#44 Die Hard is a Christmas Movie
16/12/20 15:48
The other day I was at a loose end and looking for a festive displacement activity, by which I mean a shit Christmas film. I specifically wanted something lame and ridiculous, like The Holiday, which I watched last December, letting my brain gently seep out of my skull and ooze onto the sofa. There’s a day each year where you just need a Chrimbo fluff-fest to help you banish the toxic binfire of the planet. This year I chose The Christmas Inheritance, which was lurking on Netflix, looking all snow-white and innocent.
Spoiler alert if you haven’t watched this, but you don’t need to, because you already know what happens – it’s the same thing that happens in every story like this. Hard-partying city gal/dude has to decamp from the city to the sticks, gets snowed in, learns to love the locals and their simple ways. Every scene has an open fire; it’s like Where’s Wally for naked flames. There are so many crimes against film-making, technically and narratively, that they outnumber the fake flakes whirling around the quaint country inn housing our heroine. One-dimensional characters, head-scratching set-up, zero chemistry between the leads, and, at one point, Andie MacDowell randomly singing ‘Silent Night’ in a town hall, closing her eyes and shaking her head as if she appreciated the utter mortification of her predicament.
But the principal thing that’s wrong with The Christmas Inheritance is that it doesn’t understand its role as a proponent of the genre, which is to provide a fundamentally unsettling undercurrent of darkness. It just bumbles along – no one is very bad, no one really changes, nothing goes that wrong, everything’s pretty much fine. Whereas a true festive film should take you to the brink, and bring you back again. You know what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the ultimate Christmas movie. I’m talking about It’s a Wonderful Life. If you don’t think It’s a Wonderful Life is dark, then you haven’t seen it. You haven’t SEEN it. Jimmy Stewart’s finest film has a black, black heart, laden with misery and missed opportunity. Let me outline a few of those bleak midwinter moments for you, and you’ll be sobbing on that blizzard bridge along with me…
Let’s go right back, to when George Bailey is a boy. There’s a particular scene that always cuts me to the quick, and it’s the bit where he prevents his boss, the drug store owner Mr Gower, from putting the wrong medication in a child’s capsules. You don’t need the angel Clarence to show you what might have happened if George hadn’t stopped him. Mr Gower, heartbroken over the death of his own son, is drunk and insensible, and when George tries to explain, he slaps him until his ear bleeds. You flinch at every blow along with young Mary, who’s listening at the front of the store. Even at the end of the scene, when Gower realises his mistake and apologises, the hug they share is too intense to be considered a jolly reconciliation. Gower is still grief-stricken and horror-struck, George still bleeding, and they share a secret that will bind them for life.
Feeling festive? Fast-forward to George as an adult, working for his father’s firm, Bailey Brothers Building and Loan. He doesn’t want to work there - he wants to see the world, find himself, branch out. But just before he’s due to go on his travels, his father has a stroke and dies, leaving him in charge of a business he doesn’t want. At every stage, his dreams are thwarted – his selfish brother Harry (only alive because George saved him from drowning) is the one who gets to go off to become a war hero, to study, travel, get rich, while George is destined to remain shackled to Bedford Falls, and his circumscribed life.
There’s also an uncomfortable sense that he never wanted to be married to Mary, his childhood sweetheart. George probably had bigger ambitions – maybe plans for wild affairs on his world tour – but apart from a tame flirtation with the town floozy Violet, he remains as inexperienced a lover as he is a traveller. Does he resent Mary pinning him down, anchoring him to the ‘crummy little town’ he longs to escape from? When George, broken and desperate, breaks down at home, smashing his models - buildings he will never build - the sight of his children’s faces crumpling as he rages is distressing, but you know what? The most distressing thing of all is that he never confides in his wife. Mary is ultimately the one who sorts everything out, who understands the power of community action, and has the wherewithal to gather everyone together, to ask for help. That crowd you see singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ at the end – she did that, not George. One of the real tragedies of this piece is that he underestimates her, thinks of her as the timid librarian she would apparently be were he not there.
Before Harry Potter was ever a hero, Henry Potter was a villain, and he’s a magnificent one here – avaricious, crooked and entirely devoid of sympathy. And yet he doesn’t ever get his comeuppance – he steals Building & Loan’s money and gets away scot-free. Yeah, yeah, he’s a lonely old man in a wheelchair – I don’t care, send him to prison! In a world where angels watch over us and interfere in our choices, I wonder if Clarence’s colleague Joseph might be sent down to sort him out at some point…
While we’re on the subject of dangerous old men, let’s take a look at George’s Uncle Billy, an ‘old fool’ who relies on bits of string tied round his fingers to get him through the day, and whose merry distraction leads to him losing the Bailey firm $8000. Billy has a house full of rooms he locked when his wife died – WTF is going on there – keeps a raven (a symbol of ill omen) as a pet, and is the catalyst for George’s breakdown. When George shouts at him ‘one of us is going to jail! Well, it’s not going to be me!’ they both know that’s not true. George will take the blame, shoulder the responsibility like he always does, and Billy will let him. Just as the Building & Loan’s customers are happy to plunder the Baileys’ honeymoon fund when there’s a run on the bank, Billy will take what George is prepared to give.
