JOYEUX NOEL (Merry Christmas)

Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
Sony Pictures Classics
Grade: B+
Directed by: Christian Carion
Written by: Christian Carion
Cast: Diane Kruger, Benno Furmann, Guillaume Canet, Gary
Lewis, Danny Boon, Daniel Bruhl, Alex Ferns
Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 2/22/06
Opens: March 3, 2006

The slogan of the Peace Movement, dating back to the Vietnam War days, is “What if they gave a war and nobody came?” Now there’s an interesting idea. What if the politicians who sit comfortably in their clubs sipping bourbon and sending mostly poor people out to the front were simply ignored–like boring teachers in public schools across the country? While thousands of Americans bolted for Canada during the late sixties rather than accept a draft to Southeast Asia, no such activity was present during World War I. If you got drafted, you went. Several millions were killed between 1914 and 1918 fighting against others who were demonized by the French, the Russians, the Scots, the English, the Austrians, and assorted others. There was, however, one poignant moment as the troops, hunkered down in trenches separated by less distance than a football field, fell into the Christmas spirit. They put down their guns for a few days, left their uncomfortably claustrophobic holes in the ground, met one another, and exchanged family photos and champagne. Sadly enough, the truce–which could have spread and become the first such subversive movement in the history of wars–ended. People who drank together, lit one another’s cigarettes, and communicated using sign language in the absence of complimentary tongues, picked up their guns, headed for the trenches, and fired away. Think of this truce as a conclusion of a tense game of football, the teams who had faced each other in close range putting down the pigskins and singing praises of the opponents’ virtues.

“Joyeux Noel,” a major cinematic undertaking involving film production in France, Germany, the UK, Belgium and Romania, is inspired by a momentous Christmas eve in 1914, the first year of what the Russians called The Great Patriotic War. Christian Carion, who wrote and directs this labor of love, prepares us by evoking the spirit of the time–which, if you go along with what two Scots say, is a rah-rah attitude, a chance to leave the boredom of the village or the factory to pillage and kill legally at the orders of the politicians. In Berlin, an operatic concert featuring the Danish soprano Anna Sorenson (Diane Kruger) and tenor Nikolaus Sprink (Benno Furmann), is interrupted by an announcement that Germany was now at war. In Scotland, an Anglican priest, Palmer (Gary Lewis), is perturbed that two brothers in his congregation are leaping for joy at the chance to do something more exciting than sitting in the pews.

The two singers are lovers: this is established from the discreet scene of lovemaking that earned the pic its unnecessarily severe “R” rating, and later on by their eagerness to surrender to the French rather than be separated on orders of the German command. Walther Vanden Ende’s camera takes us into the heart of the trenches in a partially occupied France. The French lieutenant Audebart (Guillaume Canet) orders a charge into the bunkers of the German foe, but unlike the officers who outrank and later chastise him, he is disgusted for having to do so, knowing that great casualties would be borne.

Audebart’s counterpart just a football field away is the German commander, Lieutenant Horstmayer (Daniel Bruhl), a Jewish man who had said that Christmas means nothing to him but one who will be overwhelmed by the holiday spirit nonetheless.

Anna, going over the head of an officer to Kaiser Wilhelm to gain authorization, joins her lover, Sprink, to deliver a concert to the troops, who have been issued Christmas trees. When their singing is joined by a recital of bagpipers on the Scottish-French side, the officers from the regiments meet to call a truce in the fighting. The grunts crawl out of their trenches, now cautious and skeptical, now enthusiastically, to exchange photos, champagne and cigarettes with people who look like them and perhaps have no real idea of why they are mortal enemies. The real antagonists will not be the ordinary folks of neighboring European nations, but the people who issue the commands from afar who, hearing about this fraternization, are swift to call it high treason. “You can be executed for this,” says one of the policy makers, “But we can’t kill two hundred of our own.” Even the Anglican superior of the clergyman, Palmer, is disgusted, ordering the parish priest back to his village and delivering a sermon to the men calling on them to kill as many Germans as they can–the Lord’s work.

The buzz for this heartwarming, but not sloppily sentimental, movie will clue the hormone-addled young ‘uns that this picture does nothing to glorify war. The kids will go back to Grand Theft Auto, reveling in their own naivete, insisting that they can march to the drums of war without becoming yet another of the millions who are cut down for no good reason and who are buried in the frozen ground right in the battlefields. “Merry Christmas” in this story does not result in an exchange of DVD players, plasma TVs and mobile phones, but when contrasted with the alternative–death at any moment and burial in a grave marked only by a simple cross–is a day for rejoicing indeed.

Rated PG-13. 115 minutes © 2006 by Harvey Karten
harveycritic@cs.com Member: NY Film Critics Online