Christmas, Again: Will this indie film become a mumblecore seasonal classic?

0:20Hello, I'm your host Helen O 'Hara and joining me today I'm delighted to be joined by film journalist and author Laura Venning. How are you doing Laura? Hello, I'm feeling very festive. Thank you so much. Look, you're sitting in front of your tree, which looks fabulous. Thank you. Well, I was as a Christmas in a flat, you know, dictates the table has had to be disassembled, moved, etc. So I was trying to figure out where to put my chair to record this because the normal desk isn't available. And I thought, why not? Why not let Helen see some of the festive action, which is actually mostly directly behind my back.

0:54but if I shift my chair that's yeah sorry this is great for an audio format yeah it is no I'm just gonna have to tell everyone it looks fabulous it looks wonderful there's some beautiful paper chains in the background you've got some tinsel in there as well I'm loving it yep big star on top of the tree fab thank you I think Christmas is you know this goes against the film we're about to discuss but I think Christmas is about maximalism and I feel as if you agree my sister has a very minimalistic Christmas aesthetic. Oh, wow. Helen's tree is that. Yeah. Maximism. Gorgeous. Yeah. Love it. All here for it.

1:26Yeah. My sister's like no tinsel on her tree and I can't bear it. Oh, no, no. That's not in the spirit. Yeah, that's not in the spirit. But as you said, this film takes a slightly different approach to things. So we are talking today about Christmas, again. Now, this is confusing because Christmas again is also the name of a Disney Channel movie from 2021 and it is styled as Christmas dot dot dot again question mark exclamation mark oh no not Christmas again I tried to watch the Disney Channel one and I failed I'm going to be honest let us say it is aimed at a much younger audience than I am and I didn't think myself terribly discerning but I find myself too discerning for that I'm afraid I may try again one day once my small niece and nephew or with me or something but I really couldn't get through it but we're talking about Christmas again from this year which is about a Christmas tree lot salesman who is played by Kentucker Audley amazing name absolutely amazing name his name is literally when that title came up on when that title came up on the screen to Kentucker Audley I was like is this like a place or is this a person?

2:44I didn't initially realize it was New York and I was like, sounds like an American like small town somewhere but oh no it's a person. Okay got it. It does sound like a kind of American small town that somebody would go to for Christmas to work on a Christmas tree lot, right? I mean so it kind of all hangs together. So basically Noel Kentuckorodley's character is a Christmas tree salesman working on a corner in New York at a sort of 24-hour Christmas tree lot. He works with some colleagues who take the day shift. He's volunteered for the night shift. They basically share a tiny little caravan and take turns sleeping in shifts during the night or day.

3:23And he's living a very isolated existence in the run-up to Christmas and I guess finding his days punctuated by interactions with people wanting to buy Christmas trees. This is not the glossy, action-packed, you know, Netflix, Hallmark, Christmas-style movie, but it did feel like it was worth talking about. It comes to us from writer-director Charles Pockel, and I thought it was quite sweet and charming. What did you think? I thought this was really quite wonderful. I don't know what I was expecting. I mean, I it's interesting because I got maybe the same as you email press release about this film maybe a month or so ago a few weeks ago and thought oh what is this I've never heard of it it was actually made 10 years ago and just never got a UK release and so it really was made it I don't know about the height maybe slightly more like the tail end of the whole mumblecore scene I think maybe are we in post mumblecore now I feel like maybe I feel like maybe yeah I mean we're having the pre and the post and the current I don't know you know it's it's funny I've been thinking a fair bit more about mumblecore than I would usually over the past year because I've written this book about Greta Goeg who was obviously the biggest breakout star of mumblecore but dare I say I don't actually like mumblecore that much and what's funny is that you know Greta Goeg herself is someone who doesn't exactly explicitly talk down that whole era of her career and how she got started but she was clearly fairly happy to leave it behind for something more precise and more carefully written less of the kind of loose improvisational slightly plotless style of a lot of those films but as much as this film does kind of belong in the bumblecore category I would say it does have it does sort of feel like it's a tiny weenie Christmas carol you know in some ways it's a very classic Christmas the story in that it builds to this you know it's lots of small encounters with different people with different customers and various other kind of people he encounters like there's a polish homeless man and there's a drunk girl he sort of rescues from a park bench yes you know being the main yeah being this sort of if there is a plot she is the sort of driver of the plot this girl who's obviously in a rough state who he finds at night and brings her back to this this little tiny caravan with no running water and powered off a powered off a generator that seems to be allowed to just kind of sit on the sidewalk in New York and the two of them eventually form a kind of slightly unlikely connection over this one night where they deliver Christmas trees together around New York on Christmas Eve and that you know in a way that does sound like you're kind of that could that couldn't exactly be a Hallmark movie because it's not a million miles off yeah no and it is a kind of transformative Christmas Eve story which feels very which feels very yeah very classic so yeah even though it does feel quite loose and very real and it you know it doesn't exactly have an awful lot of events in the story like it's not it's not exactly plotty it does kind of still fit that mold and it is it is very charming in its own quiet way yeah I was really endeared to this it was like oh yes we can still we can tell a story about people coming together at Christmas so there's this kind of melancholy overtone yeah and it can still feel very real and there are certain moments of dark humor like you realize at a certain point in the film that that Noel's got this advent calendar in his caravan it's not even his caravan I don't think it's just like where he's where he's living while also side note sorry an all night 24 hour christmas tree shop is that a thing it's the city that never sleeps baby i mean i guess yeah i guess you can get your like waffles at three in the morning in the diner and your drip coffee and you can get a christmas tree i was like what why are they doing night shift anyway but he has an advent calendar and in the middle of the night he'll open up a door in his advent calendar and then after a while you realise it's actually got pills in it.

