FILM FOCUS: HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS, PART II

Welcome to Part Two of a two-part examination of the Greatest Thanksgiving Movie Evah, Home for the Holidays.  Along with all of my previous praise I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge how well the movie represents the holiday itself.  The majority of the film takes place on Thanksgiving Day and you get a parade scene, you get football (both on TV and the front yard variety) and lots and lots of food.  Two turkeys, one fat and one lean (trope!), sweet potatoes stuffed in orange peels with cherries on top, stuffing, pumpkin pie, eggnog and leftovers.  It feels like the kind of Thanksgiving I had growing up (both the food and the functioning-dysfunctional family part).

The secret ingredient is love.  And paprika.

The kids in my family always got chocolate advent calendars on Thanksgiving from first my great-grandmother and later my grandmother, marking the official kick-off of the Christmas season. Being the Christmas fanatic that I am, I’ve always appreciated the Christmas creep that crops up throughout the movie, very small touches that remind you, as in life, that Christmas is right around the corner.  There are lights and decorations glimpsed in people’s yards, Christmas decorations seen tucked away in the basement during one scene, and storefronts and the airport are seen already decked out the day after Thanksgiving.  These small touches root the movie even further in reality and always make me wistful that a sequel, Home for Christmas, doesn’t exist.

Christmas is right behind you. And a little to the left.

It gives nothing away to say that the movies ends with a beautiful montage, one of my favorites scenes in all of film.  It captures earlier alluded to moments of joy for each of the characters, during which none of family members had a camera or managed to capture on film and yet represent some of their happiest memories.  All of the characters are given their due, shown at their best and brightest: Tommy at his wedding on the beach, Claudia snorkeling with her daughter, even Joanne and her husband, younger and I like to think less judgey, just goofing off together.  Each scene is a moment when maybe not all that much happens save people loving one another and life in general.

The very thought of you...

It’s powerful stuff and it gets me every time (and I’ve seen this movie a lot).  It doesn’t help that it’s set to Nat King Cole singing “The Very Thought of You,” as Nat King Cole was basically the soundtrack of my own family growing up.  It’s the kind of montage that makes you wish life was nothing but just a series of happy moments set to music, but Home for the Holidays isn’t afraid to fill in the other moments as well, the darker and unhappier ones.

I’ll conclude by saying that while watching the movie this year Nick and I ended up having to pause it halfway through to have an argument, spurred by something I said which was in turn inspired by something that happened on screen (and not the aforementioned comparison to Joanne).  I won’t go into details and rest assured we made peace but it struck me that that’s how good and true this movie is: just watching it brought out our own real-life family issues!  It has both the power to ignite arguments and sooth the soul.  When I first moved to New York and spent my first couple of Thanksgivings away from my family I watched Home for the Holidays over and over again.  It was like spending time with my own family, like escaping into the past, goods times, bad times and all of the bittersweet in-between.  

The very thought of you, my love

FILM FOCUS: HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS, PART I

For every holiday there is one signature movie that for me best embodies the spirit of the particular season. For Halloween it’s the previously discussed Hocus Pocus and you’ll just have to sit tight and wait to see what I consider to be the ultimate Christmas movie.  As for Thanksgiving, even if there was greater competition (which there really isn’t), Home for the Holidays will forever more be THE movie.  When I started to write about it I quickly realized I had too much to say for just one blog post, so prepare yourselves for part one of a rambling, two part epic.

I first saw Home for the Holidays in the theater with my parents in 1995.  I remember it well because an older couple sitting near us hated it so much that they walked out during the movie.  This really surprised us, considering how much we all loved it.  My guess is that they were expecting something more along the lines of your average Christmas movie: lots of treacle and gentle humor.  Home for the Holidays has a lot of heart but it also goes dark and at times it’s even crude, especially for a holiday film.  But even I, the avid consumer of treacly Christmas films, sometimes like my holiday fare with a bit of bite.  In other words, that couple was fucking stupid and the movie is awesome.

The Larsons gather together

Home for the Holidays was directed by Jodie Foster and boasts an amazing cast, including but not limited to Holly Hunter, Anne Bancroft and Robert Downey Jr., still in his drug-haze days (but it serves him well here-- his performance is brilliant).  Even the smaller roles are filled by impressive talent, such as Cynthia Stevenson (always a personal favorite of mine), David Strathairn and Geraldine Chapman.  The film is based on a (very) short story, which I read for the first time last year.  I can assure you that this is an adaptation that far outshines the source material.  The actual source material here is real life and real families, something this movies captures better than most.

Oh yeah, there's also a giant dancing turkey and some kids in pilgrim hats. 

It’s a character-driven film with a simple story: single mom Claudia Larson is having a run of bad luck, losing her job on the same day she’s flying home (sans her teenager daughter, played by Claire Danes) for Thanksgiving.  Her family consists of her parents, eccentric Aunt Glady, her uptight sister Joanne (the aforementioned Cynthia Stevenson) and her gay wild child brother Tommy, who conveniently brings along a love interest for Claudia in the form of Leo Fish (Dylan McDermott).  They talk, they bicker, they eat, they fight some more.

I could literally just make a very long list of everything I love about this movie; there’s pretty much nothing I dislike about it save perhaps for some of Aunt Glady’s goofier moments (flatulence humor is never my thing, and let's leave it at that).  And, while funny, I’m not a huge fan of the movie’s most infamous moment, in which a turkey is accidentally thrust into Joanne’s lap.  This moment was played up for the trailer but that’s about as slapstick as things get and really isn’t indicative of the tone or the realness of the film.

Joanne gets turkeyed

The characters are perfectly balanced between their likability and flaws, just like your own family.  The character of Tommy, played by Robert Downey Jr., is one of the best portrayals of a gay guy I’ve seen on screen.  He’s funny and rambunctious without every lapsing into caricature but he also continually carries a certain sadness as he deals with his alternately accepting and painfully judgmental family members.  It’s interesting that such an honest portrayal of gay life came from a time when Jodie Foster was herself still awkwardly in the closet.  Luckily those days are officially over.

You can’t help but identify with at least one of the characters and/or see your own family in the Larsons.  I obviously related to Tommy for many years but this year, during our annual viewing of the movie, Nick pointed to me during a particular scene in which the character of Joanne has a mini freakout in the kitchen, spitting out “I can’t do everything!”  Ironically this is the scene we always teased my mom about.  She even owned a dress almost identical to the one Joanne wears in the movie (I must point out, for the record, that my mom does NOT share Joanne’s bitchery or homophobia).   The thing is that in my adult years I can now see my own similarity to both my mom and Joanne.  I guess it's inevitable that soon I’ll start relating to the elderly parents, or maybe Frank, the aging, hairball-spewing cat.

Joanne can't do everything and neither can I, so give us a break Holly Hunter

Stay tuned for Part 2, in which we examine the Thanksgiving factor (including the food!), the Christmas Creep and I get a little teary…