In many ways, George’s life is not wonderful at all – it’s a life of genteel poverty, constant sacrifice, bitterness and petty frustration exemplified by the loose knob on the banister. And who is sent to save him? A second-class angel motivated by self-interest – Clarence Odbody, who wants to gain his wings. Perhaps Clarence is inspired by the book he’s reading, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer – ‘Ah, but if he could only die temporarily!’ His interpretation – ‘You might think your life is bad – but just see how bad life would be without you!’ – isn’t the most heartening of Christmas messages, resulting in George being beaten up, shot at, and finally, scrabbling desperately at his brother’s headstone. Everyone is dead, or drunk, or a crone, or a pathetic spinster, if he’s not there. The fate of that whole crummy town rests on his heaving shoulders - again, the responsibility is his.
But then – then – you get the redemption, the moment snow starts to fall again, Zuzu’s petals back in his pocket. He’s home, and he sees his world for what it is – huge, despite its smallness, wonderful despite its challenges. All the flawed, unreliable, crazy, selfish, real people of Bedford Falls chip in to put him back on his feet, and he’s finally heralded as their linchpin. In a way, George doesn’t need angel interference – like I said, Mary sorts everything out, in a practical sense – but what his celestial friend does is help him appreciate his own dazzling significance, and unique place in his kingdom. The bells ring for Clarence’s wings, but they also ring for George Bailey, the richest man in town.
The ending of It’s a Wonderful Life is so powerful because it’s such a relief – a joyous resolution, after the abyss George glimpsed, and that is what makes a Christmas movie. It’s a brief, twinkling respite that acknowledges the horror; light, along with darkness.
Alas, apart from Andie MacDowell’s singing, The Christmas Inheritance fails to plumb such depths, and thus its conclusion falls flat. That said, I bloody loved it, brain beautifully drained, and will probably watch it every December from now on. Sometimes, you just need a shit Christmas film. God bless them, every one.
Spoiler alert if you haven’t watched this, but you don’t need to, because you already know what happens – it’s the same thing that happens in every story like this. Hard-partying city gal/dude has to decamp from the city to the sticks, gets snowed in, learns to love the locals and their simple ways. Every scene has an open fire; it’s like Where’s Wally for naked flames. There are so many crimes against film-making, technically and narratively, that they outnumber the fake flakes whirling around the quaint country inn housing our heroine. One-dimensional characters, head-scratching set-up, zero chemistry between the leads, and, at one point, Andie MacDowell randomly singing ‘Silent Night’ in a town hall, closing her eyes and shaking her head as if she appreciated the utter mortification of her predicament.
But the principal thing that’s wrong with The Christmas Inheritance is that it doesn’t understand its role as a proponent of the genre, which is to provide a fundamentally unsettling undercurrent of darkness. It just bumbles along – no one is very bad, no one really changes, nothing goes that wrong, everything’s pretty much fine. Whereas a true festive film should take you to the brink, and bring you back again. You know what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the ultimate Christmas movie. I’m talking about It’s a Wonderful Life. If you don’t think It’s a Wonderful Life is dark, then you haven’t seen it. You haven’t SEEN it. Jimmy Stewart’s finest film has a black, black heart, laden with misery and missed opportunity. Let me outline a few of those bleak midwinter moments for you, and you’ll be sobbing on that blizzard bridge along with me…
Let’s go right back, to when George Bailey is a boy. There’s a particular scene that always cuts me to the quick, and it’s the bit where he prevents his boss, the drug store owner Mr Gower, from putting the wrong medication in a child’s capsules. You don’t need the angel Clarence to show you what might have happened if George hadn’t stopped him. Mr Gower, heartbroken over the death of his own son, is drunk and insensible, and when George tries to explain, he slaps him until his ear bleeds. You flinch at every blow along with young Mary, who’s listening at the front of the store. Even at the end of the scene, when Gower realises his mistake and apologises, the hug they share is too intense to be considered a jolly reconciliation. Gower is still grief-stricken and horror-struck, George still bleeding, and they share a secret that will bind them for life.
