Review by Sam Moffitt
Christmas always brings lists. Lists of gifts to buy, cards to mail, lists of things accomplished during the year past and resolutions for the coming New Year. And, always, lists of everybody’s favorite Christmas movies. Some are so very well known; It’s a Wonderful Life, several versions of A Christmas Carol, (The version with Alistair Sim is my favorite) Miracle on 34th Street, A Christmas Story (24 hours of it every year on TBS!) National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, one of the newer ones that I enjoy, Bad Santa. Classics each and every one, and then bad one’s like Christmas with the Kranks.
But here’s a more recent film about Christmas that deserves to be more well known and ought to be revisited every year. Joyeux Noel (French for Merry Christmas) was directed by Christian Carion and released in 2005. It recieved got no theatrical release in this country that I am aware of and has very little cult following, to my knowledge. Yet it tells the incredible true story of a spontaneous truce and stand down that happened on Christmas Eve 1914 at the very beginning of World War One, also known as the War to End All Wars (Yeah! Right!)
A true ensemble Joyeux Noel tells of French (Guillaume Canet as Lt. Audebert) Scottish (Alex Ferns, Capt. Gordon) and German (Daniel Bruhl, Lt. Horstmayer) officers who come to an agreement for all men under their command to stand down, cease fire and get some small measure of relief from a miserable war on Christmas Eve, 1914.
The inspiration comes from a German soldier who left his career as an opera singer (Benno Furman as Nicholaus Sprink) who sings Oh Come All Ye Faithful, in the original German of course, from the middle of no man’s land between the two sides in that barbaric conflict. The Scottish troops give him a round of applause leading to the three commanders meeting and deciding on the truce.
A Scottish chaplain (Gary Lewis as Palmer) says Mass for all the troops assembled. The men share what little they have with each other, the Germans have chocolate (of course!) while the French have wine (naturally!) and wouldn’t you know the Scottish have bag pipes with them which they play at the slightest provocation. They argue over a stray cat as tow which side he belongs to, the French or the German. The cat shows no preference and enjoys the company of all the soldiers present.
They look at photos of each other’s wives and girl friends and joke about sex as men always do when they are far from home and in uniform. The problem is they get to know each other too well and have a very hard time picking up their weapons and going back to the war. The truce extends to Christmas day when they choose up sides and play football while the three officers get to know each other only too well.
And the truce continues the day after Christmas (Boxing Day in the UK) when the Germans come walking across no man’s land to talk to the French again, a scene that brought me to tears, and tell their sworn enemies that their position is about to be shelled by artillery fire and why don’t they and the Scots come over and sit with the Germans in their trench line until the shelling ceases?
The three armies sit together and then the Scots officer makes the suggestion that, tit for tat, the German position will now be shelled and shouldn’t they move to the other trench line?
Of course this starts all sorts of complications in the chain of command. How can you have a decent war if the two sides are getting friendly and don’t want to kill each other any more? The French officer comes from a military family and his Father gives him a lecture on Duty, Honor and Country before relieving him of his command. The Scots officer is also relieved of command and his men reassigned to other units who are more in tune with the program of killing instead of playing football. And the Germans? The entire unit is reassigned to the Eastern Front. The last words from their Division Commander: “hope you’re as friendly with the Russians as you are with the French and the God Damn Scottish”.
The Scottish Chaplain is likewise defrocked by his Monsignor and told he did a very Un-Christian thing by giving Mass to the Enemy. He tries to defend himself as doing exactly what a Christian is supposed to do, Forgive and not Judge, but of course that helps him not at all.
This movie is a heart breaker. Having served in the military, four years regular Navy (in peacetime) I can understand the reluctance of these guys to pick up a gun and shoot at people you don’t even know and who have done you no personal harm. During my time at sea we used to see the Russians every time we went to the Mediterranean . Some times their ships would get so close we could see their rank and insignia, who had a mustache and whose shirt tail was hanging out. They looked like fine fellows to me, I found out years later when I got to know some Russians, that they ARE fine fellows! I had no argument with them but the Cold War was still in full swing, I was on active duty from 1975 to 1979 and had no interest in combat what so ever.
Joyeux Noel is a fine Christmas movie, which illustrates what Christmas is supposed to be all about, Peace and Goodwill, to All Men, no exceptions! It is also one of the greatest of Anti-War movies, easily the equal of All Quiet on the Western Front, Wooden Crosses, Paths of Glory (these are all about WWI, any one see a pattern here?)
It is also wonderful to see a war movie in which the USA is not present, not even mentioned. We did not enter that war until 1917, when it was almost over. Here it is early in the war, the French and Scots do not even wear helmets yet. The French are wearing bright red and blue uniforms and everyone appears reasonably clean and healthy. All that would change, World War One took the lives of 9 million men, devolved into the dirtiest and most miserable affair and resolved nothing. It lead directly to World War Two and an even bigger misery visited on the human race.
The DVD has a making of documentary and several versions of the theatrical trailer. We learn that the French production crew wanted accurate period detail, the uniforms and weapons are genuine. Even more heart breaking, the entire movie is taken from letters and diaries written by men who served in all three Armies. And we learn that truces broke out every Christmas after that and that fraternization was considered a problem on both sides of the trenches.
Even more accurately, the officers and men are all very young. This is not like an American World War Two movie where the army appears to be made up of middle aged men. The French officer, especially well played by Guillaume Canet , looks like a little boy playing at being a soldier, his uniform and cap appear too big for him, maybe a deliberate choice by the film makers to emphasize his innocence.
And the biggest irony, here is a film made by the French, twice invaded by the Germans, which makes every effort to be fair to the Germans. I challenge anyone to watch Joyeux Noel without crying, it is that powerful and moving a statement that war fare is not a natural condition for men to be in and that given a chance to know the ‘enemy’ makes it that much harder to pull that trigger. This is a movie that should be seen by every man, woman and child on this planet, but many people will pass it by because it is partly subtitled. Still it brightened my last three Christmas, I hope it brightens yours and gives hope for the future. I’ll be watching it again on Christmas Eve, I hope you will give it a look, and I wish a very Merry Christmas to all!
