At the end of Peter Godfrey’s “Christmas in Connecticut” — the greatest Christmas movie of all time (don’t fight me on this) — beloved character actor Sydney Greenstreet, having just emerged from a comedy kerfuffle of epic proportions, can think of nothing more to do than throw his mighty head in the air and declare “What a Christmas! Ho ho, what a Christmas!”
I could also think of little else to say, at first, about Tyler Taormina’s peculiar and lovely “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.” What a Christmas indeed. The film is an eclectic hodgepodge of realism and dreamlike, dare I say Lynchian mannerisms. It’s set in the 2000s but it belts wall-to-wall mid-20th century pop hits, like a family-friendly cousin to Kenneth Anger’s “Scorpio Rising.” When Peggy March’s “Wind-Up Doll” drowns out the family playtime, you can half imagine the leathery biker tinkering in the garage.
“Scorpio Rising” soaked its action with then-contemporary pop songs as a subversive commentary on masculinity and queerness. “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point” uses them as a binding agent, connecting multiple generations of a family, all crushed together into one overly decorated house. The cell phones and video games are Millennial, the music is Boomer, and Generation X seems to have gotten themselves lost in the middle, minding their own kids while debating what to do about grandma now that she’s getting on.
All this comes with, for the first half of Taormina’s film, a hazy half-remembered quality. I wouldn’t be surprised if cinematographer Carson Lund (“Ham on Rye”) based the whole film’s aesthetic on 1980s holiday commercials. You know the kind, the ones with vaseline smears on the edge of the frame, warm lights clashing with reddish brown sweaters, and every conversation somehow coming back around to a Casio wristwatch or whichever brand of liqueur was hot that season. The camera seems to have floated past most of the product placement — although M&M’s sure do have their moment — and off into the background, to find out what all the extras are “Watermelon Watermeloning” about.
The plot… does not exist. A lot of things happen but nothing drives “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point” in any direction except inescapably forward, but that’s just the march of time. Uncle Ray (Tony Savino) is writing a book and he doesn’t want anyone to know about it. One of the kids lost his pet lizard. Michelle (Francesca Scorsese, yes, the one with the TikToks) sneaks out and has a mild romantic whirl with Lynn (Elsie Fisher, “Eighth Grade”), a late night bagel shop clerk. Moms and daughters fail to connect, other moms and daughters do connect. Regrets are passed around like dinner rolls, and little dramas build up when someone refuses to pass the dinner rolls.
There’s a darling and twee version of “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point” that Tyler Taormina did not make, but he comes close. The air of light affection fills the room like a Yankee Candle, the subplots dance around until they find something resembling a conclusion, so it’s not entirely unlike Garry Marshall’s many ensemble holiday movies, like “New Year’s Eve” or “Mother’s Day” or “Talk Like a Pirate Day,” which wasn’t a real one but it should have been. Unlike those schmaltzy hits, Taormina’s film never relies on contrivance, even when it deals in coincidences. It never comes close to mawkish. Its sweetness hits harder.
It’s not all cheer and nostalgia. Oddly enough there’s a pervasive sense of vague menace that hangs around the periphery, the threat that something bad could really happen. “Miller’s Point” is disconnected from conventional genre expectations so anything is possible and the safeties are off. Teenagers sneak out and stare at weirdos in the cemetery and drink beers and smash stuff (always by accident, but always, nevertheless). Scenes fade to deep colors so slowly it’s a little disquieting. The house is so overwhelmingly crowded before the kids go to sleep that it genuinely gets stuffy in here, wherever you’re watching it. People with social anxiety might think of “Miller’s Point” as a sort of horror film.
Still, that hardness isn’t tangible. It’s just tone, and it never interferes with the tender reality Taormina builds for his audience. The cops do, though. Michael Cera and Gregg Turkington play wackily laconic patrolmen who let almost every crime slide. They always give each other a slow look as if to say “I didn’t see anything if you didn’t.” By the time they actually say anything out loud the movie is half over, and what’s on their mind is it’s a strangely ponderous meditation about, perhaps, their deep-seated sexual attraction to each other. Or maybe it’s all hypothetical. Or maybe it’s just weird. They’re in a slightly different movie but we love them for it.
“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point” is free in a way that few movies are. It’s free in a way that few people are. It’s able to go anywhere and feel anything, unhindered by expectation or self-doubt. That it comes together at all is due to an astonishing style of editing, so kudos to Kevin Anton (“Ham on Rye”), who somehow assembled this collection of fleeting moments, difficult dialogue and only somewhat funny jokes into a tapestry that weaves together a whole danged evening.
Here’s the thing: I’m not even sure I always liked it, but I was hypnotized and that counts for something. “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point” captures a big experience. It is itself a big experience. It’s a little happy, a little sad, a little off-putting, a lot like going home again. And it’s always interesting.