Noel: Miracles are Closer than You Think
Oh, and then there’s the sad case of Jules (Marcus Thomas), who has only had one happy Christmas in his entire life, and that was when he was in a hospital emergency room and they had a Christmas party. Early in the film, he wanders into his local E.R. and asks what time the party starts, but is informed, alas, that he will require an emergency. This leads easily to the movie’s most peculiar scene, in which Jules approaches a sinister man who seems to live on the stage of an abandoned theater, and says to him: “Glenn said that you break hands.”
All of these plot developments are further complicated by the movie’s intersecting plotlines and timelines; this is one of those stories where the characters always seem to be crossing paths. Some of the characters, like Sarandon’s Rose, are convincing and poignant; others, like Arkin’s lovesick waiter, are creepy, and the guy who gets his hand broken should have tried the party at the Salvation Army, where they have great hot chocolate and sometimes you get a slice of pumpkin pie.
Only a cynic could dislike this movie, which may be why I disliked it. I can be sentimental under the right circumstances, but the movie is such a calculating tearjerker that it played like a challenge to me. There’s a point at which the plot crosses an invisible line, becoming so preposterous that it’s no longer moving and is just plain weird. If it’s this much trouble to be happy on Christmas, then maybe Rose should consider doing what Susan Sontag does every year, which is to fly to Venice all by herself, and walk around alone in the fog and the mist and cross lonely bridges over dark canals and let the chill seep into her bones and then curl up in bed in an empty hotel with a good book. It’s kind of a judo technique: You use loneliness as a weapon against itself.
