MERRY CHRISTMAS d: Christian Carion
Joyeux Noël / Merry Christmas (2005)
Direction and screenplay: Christian Carion. Cast: Guillaume Canet, Gary Lewis, Daniel Brühl, Benno Fürmann, Diane Kruger, Dany Boon
SUPPOSE THEY GAVE A WAR AND NOBODY FOUGHT
Christian Carion’s Joyeux Noël / Merry Christmas, based on a true World War I ceasefire that took place around Christmastime 1914, is a tad more conventional and old-fashioned than it should have been — the film even offers the combat unit idiot of countless other movies as (unfunny) comic relief. Compounding matters, many of the performances are disappointingly below par. Even so, Joyeux Noël remains a powerful — and ever timely — anti-war statement that celebrates the human capacity for empathy and forgiveness while attacking the human propensity to call for (and to commit) the wholesale slaughter of other human beings in the name of god, country, flag, and/or freedom.
Reviewed at the AFI FEST 2005
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This was a great film. It should have won the Oscar.