Half of This Movie Makes the Holiday Season Look Perfect

I see Christmas Eve at Miller’s Point
as a combination of two narrative instincts, the first of which is, unsurprisingly, the Christmas movie. This is one of those that isn’t just set around the holiday but about it, and scenes of family togetherness (both messy and thorny) resonate beyond its moment. The other, however, is the instant ensemble film, where the moment is everything. We are with these people for one night of their lives, and the goal is to be with them, share that experience, and find meaning wherever we choose to see it.

A curious union of generality and specificity that, when well mixed, I found powerful. Christmas Eve at Miller’s Point it has long stretches that seem well drawn, in the way of the best snapshots, while at the same time exploring the concentrated nostalgia that is Christmas. However, not all sections have a firm grip on this magic, and my admiration was much more subdued at the end than I would have imagined in the middle. Yet, as an entry point to this year’s holiday season, I can comfortably recommend it.

Christmas Eve at Miller’s Point has the right holiday feel

And defend where it really comes from

The film begins with four members of the extended Balsano family driving to Kathleen’s (Maria Dizzia) childhood home on Long Island, and there are already signs of friction between her and Emily (Matilda Fleming), her teenage daughter. These four are enshrined in our memory as a family unit, but when we arrive, we are thrown into a chaos of faces, all happy and noisily enjoying each other’s company. Writer-director Tyler Thomas Taormina and co-writer Eric Berger don’t see the need to establish who belongs to who from the start, and gradually figuring out those relationships is part of the fun.

It’s also central to what the film does best. Christmas Eve at Miller’s Point immerses us in this meeting without a substitutevarying the perspective to give us pieces of this night from various family members. We experience the elements of tradition we expect from a Christmas film by the way people react to things – holidays are repetitive occasions. That elderly aunt always falls asleep in strange places; what an uncle is always irritating with cooking; somebody always brings that lazy appetizer and feels sad about it.

But repetition, Taormina shows us, is also a way of measuring change. Every year, a parade of fire trucks with colorful lights passes through this neighborhood, and everyone comes out into the cold to watch them. In the moments before, we get the adult perspective: eager but impatient, and amusingly pessimistic, as if a few seconds’ delay means this is finally the year they won’t show up. When they pass by, they are struck with childlike wonder. Sometimes we see through the eyes of a girl wearing diffraction glasses, then the trucks pass by in a blur of kaleidoscopic flowers.

Herein lies the benefit of the instant storytelling approach. The event may be the same year after year, but the eyes that watch it are not. The Taormina film draws attention to how Christmas is both a time of change and constancy. That elderly aunt wasn’t always elderly; that an uncle won’t always be healthy enough to cook all the food. If you don’t know that it’s set in the early 2000s, you might come across remnants of previous eras that naturally accumulate in a grandmother’s house. Suddenly this night is timeless and momentary.

The most critical plot of Christmas Eve at Miller’s Point comes when the matriarch’s four children, the anchors of this family, come together to discuss the elephant in the room. Their mother’s health is getting worse. Currently, the burden falls on a brother and his family who live in this house with her, but soon she will need 24-hour care. He pushes for a nursing home, much to his brother’s dismay. He also informs them that they are thinking about selling the house and moving to the city. Whatever happens, this Christmas Eve celebration is filled with wistful impermanence.

In the second part, the film takes the eye off the ball

A change of focus didn’t really work for me

As you can probably tell, the family sections of this film caught my attention. The combination of immersive cinema with performances that feel very natural really worked for me, and I felt very in tune with what Taormina was going for thematically. It evokes that feeling of vacation and trying to figure out what it really is, and it makes some genuine progress. But Christmas Eve at Miller’s Point takes a turn when Emily and her cousin Michelle (Francesca Scorsese) run away to meet up with friends and the frame around this snapshot widens.

We meet new groups of characters and are taken to new locations, experiencing the atmosphere of the bagel hangout of our youth and the tender strangeness of a partner-choosing ritual on the local lovers’ street. In a film with a general emphasis on teenage life, I might have appreciated these scenes more. Here, the greater scope came at the expense of focus. I couldn’t hold on to this new set as I did with the Balsanos, and as a result, I became less involved in the action.

Taormina and Berger tapped into their own experience for this film, so this could very well have been what they did on Christmas Eve when they were teenagers. But I had a hard time keeping up with the holiday schedule, and I hope I’m not the only one. Still, when I look back, what I connected with wins what I didn’t do – I enjoyed talking to your ideas and there are some flourishes that will stay in my memory. Christmas movies are produced at an alarming rate this time of year, but few will be as thoughtful as this one.

Christmas Eve at Miller’s Point opens in theaters on November 8th. The film is 106 minutes long and is rated PG-13 for strong language, teen alcohol consumption, some suggestive material and smoking.