Happy Christmas is available now on iTunes/OnDemand and hits theaters July 25, 2014 from Magnolia Pictures.
If you’ll all indulge me, I’d like to start this review of the new Joe Swanberg film Happy Christmas by talking about block lettering.
Because the particular shade of yellow and the particular font they use for the opening credits put me in mind of films of the seventies.
And it makes a certain kind of sense: Another term used to describe the genre I refer to as mumblecore (which Joe Swanberg is essentially the patron saint of and which, as a side note, is not a genre description the artists classified as such tend to embrace. But on the other hand, fuck you artists; you don’t get a say in these things) is ‘Slackavetes’, riffing on the works of the late John Cassavetes.
First of all, the obvious: that really is the dumbest fucking portmanteau in the history of such things. I mean, it doesn’t rhyme. It’s not even a near rhyme. And ‘slacker’? We’re going with ‘slacker’ in this day and age? It’s not clever. It’s not fun to say. It’s not fun to write and it looks just hideous on the printed page. But worst of all, it’s not even accurate: the tempestuous, hysterical emotional theatricality of his films is pretty much the exact opposite of what mumblecore is trying to do, which eschews hyperbolics for quiet observation and a more oblique and interior portrayal of psychological realities.
My point is this: Fuck you, Guy That Came Up With ‘Slackavetes’. Your genre naming privileges are hereby revoked.
(It’s also that Happy Christmas is a good movie, but I tried to write that earlier and the above it what came out…)
Happy Christmas, then, seems like a throwback to the kinds of movie that actually would have been considered mainstream back in the seventies, when people went to movies to watch other people interact, and all the dragons and robots were metaphorical. There’s a new perspective gaining traction on the internet, one that posits the 70s as being an irrefutably terrible time for cinema because it was past the age of matinee idols, but before the age of CGI; so instead of explosions, people were forced to watch Dustin Hoffman and Elliott Gould talk about their feelings and shit.
Did I just make that up? Maybe. But you know as well as I do, gentle reader, that even as my fingers hit the keyboard to type all this out that somewhere on a lonely message board somewhere in the darkest wilds of the internet, a seed has taken root. A seed that will someday bloom into a towering tree of provocative, aggregate op-ed thinkpieces. And then, when the time is right and the proper season has shown its face, revisionist clickbait will fall from the sky like so many Rotten Tomatoes…
If I’m even more discursive than usual (and I’m not; statistically speaking I’m exactly as discursive as ever), it’s because I’m an unabashed fan of Joe Swanberg, and it’s always been a struggle for me to figure out how to sell him to people. For an artist as patently eccentric as he is, it’s difficult for me to condense my feelings into anything like the perfect movie poster pull quote I feel he deserves.
Which is perhaps an odd thing for a critic to say, but I’m just keepin’ it real: I’m super in the tank for that guy. He’s relentlessly fascinating to watch as an artist, because it never seems intuitive or controlled with him. Because of his method of filmmaking, he can explore a concept from multiple angles, creating multiple works out of a single line of thinking. And somehow managing to find the human-sized grace notes in each succeeding version of the story he tells.
He’s restless in his desire to push past what he’s done before and find new ways of communicating his ideas, which, as out there as they can sometimes be, always default to a very human, character driven place. He’s as transparent in his evolution and his questing as anybody in the history of cinema, and it’s electrifying to watch.
After the frankly jaw-dropping flashpoint that was Nights And Weekends, Swanberg’s insanely prolific oeuvre has essentially split between his relationship dramas (Uncle Kent, Marriage Material) and his more experimental musings on the effects and traumas, both minor and major, of being involved in filmmaking (Silver Bullets, 24 Exposures).
Happy Christmas is most emphatically perched on the relationship side of things, and continues on the path set by his most mainstream film, 2013’s Drinking Buddies. Again, we have professional actor types mixing it up in the lo-fi, makeshift, workaday world of Joe Swanberg, tricking you into thinking it’s a normal movie.
I mean, it’s even shot on film and everything!
(Which, considering the state of the industry, has to be Swanberg kind of fucking with us.)
There’s not much story to parse here: After a bad breakup, Jenny (Anna Kendrick) moves to Chicago to stay with her brother Jeff (played by Swanberg himself) and his wife Kelly (Melanie Lynskey, blessedly using her actual accent, because Swanberg KEEPS IT REAL!), a housewife and aspiring writer whose new motherhood is getting in the way of her creative dreams.