7:34And you're like, oh boy, okay. But not in a kind of bad Santa kind of way. No, no, not fun pills, medical pills, I think. Yeah. With the implication being maybe antidepressants, I thought, or something along those lines. Yeah, I mean, that's basically the film. Let's just, very quickly for people, can you define mumblecore? I mean, you've just written a book about Greta Gerwig, so I'm hoping you can, because I'm just like, it's like art. I know it when I see it it's the slightly plotless you know chat forward but not necessarily sort of dialogue forward you know New York scene kind of what late 2000s early 2010s maybe is that about right I would say so yeah and it's yeah it's just sub-genre of the little tiny indie films that really came out of how much easier it became to make a film because of the rise of digital and they're all made on these consumer grade cameras although confusingly you could argue that the sort of first major mumblecore auteur this guy Andrew Bojelski actually shot his shot his films on film and was a little bit more uh eventually worked with slightly bigger budgets and uh I I think all almost all of these filmmakers that we're talking about Joe Swanberg being another major one who got started working with Greta Gerwig and yeah really gave her start in the industry they all hate the term mumblecore it's one of those ones isn't it yeah yeah apparently this was coined at like south by southwest film festival one sound designer or sound mixer said it as a joke and then these guys are just haunted by this term but it's the perfect word to sum it up because they do all be mumbling at each other like it's just yeah yeah it's like there's a lot like i said there's a lot of talking but it's not sort of traditional movie dialogue it's not you know there is kind of even repartee I mean especially when you're looking at sort of the Greta Gerwig films of those eras where she is very articulate often and very impassioned about everything she has to say but she's not but there's people talking over her there's people in the background there is a lot of that kind of very casual overlapping dialogue people fail to say what they mean and mumbling is not a completely unfair word I think no no it's not and you know I think they got a lot of flack, understandably, for these films mostly being about young white men straight out of college who don't really seem to be in any danger of kind of economic, you know, they're going to be fine.

10:08Like they're probably living off a trust fund or something, but they're wandering around New York kind of aimlessly and sort of, yeah, muttering and mumbling to each other and trying and failing to get girls. Like a lot of them are some version of that. and I suppose what I'm trying to say is in many ways it's no wonder that Greta Goward was fairly happy to leave this behind and you watch these films and she does she is the performer that like really pops off the screen you're like yeah it makes total sense whereas I'd say in a way this film is slightly different slightly more your your kind of American indie classic American indie yeah classic American indie and partly just the fact that it sounds obvious things like it has music in it I feel like quite a lot of your classic mumblecore films have no score as such you know they'll probably have I think is it in Hannah Takes the Stairs where there's some quite annoying trumpet playing going on but it's like one of the characters playing the trumpet quite badly like that's your classic mumblecore soundtrack whereas I was like oh sums this is nice a score something to kind of very gentle not overbearing not overly sentimental but it's slightly more mainstream quote-unquote with that and again a lot of your mumblecore characters are just these like incredibly unlikable selfish people who are you know spend their whole time complaining which you know we can all enjoy films that are about those things it doesn't necessarily mean they're not compelling but we may even see ourselves in them well exactly yeah who are we to judge but I would say the performances and the writing in this are quieter and more restrained and And I think the performance by Hannah Gross as apparently her name is Lydia.

