either. They are utterly accessible, easily digestible, they can be very, very funny (the first and third in particular), but they are also prone to making you weep a little, if that’s your cup of egg nog. It is mine ;)
So, Merry Christmas you wonderful old Building and Loan!
Put on your yamulka, it’s time for Chanukkah!
And to everyone else, Happy holidays!
