Christmas Eve in Miller's Point (2024)

Easily one of the most polarizing Christmas movies in recent history, Christmas Eve in Miller's Point can be viewed as either a masterpiece of atypical narrative structure, or as a failed experiment. The problem I'm running into is I can't decide which side of that line I fall on. I find it a little easier to address the more pressing question most of you likely have: whether or not you should watch it. The answer is almost certainly not... unless you're a diehard cinephile, that is.

Just to be on the safe side, let's get the spoiler warning out of the way. This is, after all, a new movie, and its fans absolutely adore it (with good reason, I think). I'm still trying to sort out where my opinion falls, but I don't want to spoil the story of a movie this controversial without giving you a chance to make up your own mind.

So, just to be clear, if you're still reading after this sentence, you're doing so with the knowledge you're about to have the story and plot spoiled.

It doesn't have one.

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Okay, that's not entirely true, but it comes closer to being true than virtually any other movie I can think of. And, to be clear, not having a plot - or perhaps more accurately having (almost) no plot resolution - is built into the structure and premise. This isn't a case where director/co-writer Tyler Taormina forgot to include a plot or failed to develop one: this is a movie built with a completely different framework from what we're used to (or at least that seems to be the idea). The characters in Christmas Eve in Miller's Point don't undergo powerful transformations, they don't seem to learn important lessons, and nothing of much consequence occurs. Multiple catalysts for these sorts of changes are established, but the movie pointedly refuses to follow through on their resolutions. And I do mean pointedly - there are moments where the film playfully teases us with the promise of something major occurring before simply dropping the plot point entirely. It doesn't just leave its Chekhov's guns unfired; it makes sure we know that it knows we're waiting for them to go off.

What's important, of course, is why the movie's doing this. With story functionally stricken from the cinematic language, the film is able to instead shift its focus to perspective. We're constantly shown various character's points of view, the way they see life, each other, the holiday, and more. Following a brief sequence teasing one of the movie's themes with the words, "For the lost, may they find their way home on Christmas Eve," the movie opens with credits played over upside down footage of Christmas lights viewed through a car window. This both establishes a focus on perspective and warns us its priorities will be inverted, a promise (or threat, depending on where you stand) the movie certainly delivers on.

The narrative sets up and abandons one potential plot point after another, almost daring us to complain that it's not resolving them. The point is that these don't actually matter; instead of a change in status quo, the movie seeks to change our preceptive of its characters by gradually revealing their humanity. The ending doesn't so much leave them with hope as a sense of divine grace, an idea lamp shaded when a minor character - arguably among the least likely in the movie to do so - paraphrases Tiny Tim's most famous line. I suppose you could read this moment as satire, but it felt to me as a sort of love letter to whatever real people inspired this project. These are flawed, delusional individuals, but their pain hides artistic depth, love, and generosity.

One of the few threads to actually receive some resolution comes from a storyline about one of the movie's characters working on a novel. He's been sharing his work, chapter by chapter, with a younger member of the family who's strongly implied to be humoring him: if he's even reading the book, he doesn't seem to think much of it. Other members of his family later find the chapter, and one starts reading it aloud as the writer listens in horror. They don't know who wrote this or why, and they begin by mocking it and laughing at its use of cliches and simple premise. But as they read on, they reach moments about loneliness, depression, and regret, and we see them identify with the text and respond emotionally. The author quietly sits anonymously content.

I don't know much of anything about Tyler Taormina's background, but this has the hallmarks of a film created by someone reconciling conflicting feelings about people from their past. The movie seems to acknowledge the flaws of its characters but ultimately chooses to depict them lovingly. I don't think it's reading too much into the subtext to suggest the movie's encouraging us to show each other the same grace, in the hope of receiving it in kind.

We see the movie through numerous perspectives, but ultimately it's ours that changes. Stripped of a conventional protagonist, the narrative arc needs to occur within the viewer. Conceptually, it's a fascinating idea, but all this raises another question:

Does any of this work at all?

Like I said at the outset, I'm still trying to work that out for myself. Everything I said above is my interpretation of the philosophy driving the film, and I think it's an intriguing approach. But in a real sense the movie is setting out to prove the theory that a movie can work as a satisfying experience under these conditions. And, at the very least, the jury's still out on that one.

