>>REVIEW
JOYEUX NOEL
STARRING Diane Kruger and Benno Furman
DIRECTED BY Christian Carion
Opens Friday, April 21
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Fought over 90 years ago, the First World War’s nightmarish trench warfare has been a constant fixture in cinema from its earliest days. Fighting for mere feet of land at a time, life (and more likely death) in the trenches remains one of the most powerful antiwar visuals one can present.
Writer-director Christian Carion’s Joyeux Noël takes no side other than that of peace. Following the parallel lives of the opposing forces fighting for a tiny piece of farmland, Carion gives equal time to the German, French and Scottish troops stationed within metres of one another. There is no blame placed or villains – every soldier’s got a woman who loves him back at home and everyone prays to the same God. The hostile stupidity of war is Carion’s only antagonist.
After a brutal day of fighting, the Scottish mark Christmas Eve by drinking whisky and singing mournful bagpipe hymns, while the Germans decorate trees with tinsel and candles. Overhearing one another’s songs, the bagpipes accompany opera singer Nikolaus Sprink (Benno Fürmann), singing "O Come All Ye Faithful" as he crosses enemy lines, Christmas tree held aloft. Within moments, a ceasefire is called for Christmas Eve and the Scottish, French and Germans forces join together on the battlefield for midnight mass.
There is deep irony in Carion’s trenches (Daniel Brühl’s German commander Horstmayer is Jewish and nighttime flare ammunitions are used as fireworks), and an uneasy humanity rests over the proceedings as the commanders in charge agree to clearing the dead from the fields for burial. French mingle with German and Scottish, reclaiming their fallen countrymen, and the world appears to have reached an impasse of momentary reason.
Carion’s occasional tendencies towards melodrama are most often alleviated by a humanist view that overcomes the contrivance that war films uniformly carry. After Horstmayer’s suggestion of meeting up with the French Lieutenant Audebert (Guillaume Canet) after Germany’s proposed taking of Paris, Audebert responds simply, "You don’t have to invade Paris to drop by for a drink." Horstmayer’s return of Audebert’s hospitality braves execution for treason, in effect saving the lives of his enemies.
An impromptu game of soccer (perhaps the most infamous recorded event of the Truce itself) reflects the futility of the war games played on the front lines. It’s these simplest of actions that carry Joyeux Noël above and beyond standard war film fare, asking what’s worth fighting for.
The return of bloodshed is one forced upon those stationed in these trenches by the faceless superiors far away from the actual fighting. Joyeux Noël’s biggest question is worth serious consideration, given the current state of the world and its wartorn areas. Nearly a century on, where are we now – on the verge of peaceful togetherness, or back in the trenches? |
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