Joyeux Noel [DVD] [2006]

French, Scottish and German soldiers come together to celebrate Christmas in the trenches of World War 1 in a profoundly moving film about the humanist in all of us. It is music that draws these disparate enemies together on one cold and dark wintry night in 1914 when an unforeseen harmony between soldiers from three countries suddenly becomes one.

With a cast of Scottish, German and French actors all speaking their own language, writer-director Christian Carion has fashioned a deeply moving and uplifting piece. The film begins as one of the German soldiers Nikolaus Sprink (Benno Furmann), a famous tenor in civilian life, leaves the battle lines briefly to rejoin his lover and stage partner, soprano Anna Sorensen (Diane Kruger), for a small command performance away from the Western front.

Because their time together is so short, she insists on accompanying him back to the trenches; there, the two stage a concert for the German troops. What happens then is simple, beautiful, and believably spontaneous. In the midst of the concert, the bagpipes of the Scottish regiments join the couple across the divide.

As Sprink places Christmas trees onto the field, the three commanders, the French Audebert (Guillaume Canet), the German-Jewish Horstmayer (Daniel Bruhl) and the Scottish Gordon (Alex Ferns) meet and declare the truce that spreads to Christmas Day and includes a deeply moving service in Latin said by Rev. Palmer, an Anglican priest turned soldier (Gary Lewis).

Tired and battle-weary these soldiers who slaughtered each other from trenches put down their weapons to share wine and food, exchange photographs of their loved ones and memories, and even find time to play a game of soccer in the snow. Later the men's superior officers would regard it as fraternizing with the enemy and make them pay for it, each commanding officer is chastised in different ways.

Carion really manages to capture the horror of war while presenting the story so subtly that he avoids melodrama and at the same time shows the faintly goofy affinity between the various combatants. Joyeux Noël succeeds in portraying its men as contract players who see the ridiculousness of their situation and decide to do something about it, finding a cocooned, floating moment of cogent mutiny that has ultimately no place in the politics taking place around them. Mike Leonard November 06.

Charles Dickens knew the importance of establishing horror if you want to show moments of peace or redemption that have real impact. After all, he began A Christmas Carol by emphasising Jacob Marley's death because, without that knowledge, `nothing wonderful can come of this tale.' Sadly, Christian Carrion's Joyeux Noel/Merry Christmas seems oblivious to that lesson, and so without anything tangible in the way of the horrors of war or the psychologically draining nature of trench warfare by way of contrast, there's no sense of relief or wonder to the brief respite offered by the spontaneous 1914 Christmas Truce on the Western Front. As a result, the film carries no real weight. What's worse is just how horrifically bland it all is.

At its best it's well-intentioned pap, a woefully inaccurate retelling that gets practically nothing right, historically or artistically. The scant regard it has for history is bad enough when there are so many powerful true incidents from that period to draw on, but the sheer overpowering wrongness of many of the inventions and the complete lack of any emotional involvement with the barely drawn stereotypes is equally deadly. If you're going to invent, at least invent something better! Perhaps it's the preponderance of production companies involved in this Franco-German-Anglo-Romanian co-production (more than a dozen companies and tax shelter funds are credited) that left it so bland and lifeless - certainly there's a feeling that this is not the film anyone wanted to make, merely the one that everybody could more or less agree on

Most of the performances are weak to invisible, with Gary Lewis failing miserably to provide anything but an actor's extreme discomfort in a role that's meant to be the heart, soul and conscience of the film while Benno Furrman substitutes a look of stoic indigestion for characterisation as Diane Kruger's Danish opera singer in the trenches (no, seriously) mimes her way through the classics. Only Daniel Bruhle makes much of an impression out of his underwritten role, although even he is outshone by a blink-and-you-ll-miss-it cameo from Michel Serrault and Suzanne Flon that briefly wakes up the film.

Carrion's previous film, Une Hirondelle a Fait le Printemps/The Girl from Paris [DVD], was quite superb, for the most part avoiding cliché or whimsy and creating believably flawed characters, which makes his flat handling here seem all the worse. Easily the most desperately disappointing film of the year. You'd be much better off reading Malcolm Brown and Shirley Seaton's excellent Christmas Truce: The Western Front December 1914 (Pan Grand Strategy Series) instead.

Carrion does admit to the dubious accuracy in the film in the interview that is, along with his audio commentary, the main extra on this DVD (though for some bizarre reason the out-of-copyright WW1 photographs used in the interview are all shown out of focus at the behest of Columbia's over-zealous legal department). However, the deleted scenes from the French DVD and documentary on the Australian 2-disc DVD have not been included.

This movie a French-English-German language effort telling the story of true events that happened over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day 1914 when the troops from these three countries stopped their hostilites and engaged in some good old fashioned human camaradarie is a well told and sweet movie that deserves to join the ranks of movie that warm even the coldest of hearts over the Christmas period.

Based on true events the movie starts with children fromn the 3 countries spouting propaganda that was said at the time and then leads into the stories of the various characters that are the main protaganists.On the German side you have an opera singer who joins up at as a private and his girlfriend who gets to see him by organising a concert for the brass afterwards he returns to the men as he has to sing for them,this starts the thawing of hositility and all three sets of soldiers are soon singing and carousing.

The next day the thaw continues as the soldiers bury their dead and the famous football match happens .

The ending is more downbeat the commanders of all three countries find out what happens and the soldiers from all the nations involved are transferred or their regiments are broken up.One shock is the speech made by the Bishop to the Scottish lads which is incredibly viscous but an actual true speech made in Westminster Abbey in 1915 .Good movie well made and well worth watching.,