Director: Christian Carion
Rating:10/10
I have discovered the secret to finding the PERFECT Christmas movie: DO NOT STICK TO A PARTICULAR LANGUAGE! Movies, like I've said before, are art and art has no language. For my Christmas 2013, Joyeux Noël has been the movie I was looking for! Now, the critics of this movie have said an awful lot of technical things like how the movie feels like a squishy Christmas card, lacks all the gory details of war and how the characters in the movie "never come to life as individuals." For me, however, all these things actually worked. Let us be honest! I am sick of the two World Wars and movies and literature set in the time of the World Wars. Yes, I know they were the biggest events of the last century and yes, I have living family members who were apart of at least one of them but that;s exactly my point! I know so much about them, have read and watched so many things based on them and know the gory details with such precision, I've even had World War nightmares. So, it may be set up against the backdrop of the First World War but the story was a welcome change after countless tales of World War Heroes and Concentration Camp survivors. To quite an extent it was like Thomas Hardy's 'The Man he Killed'(if you've read that poem!) and being an army kid, I could relate to it completely. I have grown up on anecdotes of my grandfathers, my father and my cousins, who talk about how they have perfectly normal friendships with the enemy when they are not busy shelling them. So, no the story is not a brilliant fantasy! Soldiers best relate with soldiers and when they're not busy committing pointless murders to please the politicians, they actually sit and smoke together, or raise a toast and sing songs!
Now, coming to the next best thing about the movie: the way it celebrates two of my favourite things. One, the power of music to unite humans. Music has no language or barriers. It recognises no enemy or friend. It knows no boundaries or borders. All the best things in the world are like that-birds, art, human emotions like love, friendship, happiness...I'm getting ahead of myself! *clears throat*
Second, the spirit of Christmas. I'm not Christian. No one in my family is, except a first cousin once removed who married a Christian but for as long as I can remember my family has celebrated it despite being Hindu Brahmins. For me, the festival isn't even about a particular religion.Who says you have to be Christian to cherish and celebrate its spirit? For me Christmas is about all the best things in the world like kindness, love, giving,-for me, its about being human and about celebrating other humans, because no matter what language we speak or what place we worship in, we are basically all humans! We all walk the earth and the breathe in the air and let out carbon dioxide.Christmas always reminds me I am no different from a billion others, who, like me are celebrating this night, despite linguistic, racial, cultural and sexual differences. Interestingly, this is what this movie said. So,in more than one way, Joyeux Noël was a movie after my own heart. Why anyone should not watch it doesn't occur to me at all, so, you'd better go and watch it yourself unless you want me to keep gushing over it continuously!
Rating:10/10
I have discovered the secret to finding the PERFECT Christmas movie: DO NOT STICK TO A PARTICULAR LANGUAGE! Movies, like I've said before, are art and art has no language. For my Christmas 2013, Joyeux Noël has been the movie I was looking for! Now, the critics of this movie have said an awful lot of technical things like how the movie feels like a squishy Christmas card, lacks all the gory details of war and how the characters in the movie "never come to life as individuals." For me, however, all these things actually worked. Let us be honest! I am sick of the two World Wars and movies and literature set in the time of the World Wars. Yes, I know they were the biggest events of the last century and yes, I have living family members who were apart of at least one of them but that;s exactly my point! I know so much about them, have read and watched so many things based on them and know the gory details with such precision, I've even had World War nightmares. So, it may be set up against the backdrop of the First World War but the story was a welcome change after countless tales of World War Heroes and Concentration Camp survivors. To quite an extent it was like Thomas Hardy's 'The Man he Killed'(if you've read that poem!) and being an army kid, I could relate to it completely. I have grown up on anecdotes of my grandfathers, my father and my cousins, who talk about how they have perfectly normal friendships with the enemy when they are not busy shelling them. So, no the story is not a brilliant fantasy! Soldiers best relate with soldiers and when they're not busy committing pointless murders to please the politicians, they actually sit and smoke together, or raise a toast and sing songs!
Now, coming to the next best thing about the movie: the way it celebrates two of my favourite things. One, the power of music to unite humans. Music has no language or barriers. It recognises no enemy or friend. It knows no boundaries or borders. All the best things in the world are like that-birds, art, human emotions like love, friendship, happiness...I'm getting ahead of myself! *clears throat*
Second, the spirit of Christmas. I'm not Christian. No one in my family is, except a first cousin once removed who married a Christian but for as long as I can remember my family has celebrated it despite being Hindu Brahmins. For me, the festival isn't even about a particular religion.Who says you have to be Christian to cherish and celebrate its spirit? For me Christmas is about all the best things in the world like kindness, love, giving,-for me, its about being human and about celebrating other humans, because no matter what language we speak or what place we worship in, we are basically all humans! We all walk the earth and the breathe in the air and let out carbon dioxide.Christmas always reminds me I am no different from a billion others, who, like me are celebrating this night, despite linguistic, racial, cultural and sexual differences. Interestingly, this is what this movie said. So,in more than one way, Joyeux Noël was a movie after my own heart. Why anyone should not watch it doesn't occur to me at all, so, you'd better go and watch it yourself unless you want me to keep gushing over it continuously!
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