Joyeux Noel - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution movie review

'Joyeux Noël' displays haunting humanism

By ELEANOR RINGEL GILLESPIE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

On Christmas Eve 1914, as World War I raged across Europe, a miraculous thing occurred. Scottish, French and German soldiers declared a temporary truce, brokered by the Christmas carols they all shared.

This actually happened.

Sony Pictures Classics

'Joyeux Noël'

B-

The verdict: Best foreign language Oscar nominee is an affecting Christmas tale of peace and good will toward all men, even in the midst of war.

Director: Christian Carion
Starring: Daniel Brühl, Diane Kruger, Benjamin Fürmann, Guillaume Canet, Gary Lewis, Dany Boon
Run time: 116 minutes
Release date: March 3, 2006
Rating: PG-13 for warfare and non-graphic sexuality.
Language: French, English and German, with subtitles
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The lovely and moving French film "Joyeux Noël" — an Oscar nominee for best foreign language film — tells that story and does it well. However, it also suffers somewhat from "Munich" syndrome. That is, the simple facts overwhelm the fictionalized bits.

Writer-director Christian Carion has created a story about an opera singer ("Troy's" Diane Kruger) determined to join her lover (Benno Fürmann), also an opera star in Germany, at the front for Christmas Eve. When she arrives, they give an impromptu concert for the troops and, across the frozen, corpse-littered no man's land, their "Silent Night" is answered by Scottish bagpipes. Before long, all three regiments have ventured out of their trenches to share photos of their loved ones, glasses of champagne and even a pick-up soccer game. All truly is, ever so briefly, heavenly peace.

The trio of officers in charge (including the excellent Daniel Brühl as a German lieutenant with a surprising secret) suspect there will be hell to pay when word of this unauthorized truce reaches headquarters. And, sure enough, their arrogant, clueless superiors — the Scottish higher-up doesn't know his way around his own trenches while the German prince in charge erroneously believes all his men volunteered — are not amused. And they exact retribution.

The same theme, in the same World War I setting, was explored more powerfully in Stanley Kubrick's "Paths of Glory." However, Carion is less interested in echoing Kubrick's anti-war sentiments than he is in showing us the haunting humanism of those few hours. His is a far more sentimental film.

This may not be exactly the way it happened that cold Christmas Eve, but it doesn't matter. "Joyeux Noël" touches so masterfully on the universal madness of war, you briefly wonder if something like this could ever happen in the Middle East.

But then you remember, they don't know the same songs.