American Gurls #2.5: Megan’s Favorite Holiday Movies
Carol is a holiday movie. Bridget Jones’ Diary is a holiday movie. Die Hard is not on this list.
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And now: Let’s get to the real reason we’re all here — making it through the holiday season without the help of three surprise ghosts interrupting our bean-counting to remind us of what truly matters.
*Jingle twinkle chime sounds*
The holiday season is here, with its heightened risk of cold and flu, rampant commercialism, and jarring cheer that, given a geopolitical situation reminiscent of the early days of the Iraq War, uh, well, tell ya what it feels weird!
When I was growing up, I was frequently tasked with writing my family’s Christmas letter. This was probably my first paid writing job now that I think about it, because in the later years — when it was less “precocious kid writes letter in effort to be helpful, film at 11” and more “oh shit will our 21-year-old get home from college in time to write the holiday letter after she sleeps in until noon and watches four hours of America’s Next Top Model in her pajamas” — my seasonal family newsgathering labor was compensated. My parents have always supported my decision to go into a field that has no money. Bless them. This is not true for most writers.
Each year, I’d ask everyone in our family — Mom, Dad, Little Brother — to share their personal highlights from the year, and then write a letter that hit just the right balance between making our overscheduled lives into something resembling a coherent narrative and also acknowledging that sentiments like “Peace on Earth and Good Will Toward Men” and glib holiday wishes felt tonally off if not offensively insincere amid the foreign policy — if you could even call it that — of the Bush II presidency.
That dissonance has been part of this time of year for me ever since. It’s absurd to feel like you have to go into credit card debt to show people you love them, as many Americans will. It’s nice to have a tree inside your house. It’s discordantly wonderful to listen to holiday songs that sound, through no fault of their own, just a little bit terrifying — “O Come Emanuel,” the Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s “Carol of the Bells,” “We Three Kings.” (Select lyrics: “Myrrh is mine; its bitter perfume. / Breathes a life of gathering gloom.” Sounds like a weird gift for a baby, Balthazar, but go off king. [SORRY FOR THIS JOKE, I AM TOO OLD TO BE MAKING IT.])
I also love watching holiday movies, even the ones that would be better off as community theater productions. But I think we can do better than debating whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie, and while Richard Curtis is probably a very nice person, Love Actually makes me feel like a grizzly bear: dead behind the eyes, prone to growling, and hungry for a snack. So here is a little holiday treat from Burbank Industries: the movies I like to watch this time of year. They are comfort watches for a variety of moods and tastes, because this time of year can be hard for so many people in so many ways, and we all deserve what respite we can find from the atmospheric rivers, doomscrolling, and early sunsets of winter — even if it’s just 90 minutes in the warm glow of a screen.
For A Very Todd Haynes Christmas: Carol
I love Christmas, but there’s a certain midcentury gloom I associate with the holiday season, the jarring juxtaposition of all things merry and bright with (a) the loss of the sun, (b) a reminder that another year is on its way out (memento mori, every one!), (c) pressure to consume even more in a country that already consumes too much! Denial is one approach to this potent mix of ennui and holiday magic, and it’s the route many of us take! But what works for me is just leaning into the “is that all there is” vibes and letting yourself feel them until they pass (and they will).
I suggest you do this by watching Carol, the beautiful, deeply sad love story directed by Todd Haynes working from a Patricia Highsmith novel, with Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett perfectly cast as star-crossed lovers Therese and Carol. I watch this movie less for the plot (though it exists! there is intrigue!) than for the feeling I get from everything in it: the moody, enthralling yet restrained score; the cinematography which is so gorgeous I want to live in it; and most of all, the period details: red nail polish and rounded coffee cups, silk pajamas and spiky holiday tinsel. Carol begins at Christmastime, it’s CALLED Carol, and it’s about facing the possibility of never really getting what you want, while also celebrating the miracle that is connecting with a true kindred spirit. To me, this is Christmas! And cinema.
Similarly great: Carol stands alone, but for another deeply committed, cerebral-but-not-cold period piece, Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers, set at a Massachusetts boys’ boarding school over Christmas break in 1970, fits the bill. Like Carol, it’s from a director we wouldn’t normally associate with Christmas movies, and deeply attentive in its depiction of the era it’s set in. Even its trailer and studio logos reflect this. Also like Carol, it explores a fleeting, holiday ennui-infused meeting of kindred spirits: a pretentious classics teacher, the school’s head cook, and a smart but messy teenager abandoned by his mother and stepfather to spend the holidays at school. All are grieving different losses, and all will worm their way into your heart by the film’s end. See it in a theater.
For a Body Horror Masterpiece: Home Alone
For a movie intended for children, Home Alone sure contains a lot of body horror. I can feel a visceral secondhand pang and uncomfortable laughter coming on just thinking about the scene on the stairs. (If you’ve seen it, you know the one, and I am sorry to remind you of it!) And yet, that’s part of Home Alone’s charm. It is a PG-rated movie that was written by John Hughes, and contains themes of child abandonment, home invasion, and family estrangement. What? How? Well, because it’s a relic of the 1990s, when dark themes and humor seemed folded into every kids’ movie ever. We did not yet have the glorious aesthetics of Pixar, but we did have John Candy as a member of a polka band, Catherine O’Hara as an opulent mom who FORGOT HER CHILD ON THE WAY TO PARIS, and the most inept criminals to ever appear on-screen, Marv and Harry, played by Joe Pesci and A+ kid-movie villain Daniel Stern. And of course Macaulay Caulkin as Kevin McCallister, the most creative and surprisingly cold-blooded 8-year-old ever to appear on screen, in that rare child-star performance: the one where, watching decades later, you know the actor grew up to be reasonably well-adjusted, and so the horrors remain in-universe, as they should. 🙏
Similarly great: The Santa Clause. The divorced dads at Denny’s scene is a text much too rich to be in a children’s movie. And yet it is!