11:53I mean, this is the thing about this film. You don't really get the sense what anyone's name is other than Noel, because it's a bit of a joke. Noel, Noel. I think she's wonderful. I've seen her in a couple of other small American indies like this. And I think she's just got such an incredible face. She's in this film called The Adults with Michael Cera that I saw a few years ago at Berlin, where she does a really good Marge Simpson impression. and as soon as she popped up on screen I went oh it's you oh you're great you're just so compelling and there's so much going on in kind of the the sort of just in her face and you learn so little about this character who's wandering around New York at night you know getting drunk and clearly having some kind of crisis but but it's all just it's all just beneath the surface and you're left to piece it together yourself yeah it's I can't get over the name Kentucky or Audley which kind of sounds like a, I don't know, is that the name of like Mark Wahlberg's character in one of the Transformer movies?

12:49You know, Cade Yeager and then Kentucker Audley. I don't know. I feel like it's, it belongs in that tradition, Stacker Pentecost. It's an incredible name, but it's also a really, really good performance because I think it's quite hard sometimes. And it's something that I find quite difficult about some indie movies is when your lead character is depressed or downbeat for pretty much the entire film it can be very hard to they start to wear on your patience you're like okay I realize you're having a tough time but also get it together man you know come on shake yourself out of it and what I like about this is I didn't feel that very much there are flashes of humor from him there are moments of where he is clearly trying to get out and do something for himself you know he goes swimming in the mornings and so on when he finishes his shift he he does help out his shift worker friends and does take little moments to you know if he particularly likes a customer he'll volunteer to go and deliver their tree and there is a sort of a search for human connection there it feels like there is some kind of spark still in him he's not just sitting around feeling sorry for himself the whole time although he clearly is also heartbroken and I thought that the film and can tucker oddly I love but really, really trod that line really, really well.

14:01And so I was invested in Noel in a way that I didn't necessarily expect to be in the first five or ten minutes of this. No, absolutely. I agree. You so desperately sort of, I feel like you so desperately want the best for him, even though you really don't get to know this person all that well. The isolation is so, the isolation in the middle of a big city, right? You know, I have to remind myself that he's surrounded by all this and all this life and also having to deal with a lot of, I mean, Christmas customer service. I was getting some flashbacks. I've never done Christmas trees, but I used to work in Waterstones bookshops over Christmas and some of those interactions with the people who want to buy trees and are just sort of talking to him like he's not there and being very demanding and irritating.

14:47I was like, oh God, yeah. I hope you're okay. Yeah, I stopped doing it years ago and yet still sometimes the memory, the memories return. and the film is so slight in many ways you know it's only 80 minutes long you don't really spend an awful lot of time with him and yet it does feel quite rich and we don't know about this loss to love we don't know anything about this breakup or no who if anyone was at fault and what happened but somehow you're still compelled to just want this want this person to to rediscover of a human connection. And unsurprisingly for a film like this, it's a bit of a bittersweet ending.

15:27But you feel that there is a sense of hope and a sense that both of those characters who are so isolated and disconnected from each other will reconnect after their night delivering Christmas trees together. I mean, what could be more festive and lovely than that? Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, it's interesting. The film sets up that he has worked in this Christmas tree lot every December, say roughly, for the last five years or something that he previously did so with this girlfriend who is now gone for whatever reason. And he does have a job the rest of the year. Like he does have somewhere to go.