I didn't need to skim audience reactions to know the charge of "boring" was going to be leveled against this, but... yes, that definitely seems to be a common theme in one-star reviews. And part of me shares that response. I'm a big enough Christmas movie nerd to have kept myself engaged exploring the reason behind this structure, but this certainly wasn't a film that drew me in or entertained me. I didn't find the humor funny, and - aside from feeling a few pangs of empathy in the last third - I wasn't really all that invested in the drama.

To put this another way, I absolutely missed the narrative elements the movie left out, and I think there's an argument to be made that, for this to truly have been successful, we shouldn't care that they're gone. Maybe we shouldn't even notice they're missing.

I also think it's worth noting that, while I can't think of another movie going to this extreme, I can think of a couple holiday movies that experimented with paring back resolution and exploring similar tonal aspects of the season. Namely, Happy Christmas and White Reindeer portray the depths of sadness and isolation that come with Christmas. In both cases, traditional narrative elements are toned down but still present enough to give the movies a backbone, which in turn allows the innovative aspects a chance to flourish. Like Christmas Eve in Miller's Point, these are movies with unrealistic elements that manage to feel grounded by dialing back the dramatic conventions we come to expect from fiction. I recommended both Happy Christmas and White Reindeer; I can't do the same for Miller's Point. At least not yet.

This could definitely be a case where my reservations evaporate over time, either on rewatch or simply as I mull the movie over in my head. My opinion has already shifted back and forth several times since I watched it a day ago. This could be a new classic that challenges our assumptions about narrative structure, or it could just be a bizarre misfire. I realize it's a bit of a copout to refuse to commit to something so fundamental in a review, but it would be disingenuous for me to pick a side when the truth is... I really just don't know.

So let's talk about a few things I do know, starting with tone. This movie is deeply, relentlessly sad, at least until the end, when it transitions to a sort of grace that's... still pretty damn sad, honestly. The movie uses the timeless sense of Christmas to amplify this, as its older characters look back on their lives with a sense of regret and younger characters stumble forward with little hope of avoiding their parents' fate. There's a sequence in which the family plays old movies, and the camera drifts into the film and seems to explore the past. When we return to the present, we find those watching staring as if in a daze, wondering where things went wrong and mourning the direction their lives went in.

So... not a feel-good movie.

This tone is of course common in holiday movies, but usually it's coupled with a pivot to a hopeful resolution. Instead, Christmas Eve in Miller's Point gives us a moments of peace, but not really hope for the future. Because, again, this isn't a movie interested in resolutions.

Holiday lights and decorations have a soft, timeless glow. The world the movie's set in feels older than its actual setting turns out to be - it convinces you you're watching something in the '70s or '80s before revealing technology dating this to the early 2000s. All of this reinforces the sense that time is frozen for these people and this town. Again, this is a common idea in American Christmas media, but the context here is of a town trapped in its past, unable to move forward.

I should note this is all gorgeously shot, with incredible contrasts between warm interiors and blues from outside. Stylistically, the movie shifts as it changes who it's following and how they're framed. The crowded, claustrophobic party is replaced with a open, lonely world when we transition to following the teens as they sneak out. When the narrative shifts to a couple cops, the whole thing resembles a Wes Anderson movie for a time. Taormina goes with whatever fits the scene and manages to stitch it together in a way it doesn't feel disjointed. From a technical standpoint, there's not a lot to criticize on the filmmaking side.

On the writing side, it's going to come back to whether the film wins you over. This is built around perspective rather than story, which is a lot to ask of audiences. Part of me thinks the tonal flow of this is more than enough to justify the experiment, while another part thinks this needed something else to pull us through. Say, better jokes or intrinsically likeable characters to make us forget we were seeing something without the narrative beats we expect. But I suspect Taormina doesn't want us to forget that, so perhaps those suggestions would have negated the point. As it stands, this might be destined to go down as a classic that inspires new and innovative approaches to structure and storytelling... or it might be a well-intentioned project audiences recoil from that gets forgotten and buried. Again, I apologize for evading the question, but I just don't think I have a solid answer.

But I wouldn't recommend this to most viewers. Unless you're looking to expand your understanding of narrative structures and approaches, this is probably going to leave you frustrated and annoyed. It's a smart, interesting project, but I don't think it offers what most audiences want from a movie, let alone a Christmas one.

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