Review
Christmas culture
Culture
5 min read

Five Christmas films to revel in

Haunting, salving, teary, side-splitting and glorious - our recommended festive films.
Muppet characters dressed as Dickensian characters stand in a snowy street.
'Dickens made the fatal error of not putting Muppets into his story.'

‘Tis the season to be jolly and watching a good film with a cup of tea and a biscuit, while the freezing wind and rain whip at the window, can be one of the jolliest things you can do this year. The genre of ‘Christmas’ has only grown and grown over the decades, so if you’re stumped by the myriad of choices – often dreadful schlock that feature the word ‘Prince’ and ‘Christmas’ in the title superimposed over a picture of two ludicrously attractive people staring lovingly into each other’s eyes in a blizzard – take comfort in my Top 5 Christmas films. 

Note – this is my top 5. My personal top 5. These are not the ‘best’ Christmas films. You will not find It’s a Wonderful Life on here. It is glorious and lovely, but I saw it too late in life, and just don’t emotionally resonate with it as much as other Christmas films. I will not apologise. You will not see Die Hard. It is indeed and iconic action film, with a superb Alan Rickman performance, and it is indeed set at a Christmas party…but that isn’t enough to make it a ‘Christmas film’. I WILL NOT APOLOGISE! 

5. The Nightmare Before Christmas 

An animated scene shows a grandmother readng a story to children on her lap in front of a fire.

I would have put this film higher up the list if not for the fact that it straddles two seasons – All Hollows and Christmas. This film is iconic, however. The stop-motion animation gives the whole affair an extra haunting air. The music is superb – I still find myself humming What’s This every few weeks. The story is unhinged (what else do you expect from Tim Burton?) but to just the right degree, and behind the ghoulish setting and mad-cap story there is a good old-fashioned moral-of-the-story for children and adults alike to enjoy. Nightmare is a marvellous reminder of what it means to have the Christmas spirit, and the great thing about it is that it’s a film you can enjoy any time from October 31st! 

4. Bad Santa

A dishevelled looking Santa, without a beard, stares to the side.

Billy Bob Thornton is mesmerising as an ‘eating, drinking, sh***ing, f***ing Santa Claus’. This is not one for the kids! Thornton’s Willie T. Soke is a professional thief who, with his dwarf assistant, get jobs as a grotto Santa and Elf in shopping malls during the festive season so as to case the place and rob it…but this time is different. Soake’s degeneracy has become a serious liability, and his instability and vulgar sexual exploits catch the attention of John Ritter’s mall manager and Bernie Mac’s security chief. Soake is spiralling out of control, but perhaps a romantic relationship with Lauren Graham’s barmaid and a chance encounter with a vulnerable young boy (to whom Soake becomes the least appropriate father-figure) might just be his salvation, and teach him the spirit of Christmas. The script is jet-black funny, and all the performances are spot on – although this is entirely Thornton’s film to shine in. Lewd, rude, and crude, but with a heart of gold (deep down under all the effing and jeffing), this film is the perfect antidote for those who find the jollity of the festive season a little twee. 

3. The Holiday

A couple, wrapped up in winter clothes, flirt with each other.

This film has Jude Law in it. This ought to be enough to commend it to you, but I’ll go further. This film has Jude Law playing a jumper-wearing widowed single-dad, who can turn the humble napkin into a delightful children’s entertainment, and who gives smouldering glances across a crowded pub. Before you all rush out to watch it, let me finish the blurb. Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslett are two women, unlucky in love, who decide to swap homes for the Christmas holiday. Winslett is escaping a toxic infatuation and finds solace in a friendship with a nonagenarian scriptwriter from the Golden Age of Hollywood, and a possible romance with Jack Black (giving a genuinely restrained and enjoyable performance). Workaholic Diaz is desperate to learn how to switch-off, relax, and maybe give love a chance. She finds solace in…Jude Law’s many lovely jumpers and smouldering glances. This is not a film to be described but experienced. Its camp and frothy and silly, but its also just really lovely and gets the tears going every time. If my recommendation isn’t enough, listen to my wife – watch this film over Christmas!  

2. The Muppet Christmas Carol

Kermit, a frog talks to rats dressed as Victorian children.

It’s a well-known fact that you can’t improve upon the indominable prose of Charles Dickens…WRONG! Dickens made the fatal error of not putting Muppets into his story. Rizzo and Gonzo take on the role of narrators of the story, Kermit does a sparkling turn as Bob Cratchit, and Michael Cain stars as the best on screen iteration of Scrooge (go on, fight me on this!). It’s the well-worn story brought to life by glorious songs – every year I start to sing “Tis the season to be jolly and joyous” to myself – a side-splitting script, and a clear and tender reverence for the original story and its central message. I defy anyone, child or adult, to sit through to the end this wonderful film and not want to keep Christmas in their heart every day. If you don’t like this film then I can only guess that you’ll be visited by ‘Marley and Marley, WOOOOOOOOOOA’! 

1. Love Actually

A women rubs her eye, close to tears.

Richard Curtis is my favourite director. Every film of his, however flawed (and there a several flaws in Love Actually), is so warm-hearted and good-natured that I can’t help but love them. Love Actually is Curtis firing on all cylinder: a painfully funny script, an ensemble cast of Britain’s finest talent, and a score that plays your emotions like a fiddle. A series of interconnecting love stories – love found, love lost, unrequited love, misdirected love – playing out in the run-up to Christmas, this film will not fail to put a tear in your eye and smile on your face. At times it’s a little too ‘laddy’ – I’m looking at you American sexcapade storyline – and the fact that all these people live in gorgeous houses in Wandsworth in spite of doing no discernible work is infuriating, but the fact that it is number one on this list in spirt of this is mark of just how strong a film it is. The cast list alone puts it at the top: Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Alan Rickman, Liam Neeson, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Bill Nighy, Rowan Atkinson popping in for a bit…EMMA THOMPSON! The raw power of Emma Thompson quietly weeping as she listens to Joni Mitchell and contemplates the implosion of her marriage is stunning to behold. At its heart, it is a simple Richard Curtis film; it wants the viewer to relax in the beautiful spectacle of love, and to know that they are loved. I love Love Actually, and Love Actually loves me. 

