A few thoughts on Home for the Holidays...

The other day I was planning on writing about Home for the Holidays, one of my favorite movies, but then I was overcome with an attack of the “you’re not as good as the Lancies” . Anyone who has read Lance’s reviews knows that he is thorough. His movie reviews are like going to the car wash and not just opting for the rinse off, but are like choosing the carnauba wax and the undercarriage treatment.

I suddenly doubted my ability to review the movie, to do a critical analysis, but some kind souls pushed me back in the direction of writing about a movie I love and it was then that I realized… I didn’t really want to write a review per se or a critical analysis… I just wanted to write a little bit about a movie I love.

Home for the Holidays was released in 1995 and was directed by Jodie Foster. It stars a stellar ensemble cast, each capable of holding their own in a leading role. Holly Hunter is technically the lead, but her lead is equally supported by Anne Bancroft, Charles Durning, Robert Downey Jr. etc.

The screenplay, written by W.D Richter, was based on the short story of the same name by Chris Radant, but only loosely resembles the original story. Foster said her directorial debut, Little Man Tate, had been very linear and rigid and she wanted to make a film that was anything but. She went against her grain on this and let the movie flow wherever the energy or the actors took it.

Home for the Holidays is basically about 48 hours in Claudia (Hunter) Larson’s life. She starts off in her own world as an art restorer, doing her best work, getting lost in the moment where time has no meaning  and when she snaps to she is promptly fired and is about to go spend the next painfully slow 36 hours with her family over the Thanksgiving holiday.

I am now resisting recapping the entire movie or discussing how it is a movie with a lot of talk about the point while it is often brought up that there is no point.  What I want to do is write about why I like this story, like this movie. Number one is because it is indeed full of wonderful actors who are being allowed to make it work and #2, but equally as important, is because it is a wonderful story about how life is messy and families are even messier.

In American, we are fed a line about how having the nuclear family is the ideal and how if that is in place, everything else is gravy. I think what this movie displays so well is that being a part of a family is hard and confusing… You can love people so much it aches and yet still not understand how you or they fit in. And being an adult, as Claudia's case points out, does not spare you. Just because you are an adult does not mean that you will not be whisked back into childhood any and every time you go through your parents’ door. Here you are, grown up, with your own life and people who truly get you and then Thanksgiving rolls around and you are going home… going back in time. You are relinquishing control... you are relinquishing some of your identity. (I think this is best shown in the movie when Claudia loses her *stylish coat that fits her* at the airport and must wear her mother's horrid fucshia, down extravaganza for the remainder of her trip.) Before you know it, you are slipping into your juvenile ways and instead of being a lead player, you are a supporting player to whatever story was drafted long before you came along.

HFTH shows how a family can be painfully intimate and in the same breath, painfully isolating. It portrays how when we go back, we are no longer fully conscious of our behavior, but revert to some kind of autopilot. We are going through the motions and are reacting to others going through the motions, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.

When we go home for the holidays, all of our personal dramas collide. Sometimes we are able to maneuver around them… sometimes they end up with ones mother chucking the “Family Feud” game into the fireplace without a clue as to the irony of that act…

We know our family members longer than anyone and yet we rarely really *know* them. We think we do, but we don’t. I think I know my parents and yet I am still amazed when my mother or father offers up some tidbit about the other that happened long before I was a part of the plan and goes against my fully formed ideas. And I often feel that they don’t know me, even while going through the motions of the loving, thankful family and yet, in some quiet time, one of them will do something that shows they have known something intrinsic about me all along. The dialogue slows, the distraction clears and pure knowing, if only for an instance, is there. Claudia Larson experiences this in many ways during the film, but most of all at the end when her father reminds her of her fearlessness. He seems distracted, out of touch, but in reality, he has seen the kernel of who she really is and maybe reminding her will get her back to her authentic self.

Okay, okay, I could ramble on and on about the wonder and the insanity that is each and every American family, but you can see a very entertaining, very slapstick instance of it in Home for the Holidays. Every role is worth seeing (maybe with the exception of Steve Guttenberg… sorry Steve.) Robert Downey Jr. is especially entertaining to watch. Apparently, high as a kite, most of his performance was improvised and yet Foster said it was better than it had originally been written... fighting his own personal demons added something extra to his role, to the story. 

Often times in families people feel they need to change to be accepted, but really what we need to do is just love them and accept them as they are. We're all doing the best we can .