16:00He does do other things. He doesn't sort of disappear to the North Pole or something for 11 months of the year and then just come back like Santa Claus. But I think that was kind of important because he's made the choice to be there for that month. And he clearly values it beyond just having the girlfriend with him. And so I think maybe that gives you a sense that he is searching for something and he hasn't sort of completely given up on life. And again, I take comfort from the fact he's taking his pills. He's going to the YMCA or wherever to swim. He is trying to kind of claw his way back, I think, to some kind of happiness or some kind of normality or however you want to put it.

16:38And I think, so I think in a strange way and in a very understated way, I find this film very hopeful and I find this film very sort of encouraging is maybe the wrong word, But just it had a sense of, OK, yeah, things can be bad. And even at Christmas, they can be kind of bad. But if you look for it, and I think he's looking around him, you can see signs of love in the world. You can see signs of hope. You can see signs of people celebrating. And you can hope to one day be one of those people in the well-lit rooms, not sleeping in a caravan out on the street. And I thought the Christmassy-ness of this film is actually considerable because of that sense.

17:19yeah exactly I totally agree it's not just a sad little indie drama that happens to take place over Christmas but I'm like no no it's in the spirit and it's the act of kindness and generosity and helping this this girl on this drunk girl on a bench in the middle of the night which when he really doesn't have to he really does go he does the right thing but he goes above and beyond for this person that is the kind of catalyst and he's not so disconnected that when he's delivering with these trees with her at the end that when he enters he goes into a flat and they're this little group of very angelic blonde German children question mark and they're very sweet they're asking if he works for father Christmas and how old is the tree and then they all recite their ages and he's not yeah he's not so disconnected that he can't can't share in that and there's a lovely scene oh it broke my heart where he I think earlier on he before Christmas Eve he delivers a for a couple and the wife is pregnant and they are so wrapped up with each other that they're barely noticing that he's there and he just has a little weep on the way back to his caravan and it's just oh god it really yeah yeah yeah and again not so disconnected from his emotions that he can't let himself feel that heartbreak and himself up to maybe the potential of rebuilding his life in one way or another absolutely I think he's going to be okay down the line weirdly and I don't always have that sense coming out of never mind Christmas movies but American indie movies which seem to sometimes just be misery fests all right let's kind of rank this then out of five what would you give this for its Christmassy-ness yeah I mean it's tricky isn't it because it's not exactly one I would suggest to the family to throw on on Christmas Day but at the same time as we've just said it's really in the spirit of what Christmas actually is but it's true that connection so i think out of five i'm gonna give it a four i think it's quite strongly christmassy yeah i'm kind of up there with you i think you know first of all like he literally lives around among a heap of christmas trees so the smell must be incredible oh my god but the christmas i guess iconography is kind of there because of that for a lot of the film yeah it's not obviously christmassy it's not obviously in the same way that like national Lampoon's Christmas Vacation or Elf is or Santa Claus the movie it's not that Christmassy but I do think like the spirit is very much there as you say and the kind of the heart of it is very much there I feel like if you have your like cool cousin who's just started doing film studies at university this is the Christmas film to recommend for them or your teenage brother who thinks he's above Christmas films like this is the kind of thing that that you can put on for them and sort of go no this there are different kinds it's not all snowmen turning into male models it's there's other kinds of christmas movies out there all right how would you rate it then as a movie what would your score be out of five for that you can do halves if you want you can grade on a curve if you want it is after all christmas true oh thank you yeah i think i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm also gonna go with a four i found this very charming and as with you know it's some mumble call films are a bit of a slog let's be honest this is not a slog at all this was a pleasure and you know really surprisingly moving and beautifully executed, beautifully acted.

20:39I was like, yeah, I'm going to go with a four. I am too. I might be grading on a curve. If it was not a Christmas film, maybe I'd be like a three or 3.5 if we were doing half stars. But like we say, I think the heart was really there. I think the sense of hope and promise and all the good things about Christmas were in a really low-key way. I cannot stress enough how low-key this film is. In a really low-key way, they are there and I appreciate that it managed to do that. I mean, we talked last year about Christmas Eve in Miller's Point, you know, being a slightly unconventional Christmas movie that was also kind of plotless, if I'm honest.

