Christmas, Again

The reviews I've read reminded me of a couple of things. While working at a national retail chain I would read books on my breaks in the break room. I was reading a biography and when I told a fellow worker what I was reading she said, "You read non fiction, isn't it boring". Well, it is not. This film is very much like a documentary but it is not and that seems to me that why it is so brilliant. John Lennon once was asked what he thought of people who wrote bad reviews of Beatles music. As I recall, his answer was something like, "I'm just bloody well sorry they don't get it". Watch it and you be the judge...I really hope you "get it". It is a brilliant film and I'll certainly recommend it to people who grow tired of "cookie cutter" Christmas movies.

This film definitely wasn't festive but instead a pointed slice of reality. It was a bit boring and very depressing, and definitely low budget. It isn't a bad film, just be prepared for not a lot to happen.

It was really just a snapshot of a guy who is for the most part by himself selling Christmas trees on the streets of New York City for the last few weeks leading up to Christmas morning.

We learn that he was lamenting a very hard breakup of a past serious relationship. He meets a girl, who also seems to have a ton of problems of her own. His life is boring, mundane, and seeming at the moment, painful.

As I pondered the movie, it became clear that the writer and producer wanted us to realize that Christmas is not wonderful and magical for many. It is a time that seems to highlight and magnify how lonely and miserable some people can be. Christmas can really stink for some...if Christmas comes or not, you are still broke, you are still lonely, the sting of that breakup or a struggling marriage is still real, your cancer is still there, your emotional struggles did not leave...

The point is...people are broken regardless if we have a December 25th this year or not.

While there is value in creating cinema that captures the everyday human experience, Christmas, Again overshoots that mark by being so real that it's boring. I'm not saying that every film needs to fill their spare moments with car chases, drug use, and automatic weapons, but at the very least, films should tell stories about interesting characters. It's too bad, considering the idea of a disaffected Christmas tree salesman named Noel (Kentucker Audley) who slowly recovers his holiday spirit could make a great story. I suppose what makes this film aggravating to watch is the fact that there were so many opportunities to expand the narrative beyond the many extensive close-ups of Noel looking angsty or wistful. For example, the unconscious mystery woman (Hannah Gross) whom Noel rescues from freezing to death on a park bench would have been a good avenue to explore. Instead, the film shows us a series of fractured scenes that hint at the vague possibility of a love story between them. It's possible that the film is ambiguous in order to encourage the audience to form their own conclusions, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but that sort of thing requires effort from an audience—and we don't like spending effort figuring out characters that we don't really care about. –Alex Springer

Rarely a film come along that captures the grit and nuance of a city's unique personality. "Christmas, Again" presents a touching drama that extends beyond the mainstream glitz and holiday glamor most associate with New York City during the most busy and commercial of holidays. Like its spiritual predecessors "Chop Shop" & "Man, Push, Cart," "Christmas, Again" peeks into one of New York's largely unknown indigenous communities in a near documentary fashion to tell an intimate story of love that viewers will embrace; regardless of their city or origin. There are plenty of films which cheaply capitalize on the Big Apple's Christmas draw; the same draw that brings tourists to the city by the thousands. But, few tourists venture away from Times Square or Rockefeller Center to truly get to know the depth of New York City. Similarly, I encourage viewers to venture into "Christmas, Again" and enjoy an intimate view of Christmas in New York not often seen.

Just saying the title of Charles Poekel's directorial debut sparks a sadness inside a person, one that they've never experienced perhaps. Imagine getting to the point in life where you look upon a calendar, and due to poor circumstance, a failed relationship, a family death, or some other unforeseen situation, your mood for the holiday season is dour and sad and all you can do is simply sigh and say, yes, "Christmas, again."

Such is life for our lead character Noel, played by independent writer/director/actor Kentucker Audley, who has also worked with Joe Swanberg in the past, a Christmas tree salesman who is currently spending the holidays working through fond memories of a woman with whom he has just broken up. Now, Christmas is just an irritating force begging him to be happy and cheerful when he feels anything but. Through all this pain, Noel finds some sort of evident solace and comfort in schlepping Christmas trees to set up, deliver, cut down, or decorate, to the point where he seems to try and find every little thing wrong with his employees' actions because he would like to do what they're doing again.

Noel fights through the hurt, and is elevated by the people that come to his Christmas tree farm, the kind of quirky people that are just quirky enough to be believable, doing things like talking to their significant others on the phone whilst purchasing a tree, demanding that the salesman pose next to the tree for a picture to try and give an estimate on the height, and so forth. One day, Noel winds up finding Lydia (Hannah Gross) asleep on a park bench, missing her purse, a shoe, and clearly worn from a night of drunken escapades. She works to add some sporadic spice into his life upon leaving him rather abruptly the night after he finds her sleeping on a park bench. In the meantime, Noel slaves away at his job, working the tireless night shifts, guided and uplifted by the optimism brought upon him by lottery tickets and energy shots in order to maintain some semblance of sanity.

Noel is a fascinating character just by the way Poekel chooses to define and show him. In a screen writing sense, Poekel doesn't set up these compromising or very revealing scenarios that allow us to see Noel in a way that over-personalizes him or makes his motivations and emotions all too clear to us. Instead, Poekel prefers to have Christmas, Again function as a very meditative film, focused on intimate closeups of Noel's bearded face, wide eyes, and constantly overworked face. These traits alone personalize him more than most screen writing tactics could, and Poekel keeps Christmas, Again very observant in this manner. In seventy-seven minutes, rarely does a frame exist that Noel isn't in, so the result is a film that's focused on this sole subject to the point where his world becomes fairly clear, or at least extractable, without the need of overly obvious storytelling.

But, let's not forget, Noel wouldn't be the character he is without Kentucker Audley, an uncommonly natural performer with a gift at understated acting. Audley is a gifted performer thanks to his ability to take any character and, regardless of he or someone else is the writer, work with such a character to at least give him some kind of thesis or idea for with the audience can concern themselves. As stated, Audley's face says more than any writing Poekel could do, and his naturalism recalls the early days of mumblecore, where lowlit settings, naturalistic acting, and low budgets were as normal as believably eccentric, last-minute visitors to a Christmas tree farm.

Admittedly slight but a quietly observant look at functional loneliness and how sadness doesn't have to be a thoroughly exhausted theme in a film by way of orchestration and mawkish circumstance, Poekel's Christmas, Again hits all the right notes for a delightful anti-Christmas film. In a more cynical, but broader, dissection of the film, I find that the film looks at the lie of the season of Christmas; is it really the happiest time of the year, or a season that forces those lonely, unsatisfied, or hurting to look at themselves and only feel more of an outsider or a downer in the world. Personal empathy and just an understanding of human condition allows me to laud the film more on that level than any other one I can conceive, and that's a real accomplishment for a holiday film in and of itself.

Starring: Kentucker Audley and Hannah Gross. Directed by: Charles Poekel.