Jenny quickly proves herself to be clinging to the youthful irresponsibility that was, once upon a time, the defining trait of all Joe Swanberg characters. Getting blackout drunk at a party on her very first night in town and having to be picked up by Jeff is a bad start, but it also gives her the opportunity to meet potential new boyfriend Kevin (Mark Webber), who comes in to babysit at the last minute when Jenny (who had promised to do it) proves unable.
Once we’ve seen her at her worst, the movie settles into a casual rhythm as Jenny tries to make up for her bad start, dedicating herself to helping Kelly start writing again.
(Which is one way of saying ‘yes; this movie does in fact pass the Bechdel Test…)
As someone who liked but didn’t love Drinking Buddies (which seemed like a glossier, more professional take on themes he had already outgrown to a certain extent), I was worried by the first couple of minutes of the film. There were, as I recall, three songs in the first five minutes of the movie, and the house that the movie takes place in is distracting in its ornate clutter. It was oppressive in a way that had me concerned that Swanberg had maybe lost the plot with the lure of the new freedoms of bigger budgeted indie filmmaking.
But much as Jenny got off on the wrong foot and managed to recover, the film revealed itself to be a wise and entertaining exploration of family and creativity.
Now, I’m a big proponent of Joe Swanberg for his artistic, experimental merits, but that’s a personal thing. For the casual viewer, the true joy of his work is not in the cinematography, or the plot twists, but in the simple act of seeing people be people. His highly improvisatory methodology, which can sometimes come off like a neat party trick with nonprofessionals, works wonders with big shot Hollywood types.
Anna Kendrick and Melanie Lynskey are the big names here (though Lena Dunham has a small, funny role as Jenny’s best friend), and they’re a straight up joy to watch. Kendrick embodies both the sweet, well-meaning charmer and the hot mess and makes them seem like part of a fully realized whole. You know it’s not the first time she’s screwed up, and you know it won’t be the last, but you can also see why she gets so many second chances. Plus, her aborted makeout scene with Webber is note perfect in its comic awkwardness.
She’s good, of course, but she’s not the whole story. Melanie Lynskey, who is always good, might be the best I’ve ever seen her here. There’s something so endearing and heartbreaking about the way she meekly deflects any attempt to compliment her looks or talent, and she makes the self-flagellating guilt she feels over her occasional resentment of her child for stalling her writerly ambitions manifest in her every line and gesture.
Plus, she shares an easy chemistry with Swanberg, whose general charm and affability (and relatively diminished role in the proceedings) make up for his lack of more technical acting chops.
But perhaps the best performance of all is Jude Swanberg as the toddler. I’m not even joking when I say this might be the best child performance I’ve ever seen. Somehow, in what I’m assuming is a wholly unscripted film, Jude (who can’t be more than 2 years old, if that… I’m bad at carbon dating children) does the exact perfect thing from the exact perfect angle in every single scene he’s in. It is quite simply astonishing.
The movie coasts on such good vibes and easy chemistry, with such a notable lack of conflict, that I actually fooled myself into believing that we were just going to ride this wave of good feeling right on to the end.
But that’s not the story Happy Christmas is telling. It started as the story of a screwup, and so must it finish as one. While the rapidity of the relapse into bad habits wasn’t as smooth as it could have been, I can’t argue that it’s unrealistic. Take it from me, an expert on these matters: sometimes, people just do stupid shit.
And as always, and to Joe Swanberg’s never-ending credit, the actual resolution of the movie isn’t the drama bomb it could have been. It never strains to make things seem any worse, or any more dramatic than they need to be.
(That might make it sound dull or somehow anti-climactic, but in fact, quite the opposite is true: anything else would have felt “wrong”.)
There’s a pleasing ambiguity to the final moments. Just as it’s not the story of a screwup redeeming themselves and making good, it’s not the story of a screwup crossing the point of no return and committing to being a trainwreck. It’s just another speedbump on the way to becoming an actual person.
And as far as the experience of watching a speedbump unfold goes, I found this one extremely funny and extremely human, and highly recommend it.
Which is perhaps not the best way to phrase things if you want to be a poster pull quote, but there you go: I’m kind of a screwup myself…
