Christmas, Again

While there is value in creating cinema that captures the everyday human experience, Christmas, Again overshoots that mark by being so real that it's boring. I'm not saying that every film needs to fill their spare moments with car chases, drug use, and automatic weapons, but at the very least, films should tell stories about interesting characters. It's too bad, considering the idea of a disaffected Christmas tree salesman named Noel (Kentucker Audley) who slowly recovers his holiday spirit could make a great story. I suppose what makes this film aggravating to watch is the fact that there were so many opportunities to expand the narrative beyond the many extensive close-ups of Noel looking angsty or wistful. For example, the unconscious mystery woman (Hannah Gross) whom Noel rescues from freezing to death on a park bench would have been a good avenue to explore. Instead, the film shows us a series of fractured scenes that hint at the vague possibility of a love story between them. It's possible that the film is ambiguous in order to encourage the audience to form their own conclusions, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but that sort of thing requires effort from an audience—and we don't like spending effort figuring out characters that we don't really care about. –Alex Springer

What a lovely, heartfelt film. The reason it works so well is because, as always, not forcing any emotion is the way to go. It's devoid of any silly contrivances and everything because of that feels and sounds realistic. The lead actor is pretty great. I reckon this must have been a difficult role to cast because it's so reliant on silence, and the actor is able to infuse the film with charm and emotion without ever feeling like he is trying. It's probably one of the best Christmas films I have ever seen, and definitely deserves to be seen by a much larger audience. Definitely recommended for anyone who wants something real and very relevant.

Just saying the title of Charles Poekel's directorial debut sparks a sadness inside a person, one that they've never experienced perhaps. Imagine getting to the point in life where you look upon a calendar, and due to poor circumstance, a failed relationship, a family death, or some other unforeseen situation, your mood for the holiday season is dour and sad and all you can do is simply sigh and say, yes, "Christmas, again."

Such is life for our lead character Noel, played by independent writer/director/actor Kentucker Audley, who has also worked with Joe Swanberg in the past, a Christmas tree salesman who is currently spending the holidays working through fond memories of a woman with whom he has just broken up. Now, Christmas is just an irritating force begging him to be happy and cheerful when he feels anything but. Through all this pain, Noel finds some sort of evident solace and comfort in schlepping Christmas trees to set up, deliver, cut down, or decorate, to the point where he seems to try and find every little thing wrong with his employees' actions because he would like to do what they're doing again.

Noel fights through the hurt, and is elevated by the people that come to his Christmas tree farm, the kind of quirky people that are just quirky enough to be believable, doing things like talking to their significant others on the phone whilst purchasing a tree, demanding that the salesman pose next to the tree for a picture to try and give an estimate on the height, and so forth. One day, Noel winds up finding Lydia (Hannah Gross) asleep on a park bench, missing her purse, a shoe, and clearly worn from a night of drunken escapades. She works to add some sporadic spice into his life upon leaving him rather abruptly the night after he finds her sleeping on a park bench. In the meantime, Noel slaves away at his job, working the tireless night shifts, guided and uplifted by the optimism brought upon him by lottery tickets and energy shots in order to maintain some semblance of sanity.

Noel is a fascinating character just by the way Poekel chooses to define and show him. In a screen writing sense, Poekel doesn't set up these compromising or very revealing scenarios that allow us to see Noel in a way that over-personalizes him or makes his motivations and emotions all too clear to us. Instead, Poekel prefers to have Christmas, Again function as a very meditative film, focused on intimate closeups of Noel's bearded face, wide eyes, and constantly overworked face. These traits alone personalize him more than most screen writing tactics could, and Poekel keeps Christmas, Again very observant in this manner. In seventy-seven minutes, rarely does a frame exist that Noel isn't in, so the result is a film that's focused on this sole subject to the point where his world becomes fairly clear, or at least extractable, without the need of overly obvious storytelling.

But, let's not forget, Noel wouldn't be the character he is without Kentucker Audley, an uncommonly natural performer with a gift at understated acting. Audley is a gifted performer thanks to his ability to take any character and, regardless of he or someone else is the writer, work with such a character to at least give him some kind of thesis or idea for with the audience can concern themselves. As stated, Audley's face says more than any writing Poekel could do, and his naturalism recalls the early days of mumblecore, where lowlit settings, naturalistic acting, and low budgets were as normal as believably eccentric, last-minute visitors to a Christmas tree farm.

Admittedly slight but a quietly observant look at functional loneliness and how sadness doesn't have to be a thoroughly exhausted theme in a film by way of orchestration and mawkish circumstance, Poekel's Christmas, Again hits all the right notes for a delightful anti-Christmas film. In a more cynical, but broader, dissection of the film, I find that the film looks at the lie of the season of Christmas; is it really the happiest time of the year, or a season that forces those lonely, unsatisfied, or hurting to look at themselves and only feel more of an outsider or a downer in the world. Personal empathy and just an understanding of human condition allows me to laud the film more on that level than any other one I can conceive, and that's a real accomplishment for a holiday film in and of itself.

Starring: Kentucker Audley and Hannah Gross. Directed by: Charles Poekel.

The storytelling and direction seemed a bit clumsy, and somewhat amateurish. However, the main character was very believable, and I felt like I was seeing a real person, not an actor. But we never find out much at all about his background, or why or how he lost his former relationship. And the story never really develops much until late in the movie. We also never learn anything about Lydia's background, either, other than that she lives with some guy she isn't well-suited for.

The title says so much about the content and message in this film! "Christmas, again!", don't we all feel this way? Christmas again and again and again with it's perpetual message of peace & joy that we all know doesn't exist. It's a time of year our culture celebrates and 99% of us feel it is something we must do because it is expected of us.

Director/writer Charles Poekel brings to the screen the story of 'Noel' once again selling Christmas trees, wreaths, lights on a corner in NYC, something he has been doing for years. We see his perfunctory interaction with the customers and his co-worker. He is so bored and frustrated he keeps his pills (pain killers maybe) in an advent calender! Then an incident and act of compassion by Noel brings Lydia into his life. Noel may be bored and frustrated with his life but he is an honest and truly nice person. Lydia is a mysterious character as she is obviously at a period in her life in which focus and direction have been lost. She leaves but returns to thank Noel for his kindness. This turns out to be both good and bad for Noel. He is attracted to her and she is attracted to him but there are reasons for her to keep her distance.

Noel is a withdrawn and quiet character and he wants more in his life but it's not happening. There is a scene in which he sees what he feels is the ideal Christmas family, and he becomes very upset with himself and his life. Even his brief and intermittent encounters with Lydia feeds his frustration. In the end nothing happens, he sells all his Christmas trees except for one, which is left standing alone. Just like Noel.

"Christmas, again" is, in my opinion, a story of the false promise of the holiday season and how it is a constant source of frustration to many. No matter how much we try, the Love, Peace, and Joy that so much saturates the Christmas message, is in reality hollow and false as we all stand alone in this world.