Merry Christmas

This could have been a magnificent film, something to be broadcast every Christmas along with the likes of It's a wonderful life, but in failing to go that extra mile turns out to be merely good. Not a complaint in itself, except in that the potential of the subject matter is not exploited to the full.

The impromptu ceasefire in many stretches of the trenches over the course of the first Christmas of World War I is well-documented, enemy soldiers exchanging gifts and playing football in no man's land. These scenes were tinged with many gently comic moments (German and French soldiers disagreeing over the name of the cat from a nearby farm was a highlight), and the impartiality of the script was reflected in the soldiers coming to feel more for the enemy in the trenches opposite than their compatriots, their daily lives away from the front left unaffected.

The surprise of hearing some characters speaking in languages other than their own could not come over in the subtitles - a pity, as one German officer (in a similar to that in Vercors' Le silence de la mer, filmed by Melville) came across as particularly sympathetic as a result.

Then why the mild disappointment? The film opened with three schoolboys each reciting poems in their own language exposing their country's prejudices against the enemy - the shock of hearing these views from such young mouths could have been followed through by showing how these views were engrained in the soldiers, making the unexpected truce all the more unreal. As such, it felt too much like a comedy instead of an incredibly powerful hymn to peace and humanity.

(21st December 2005)

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