EMMA THOMPSON! 

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Review
Attention
Culture
5 min read

Seeing slowly takes time

In a culture of immediacy there’s a lesson to be found in the art of Georgia O’Keeffe. Alex Hughes reviews a recent exhibition of her work.

Alex Hughes

Alex Hughes is Archdeacon of Cambridge in the Diocese of Ely.

A corner of an art gallery displays three pictures to one side and one to the other.
The Museum of Modern Art New York's Georgia O'Keeffe exhibition.
MoMA.

Over the past few months, the Museum of Modern Art in New York hosted a gorgeous exhibition devoted to the work of Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986). The exhibition’s title, “To see takes time,” comes from an account O’Keeffe gave of her creative impulse: 

‘Nobody sees a flower — really — it is so small — we haven’t time — and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time. If I could paint the flower exactly as I see it no one would see what I see because I would paint it small like the flower is small. … So I said to myself — I’ll paint what I see — what the flower is to me but I’ll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it.’ 

Despite O’Keeffe’s hopes, studies have shown that the average attention visitors give to gallery exhibits is between 15 and 30 seconds. Veteran art dealer Michael Findlay laments this attention deficit and urges the discipline of ‘seeing slowly’. Findlay argues that the best way to look at art is to strip away much of what we think we know or have been taught to think about it, and then give time to our eyes to search and absorb what they can see, and to our hearts and minds to experience and assimilate its effect. This parallels O’Keeffe’s process of patient looking, returning to the same subject again and again, to discern and refine whatever qualities seem most significant and worthy of depiction. 

It isn’t necessary to enumerate the contemporary contextual pressures and tendencies that militate against seeing slowly; suffice to say that we are immersed in a culture of immediacy, which expects the payoff from any investment to be quick and obvious. Not only does this affect our ability to appreciate art, but it also goes against much spiritual wisdom from the world’s religious traditions. Certainly, the Christian tradition of prayer would agree that to see spiritually takes time, like to have a friend in God takes time.  

All seeing is a matter of relationship, as John Berger wrote in a groundbreaking study of visual art:  

‘We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves.’  

Berger was particularly concerned about the way in which the ‘male gaze’ views the female form - an insight of enduring, urgent importance, which can be broadened to highlight the different characters of relational looking. In this regard, Martin Buber made a helpful distinction between an ‘I-It' mode of seeing, in which individuals treat others as objects, reducing them to mere things or instruments for their own purposes, and an ‘I-Thou’ mode, wherein people engage with each other as unique and sacred beings, recognizing the other’s inherent worth and treating them with reverence and respect. 

Simone Weil offered an allied perspective on the dignifying quality of a certain kind of seeing - ‘Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity’ - and went even further: 

‘Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love. … Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.’  

Weil’s writing is rich and seminal but also somewhat gnomic. What are the faith and love implied by attention, and how do they link to prayer? She doesn’t spell this out, but we might take a cue from Berger’s observation that,  

‘We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice.’  

Choosing to look at one thing rather than another is part of the generosity of attention. Of course, people may choose to look at anything, for any number of reasons; but the kind of slow seeing advised by O’Keeffe and Findlay seems to presuppose a valorisation - a decision or intuition that the subject in view is worth giving time to. There is a determination in this kind of seeing to seek the kind of presence that gives space for a true and authentic encounter: an ‘I-Thou’ connection. The fulfilment of this hope cannot be known in advance, so it is like an act of faith, and the impulse seems much like the desire of a lover. 

In a discussion of the detailed painting of some flowers, which are a very minor element in a much larger canvas, Alain de Botton remarks on the artist’s great care and devotion to the depiction of every detail, as if he has asked each flower, ‘What is your unique character? I want to know you as you really are.’ For de Botton, ‘This attitude towards a flower is moving because it rehearses, in a minor but vivid way, the kind of attention that we long to receive from, and which we hope to be able to give to, another human being.’ 

Though de Botton is avowedly not religious, his account of a human longing for attention, which others have elucidated in terms of a dignifying and deeply satisfying form of connection, resonates with what is often said by people of prayer. 

There are different forms of Christian prayer. Patterns of speaking to God in words of praise, confession, petition and thanksgiving are fairly well known, but there are also practices that respond to the biblical summons: ‘Wait for the lord … and he shall comfort your heart’; ‘Be still and know that I am God’. These Christian practices overlap with the meditative and contemplative traditions of other religions, and also feed into the emerging areligious exercise of mindfulness. It would be false to say that the aims and ends of different traditions are identical, but they offer a collective invitation to try a different way of seeing – a way of seeing that can help us to transcend the ‘I-It’ perspective, characterised by a sense of detachment and a focus on utility, and to move towards the cultivation of meaningful, mutual connections and a sense of interconnectedness with the world and other people … and perhaps with God too. 

 

References 

Elizabeth Turner and Marjorie P. Balge-Crozier in Georgia O’Keefe: The Poetry of Things (1999) 

Michael Findlay, Seeing Slowly: Looking at Modern Art (2017) 

Peter Berger, Ways of Seeing (1972) 

Martin Buber, I and Thou (English translation, 1937) 

Simon Weil, First and Last Notebooks (English translation, 1970) and Gravity and Grace (English translation, 1952) 

Alain de Botton, Art as Therapy (2013) 

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