Joyeux Noel (Merry Christmas) | Review

Carion shows three sides of the coin.

It’s not the first movie to investigate a ceasefire of this nature and by comparison, this doesn’t come across as accomplished or detailed as another recent World War themed France-produced pic as Jeunet’s A Very Long Engagement, but French filmmaker Christian Carion’s popular European co-production is a war drama prepped up without the melodrama and without romanticism revealing itself as a friendly feel-good story that banks on tiny miraculous connections made between humans who should be from polar opposites.

They believe in the same god, are passionate about the same sport and when a picture of a good looking dame is shown they pat each other on the back like old drinking buddies, and yet they have every inclination to kill one another. Whether they grew up knowing the enemy as Frogs or as Krauts, all men are disarmed when serene voices sigh on the Christian holiday known for evergreen trees and present exchanges. Based on the unfathomable accounts that took place on a stretch of French occupied land On Christmas Eve 1914, – Merry Christmas describes how enemy lines get blurred when soldiers are no longer killing machines, but instead human beings.

This is the type of film that American troops stationed in Iraq won’t have the chance to see in their downtime – especially since the film is more about a collective yearning to return to normalcy highlighted with the cognitive meaning of ‘home’. Like in any film where multi-languages and different perspectives intersect, obviously once the three camps start to fraternize there are small doses of humor that set in. The film’s set design looks the part and the point-of-view perspectives that are highlighted by the odd presence of an alarm clock and bag-pipes carry a symbolism on their own.

Aptly tuned, delivered with credible storytelling and a satisfying trilingual language, cross-cultural pattern this may even please viewers who are looking for catalogued World War I trivia facts and battleground tactics. Populated mostly by known faces and names that you might not have at the tip of your tongue, Merry Christmas is the perfect film for the yuletide spirit displaying how misguided human beings are living casualties in a world that is filled with so much misunderstanding. While the film’s end kind of drags, the voyage there is a pleasurable one. See this as a nice stocking-stuffer, but not the enormous present under the tree that you open last.

Viewed in German, French and English with English subtitles.

New Montreal Film Festival 2005.

Rating 2.5 stars