Going Home for the Holidays?
“How’s anyone? It’s the nineties.” – Tommy Larson
As soon as the film started, I knew that Home for the Holidays was the kind of film made especially for the likes of me. With thoughtful direction from a still-novice director, Jodie Foster, a witty, sardonic, yet deep screenplay by W. D. Richter, and great performances from the likes of Holly Hunter, Robert Downey Jr., Anne Bancroft, and Charles Durning, this movie ticks almost all of the boxes for a genuine, certified, Bailey-recommended picture. Give me an ensemble of characters with a history, trap them in a house together arguing about minutiae, and you have everything about art that I hold most dear.
What I love most about Home for the Holidays is the tonal unsteadiness that permeates the various interactions in this ‘dysfunctional family.’ While occasionally the film teeters on the edge of being a typical Hollywood family drama, the majority of the movie succeeds in depicting a surprisingly accurate, albeit heightened, family experience. Through the Larson family, we, the audience, see the bizarre and beautiful fever dream that is a family holiday like Thanksgiving. We experience the uncanny sensation of coming ‘home’ to the most familiar place in the world, and yet feeling a strange disconnect, having retreated to our own little islands of experience as time goes by. We recognize the feeling that we each have to perform our familiarity with our loved ones, to recapture the idyllic days when it all somehow seemed more natural. We all nod in acknowledgement of the universal moment where you’re a stranger to a family, and go in to an aunt’s house for a single minute and come out with a lamp. We see our tiny moments of drama, not big conflicts that fit neatly into a three-act structure, but our little waves of anger or frustration as we get a bit too annoyed with that one family member, snap for half a minute, then make up, not in dramatic dialogue accompanied by strings, but with a silent, playful punch on the arm or a sarcastic comment. There are, unfortunately, a couple of moments where the drama in the film is sadly predictable and overly constructed, but about 90% of the film consists of these beautiful, small undulations of tension, release, cringiness, and humor, all set to rinse and repeat.
I’m not sure if it’s the time of the year, or the time of my life, but I found the final moments of the film to be extremely effective. The entire film considers, among other ideas, questions of experience, memory, and the capturing of those memories. Toward the end of the film, Henry, the family patriarch (Durning) delivers a monologue as he watches home movies in which he explains that when he looks at those images he feels disconnected from that version of himself, and the moment during which he felt complete fulfillment was not only undocumented by a camera, but also fleeting, a fraction of a percentage of his entire life. Jodie Foster ends the film with a montage of such undocumented moments, shot as though they are old home movies. The audience sees Henry’s memory that he previously mentioned he had no pictures of, followed by other characters’ own moments, such as his son Tommy’s (Downey) wedding, at which no pictures were taken, and Claudia’s (Hunter) memory of swimming with her daughter, a moment that she frequently returns to during times of stress as a comfort. Throughout this sequence, we recognize that no matter how much we perform, recreate, or record these ‘ideal’ moments, the experiences that truly matter are often unexpected and brief, and will only ever endure in ourselves. This film not only appealed to me in its style from the beginning, but made me consider my own internal world at the end. Home for the Holidays will undoubtedly become an annual Thanksgiving-time watch for me. - Bailey 💓🦃🎥
I wanted to enjoy this film. The ensemble cast and director should have been a perfect combination, but sadly, there is something lackluster about Home for the Holidays (1995). Watching this film for the first time I couldn’t help but realize that this film works as the best PSA for not spending the holidays with your family…
With such an excellent cast, including Holly Hunter, Robert Downey Jr., Anne Bancroft, Dylan McDermott, Geraldine Chaplin, Steve Guttenberg, Claire Danes, Cynthia Stevenson, and Charles Durning, I had high hopes going into this film that it would become a Thanksgiving film staple. You know, one of those perennial movies that you bring out and re-watch in anticipation of the upcoming holiday season, but sadly, this is one holiday film that I don’t foresee myself revisiting anytime soon. It would be better to succumb to turkey coma and simply sleep right through this film.
The biggest issue that I had with Home for the Holidays was that none of the cast members were believable as a family. There was little to no chemistry between the characters, which made them unrelatable and jarring, and maybe in a weird satirical way you could sort of see them functioning as a ‘family,’ but why would you put yourself though the yearly torture of reuniting at the holidays with a family like that? The sister and her husband bringing a complete second meal, including a turkey, the brother with his ridiculous pranks and twisted sense of humor, the maiden aunt lusting after the father, and even the main protagonist, Claudia (Hunter), having a quasi-mid-life crisis after losing her job and making a pass at her boss, is just another unlikable and over the top character.
Part of the problem with this ensemble cast is that they appear to have forgotten that they were in fact an ensemble. Each actor appears to be competing for attention with their never-ending display of heightening eccentricities, so much so that I got bored watching their frenzied performances. As a director, Jodie Foster tries to rein in the chaos, and creates some interesting and memorable moments. The Thanksgiving dinner scene with two turkeys is like a horror interpretation of a Norman Rockwell painting, the scene is recognizable as a traditional family gathering, but this film and family is anything but normal.
As the film’s intertitle cards suggest, “the point” of going home for the holidays is that you share an unconditional love for your family. No matter how crazy gathering for the holidays makes you, you keep coming back, year after year. If the point of the film is “we love you,” the question you have to ask yourself is “ditto?” – Sarah 🦃💤
What did you think of Home for the Holidays? Can you see any of your family members reflected in these characters? What are some of your favorite Thanksgiving-themed films? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Happy (Belated) Thanksgiving!
Copyright © 2019 Sarah Crane & Bailey Lizotte