21:11I'm sorry that you've become my go to plotless Christmas movie person. No, no, it's fun. But that also, you know, had a lot of heart and it had a lot of the sense and the energy of Christmas, even if it didn't, you know, again, have a snowman turning into a male model. all right so yes so that is a high score for Christmas again which I cannot stress enough once more is not the 2021 Disney movie of the same name please do not make that mistake people this one is on in cinemas around the country this Christmas so you will have a chance I hope to see it but do not make that one mistake Laura you mentioned your book on Greta Gerwig that is out now what can you tell us about it please thank you so much so it's called Icons of Cinema Greta Gerwig and she is an icon of cinema she is it's exciting it's exciting because that's it's a series of books and the other two in the series so far have been about men Baz Luhrmann and Wes Anderson who are both fabulous directors of course yeah but it's lovely to do the first woman and it's really a a bit of a deep dive into her career you know beginning with her yeah her start in mumblecore films her introduction to Noah Baumbach surely the most kind of influential person in her career who really ignited her interest in writing and really made her realize this is the style that I want to I want to I want to engage in and write myself and yeah and then her journey through through Lady Bird, Little Women, Barbie, a little tease of Narnia although of course sadly we still don't know very much about Narnia.

22:40Can't wait though, cannot wait. Yeah I mean hopefully a future episode right is Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is Christmassy enough for this right? It literally has Santa Claus in it. So 100%. Yeah, absolutely. And apparently that is something that nearly destroyed the friendship of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. So that alone could be like 10 minutes of a podcast because we've got to get into how infuriated Tolkien was by that absolute disrespect for any kind of sensible, hung together mythology. I just love that for both of them, quite frankly. But yeah, for my money, her three films as director have all been masterpieces.

23:15And I'm just so excited about anything she wants to make from now on I'm like I'm there no questions asked it's going to be amazing and I know yeah absolutely I feel like you know I wasn't thank you I was not alone in my doubts about what Barbie would turn out to be but of course I think it's pretty extraordinary and probably the most extraordinary blockbuster if we want to call it that I suppose we can I think so Hollywood in the past I don't know maybe the past decade and what I hope that the book does is introduce people who already know and love her films to the kind of wider world of all of her influences and yeah all of the filmmakers that she loves I really try to sort of expand the Gretaverse I have been calling it the Gretaverse because she's such a film fan and a film lover and if one person gets it in their stocking and discovers the films have shagged me then I will be very happy amazing yeah she is a major cinephile so this that feels like a really good way to go with it and of course you can learn more about mumblecore as well so um absolutely if that's more your bag yeah if that's all right a couple of questions i ask everybody i know i've asked you these last year but just in case anything's changed favorite christmas movie the one you have to watch every year um i'm sure i said this last year but i'm gonna say it again it's meet me inst louis because it's just it's pure wonderful it's all about a family and that's the most Christmassy thing of all right like the interaction between a family all the highs and lows and I mean there's Judy Garland singing have yourself a merry little Christmas and I just start weeping and those fantastically fake snowmen it's wonderful it's pure Hollywood yeah yeah 10 out of 10 no notes and any Christmas traditions that we need to be aware of anything that you do differently from other people that you would recommend other people pick up well on Christmas Eve it's become a habit because we're not going to eat enough on Christmas day so we have to start things early we make this giant Delia Smith mushroom pappardelli pasta bake thing and it's just an extraordinary quantity of like cream and it's with masala wine which gives it this really nice warm spicy flavor it does sit heavy I can't lie but if you want something for your Christmas Eve dinner that's not your more traditional roast but still very luxurious I'd highly recommend it's from her Christmas book.

25:33So, you know, it is Christmas. It's just dealing approved. Amazing. Yeah. All right. Well, Laura, thank you so much. Where can people find more of your work apart from going out there and immediately buying the Greta Gerwig book? Yes, thank you so much. I am sort of on blue sky, but it's a bit quiet over there, sadly. But actually, at the moment, I'm mostly on Substack. I'm sure you'll find me under my name, Laura Venning, and I have a newsletter, which is called Mise en Venn. Oh, very good. From all the film heads. I can't claim credit. my girlfriend came up with it I didn't come up with that but I obviously I'm gonna run with that forever and you can find me on the pages of Empire Little White Lies as in journal here here there and around amazing well Merry Christmas to you and I hope it's a great Gerwig filled new year and to you I will be enjoying my little woman watch and yeah getting real cozy

26:32Thank you.