Christmas is just around the corner and, as always, the inevitable arrival of the season is marked by the appearance on streaming services of cookie-cutter films full of high jinks, Santa suits and all’s well that ends well sentimental aphorisms that are deemed fun for all ages. For the rest of us here are three Christmas-related films serving as reminders that even as the year draws to a close, bad, sad and eerie things don’t just stop happening, regardless of the gold baubles and strings of silver tinsel.
THE ARTHOUSE ESSENTIAL
Mon Oncle Antoine — YouTube
If ever there was an award for the greatest anti-Christmas movie, Canadian director Claude Jutra’s darkdrama would win it hands down. However, the story of Jutra himself casts a shadow that may be too dark for many to want to watch it.
Released in 1971, the film is set in the bleak and unforgiving world of the 1940s asbestos mining region in northern Quebec, just before the 1949 miner’s strike that ushered in the area’s pivotal Quiet Revolution that led to the secularisation of French Canada and the institution of social welfare policies.
Benoit (Jacques Ganon), a teenager living in rural Quebec, works for his uncle Antoine (Jean Duceppe) who runs a general store in a small town with his wife, and has a side job as an undertaker.
On a freezing Christmas Eve, Benoit and Uncle Antoine find themselves trekking to fetch the body of a local young man to prepare for his family before the funeral. Things take a terrible turn on their way home, with the teenager and his drunken uncle facing a series of hard-hitting revelations.
Hailed as the greatest film ever to be made in Quebec and regarded by many as one of the finest Canadian films, there’s an added level of unease to watching it now, in the light of its director’s horrific story.
Jutra was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s in the 1980s, when he was in his 50s. His body was found in the St Lawrence River in 1987, the result of suicide by drowning. That may have been the tragic end to a sad story, but fate and Jutra’s dark secrets had other plans.
Celebrated for years after his death as a pioneer of the Quebec cinema movement — awards and streets were named in his honour — Jutra’s reputation was dealt a fatal blow in 2016 when a book by a Canadian journalist alleged that Jutra was a paederast and that his “proclivities were known by many in the industry”, but wilfully ignored. Within a day of the revelations, the awards and streets named after him were renamed.
Still, the film that made his name remains a singular and powerful antidote to Christmas cheer and a prime example of great art made by a monstrous and deeply troubled man.
Trailer:
THE STONE-COLD CLASSIC
The Snowman — YouTube
Call me sentimental, but I grew up with, and have always had a special place for, the work of British illustrator Raymond Briggs. In addition, the evergreen bittersweet animated adaptation of his book The Snowman, with its David Bowie cameo introduction, remains one of my favourite cinematic Christmas tales.
Released in 1982 and a British festive season staple ever since, the film directed by Diane Johnson turns Briggs’ bestselling 1978 wordless picture book into a beautifully animated 26-minute fable about the fleeting wonders of childhood imagination and how we often regret losing them in adulthood.
James, a young boy from Brighton, builds a snowman on Christmas Eve and at midnight tiptoes downstairs to find that his creation has, magically, come alive. Boy and snowman take a flying journey across England and up to the North Pole to meet Father Christmas. When James awakes, his magical friend has inevitably melted, but not before leaving him a reminder that it wasn’t all just a dream.
Trailer:
THE DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH
The Dead — YouTube
The final film directed by Hollywood Golden Age legend John Huston was adapted by his son Tony from the James Joyce short story and stars his daughter Anjelica.
Set on an icy January night in Dublin, the events focus on an epiphany at the townhouse of a pair of spinster sisters. As the guests talk and reminisce, matters take an uncomfortable turn when one of them realises his wife may still hold feelings for a dead young man from her youth, and for whose death she still feels responsible.
Directed from a wheelchair, the then 80-year-old Huston still displayed his talent for setting scenes and guiding actors that had defined his career.
The film has become a cult classic and is hailed by many as one of Huston’s finest works.
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