Feeling festive? Fast-forward to George as an adult, working for his father’s firm, Bailey Brothers Building and Loan. He doesn’t want to work there - he wants to see the world, find himself, branch out. But just before he’s due to go on his travels, his father has a stroke and dies, leaving him in charge of a business he doesn’t want. At every stage, his dreams are thwarted – his selfish brother Harry (only alive because George saved him from drowning) is the one who gets to go off to become a war hero, to study, travel, get rich, while George is destined to remain shackled to Bedford Falls, and his circumscribed life.
There’s also an uncomfortable sense that he never wanted to be married to Mary, his childhood sweetheart. George probably had bigger ambitions – maybe plans for wild affairs on his world tour – but apart from a tame flirtation with the town floozy Violet, he remains as inexperienced a lover as he is a traveller. Does he resent Mary pinning him down, anchoring him to the ‘crummy little town’ he longs to escape from? When George, broken and desperate, breaks down at home, smashing his models - buildings he will never build - the sight of his children’s faces crumpling as he rages is distressing, but you know what? The most distressing thing of all is that he never confides in his wife. Mary is ultimately the one who sorts everything out, who understands the power of community action, and has the wherewithal to gather everyone together, to ask for help. That crowd you see singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ at the end – she did that, not George. One of the real tragedies of this piece is that he underestimates her, thinks of her as the timid librarian she would apparently be were he not there.
Before Harry Potter was ever a hero, Henry Potter was a villain, and he’s a magnificent one here – avaricious, crooked and entirely devoid of sympathy. And yet he doesn’t ever get his comeuppance – he steals Building & Loan’s money and gets away scot-free. Yeah, yeah, he’s a lonely old man in a wheelchair – I don’t care, send him to prison! In a world where angels watch over us and interfere in our choices, I wonder if Clarence’s colleague Joseph might be sent down to sort him out at some point…
While we’re on the subject of dangerous old men, let’s take a look at George’s Uncle Billy, an ‘old fool’ who relies on bits of string tied round his fingers to get him through the day, and whose merry distraction leads to him losing the Bailey firm $8000. Billy has a house full of rooms he locked when his wife died – WTF is going on there – keeps a raven (a symbol of ill omen) as a pet, and is the catalyst for George’s breakdown. When George shouts at him ‘one of us is going to jail! Well, it’s not going to be me!’ they both know that’s not true. George will take the blame, shoulder the responsibility like he always does, and Billy will let him. Just as the Building & Loan’s customers are happy to plunder the Baileys’ honeymoon fund when there’s a run on the bank, Billy will take what George is prepared to give.
In many ways, George’s life is not wonderful at all – it’s a life of genteel poverty, constant sacrifice, bitterness and petty frustration exemplified by the loose knob on the banister. And who is sent to save him? A second-class angel motivated by self-interest – Clarence Odbody, who wants to gain his wings. Perhaps Clarence is inspired by the book he’s reading, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer – ‘Ah, but if he could only die temporarily!’ His interpretation – ‘You might think your life is bad – but just see how bad life would be without you!’ – isn’t the most heartening of Christmas messages, resulting in George being beaten up, shot at, and finally, scrabbling desperately at his brother’s headstone. Everyone is dead, or drunk, or a crone, or a pathetic spinster, if he’s not there. The fate of that whole crummy town rests on his heaving shoulders - again, the responsibility is his.
But then – then – you get the redemption, the moment snow starts to fall again, Zuzu’s petals back in his pocket. He’s home, and he sees his world for what it is – huge, despite its smallness, wonderful despite its challenges. All the flawed, unreliable, crazy, selfish, real people of Bedford Falls chip in to put him back on his feet, and he’s finally heralded as their linchpin. In a way, George doesn’t need angel interference – like I said, Mary sorts everything out, in a practical sense – but what his celestial friend does is help him appreciate his own dazzling significance, and unique place in his kingdom. The bells ring for Clarence’s wings, but they also ring for George Bailey, the richest man in town.
The ending of It’s a Wonderful Life is so powerful because it’s such a relief – a joyous resolution, after the abyss George glimpsed, and that is what makes a Christmas movie. It’s a brief, twinkling respite that acknowledges the horror; light, along with darkness.
Alas, apart from Andie MacDowell’s singing, The Christmas Inheritance fails to plumb such depths, and thus its conclusion falls flat. That said, I bloody loved it, brain beautifully drained, and will probably watch it every December from now on. Sometimes, you just need a shit Christmas film. God bless them, every one.
- The Christmas Inheritance, Netflix
- It’s a Wonderful Life, Sky - and probably every channel in the run-up to Christmas
