Goodwill hunting
Film review: Joyeux Noel
* * *
On Christmas Day, 1914, a truly remarkable thing happened: pockets of troops on the Western Front stopped fighting. For a few hours they left their sodden, stinking trenches to have a drink and smoke and a game of football in no man’s land. Remarkable too, that Joyeux Noel (Merry Christmas) is the first big-screen presentation of this surreal event. But just in time for Christmas.
Possibly the only two familiar faces in this necessarily feel-good-feel-bad co-production are Daniel Brühl (Ladies in Lavender) as a German officer and Diane Kruger (Troy) as half of a singing couple (there is also apparently an Eastender in the cast). Her and her bloke heroically escape from singing for some stereotypically raucous drunken Nazis to entertain the troops at the front line. A burst from him of “Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht” is matched by the Scots across the way filling up with their pipes to a tune about dreaming of home. Pretty soon a Christmas truce is declared. The French in the other corner bring their wine and coffee, and soon the three groups are sharing pics of their wives and indulging in a game of football. A mass is held in Latin - a lingua franca and religiosity almost certainly more commonly shared then than today.
(In daylight the sides also took the opportunity to bury those killed in the middle, and Tommy and Fritz in real life also used the opportunity to scout out one another’s positions. The film quietly notes both less sentimental realities through one soldier who refuses to fraternise and instead bitterly mourns his fallen brother.)
This film is eager to illustrate the veneer of difference, merely hidden behind a cloak of animosity created by nationalistic egomaniacs of varying craziness. The troops' cosiness is not condoned by commanding officers miles behind the lines or representatives of the church (a bishop reprimands one of his underlings after the fact for refusing to morally condemn the men). It was, however, the early days of the war, so soldiers are not yet embittered, and perhaps retain a remnant of the adventure with which they entered the war.
But Joyeux Noel, directed by Frenchman Christian Carion, suffers from clumsy exposition and lumpish moralising – it opens with three children of the warring nations talking the inflexible language of their belligerent politicians in what appears to be a classroom. The acting is also at times flat and stagey. The German crown prince is suitably weasely and weird, and the front-line officers tread the line well between guarded and enjoying the company of their cultured counterparts. But the lip-synching is atrocious, and distracting. Plus the trenches are a bit clean.
Even so, there are real moments of pathos in the schmaltz of what is in effect a statement film, and the film does pretty well to balance the light- and heavy-hearted. Joyeux Noel will be enjoyed most by those who actually remember a world war or its effects.
* * *
On Christmas Day, 1914, a truly remarkable thing happened: pockets of troops on the Western Front stopped fighting. For a few hours they left their sodden, stinking trenches to have a drink and smoke and a game of football in no man’s land. Remarkable too, that Joyeux Noel (Merry Christmas) is the first big-screen presentation of this surreal event. But just in time for Christmas.
Possibly the only two familiar faces in this necessarily feel-good-feel-bad co-production are Daniel Brühl (Ladies in Lavender) as a German officer and Diane Kruger (Troy) as half of a singing couple (there is also apparently an Eastender in the cast). Her and her bloke heroically escape from singing for some stereotypically raucous drunken Nazis to entertain the troops at the front line. A burst from him of “Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht” is matched by the Scots across the way filling up with their pipes to a tune about dreaming of home. Pretty soon a Christmas truce is declared. The French in the other corner bring their wine and coffee, and soon the three groups are sharing pics of their wives and indulging in a game of football. A mass is held in Latin - a lingua franca and religiosity almost certainly more commonly shared then than today.
(In daylight the sides also took the opportunity to bury those killed in the middle, and Tommy and Fritz in real life also used the opportunity to scout out one another’s positions. The film quietly notes both less sentimental realities through one soldier who refuses to fraternise and instead bitterly mourns his fallen brother.)
This film is eager to illustrate the veneer of difference, merely hidden behind a cloak of animosity created by nationalistic egomaniacs of varying craziness. The troops' cosiness is not condoned by commanding officers miles behind the lines or representatives of the church (a bishop reprimands one of his underlings after the fact for refusing to morally condemn the men). It was, however, the early days of the war, so soldiers are not yet embittered, and perhaps retain a remnant of the adventure with which they entered the war.
But Joyeux Noel, directed by Frenchman Christian Carion, suffers from clumsy exposition and lumpish moralising – it opens with three children of the warring nations talking the inflexible language of their belligerent politicians in what appears to be a classroom. The acting is also at times flat and stagey. The German crown prince is suitably weasely and weird, and the front-line officers tread the line well between guarded and enjoying the company of their cultured counterparts. But the lip-synching is atrocious, and distracting. Plus the trenches are a bit clean.
Even so, there are real moments of pathos in the schmaltz of what is in effect a statement film, and the film does pretty well to balance the light- and heavy-hearted. Joyeux Noel will be enjoyed most by those who actually remember a world war or its effects.
posted by Mark Broatch at 2:49 PM
2 Comments:
Of the football match in no-man's land, did I ever tell you I worked as an extra in the Paul McCartney video of the incident (well, somebody had to make a pop song out of it, didn't they...), 'Pipes of Peace', in about 1983? I played a British soldier and, in the December chill of the English countryside, in my scratchy Bermans & Nathans costume, spent the most uncomfortable few hours of my life itching in a wet trench, cursing above a rumbling stomach and waiting for lunch break to roll around. I was later ashamed to remember how my Great-Grandfather had fought in the Great War, which rapidly put the minor discomfort of the exceptionally well-paid day (by my then standards) and my short-lived 'career' into proper perspective.
What's the line about fighting and empty stomachs?
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