Christmas with the Kranks

LINKS
—Interview with Dan Aykroyd
—Trailers, Photos
—About this Film pdf file
—Spiritual Connections

The first time you saw the trailer for Christmas with the Kranks, you may have thought precisely what I did: “Tim Allen in another Christmas movie?” And unfortunately, you may still be itching to ask that question after seeing Kranks, too -- just like members of the press were after screenings of the movie in Manhattan earlier this month.

The storyline of Christmas with the Kranks is very slight. Yet again, we are presented with what is apparently the quintessential modern American Christmas dilemma: why do we continue to put so much effort into celebrating Christmas when the holiday season makes the majority of us so stressed out during the weeks leading up to that magical Christmas day? Since Charles Dickens, and likely before that, Scrooge and his variant cousins have repeatedly cropped up in books and films to remind us that the value of Christmas is not in the rituals and the trappings, but in the truth of the spirit behind the traditions.

These days, in fact, it seems as if that reminder itself has become a ritual. Even a recent Christmas classic like A Christmas Story is not a tale of goodness and light, but of Christmases gone ironically wrong -- and which get righted in the improbable giving of one memorable, if ultimately misguided and failed, gift. Even last year’s Elf was driven by the need to “save Christmas” by literally recapturing the spirit that fuels Santa’s sleigh.

So what makes Christmas with the Kranks a worthwhile addition to the tradition? What does it have to say of value? After all, Tim Allen told reviewers, the movie wouldn’t have been his own “first choice” to make. “The best line,” he elaborated, “was when I called my mother and said, ‘Hey, I’m gonna start a new movie, not The Shaggy Dog,’ and she goes, ‘Oh good.’
‘It’s a Grisham book.’ She goes, ‘Oh, thank God. Do you get to kill a lawyer or something down in Havana?’ ‘No. No, it’s more of a morality play. About a family making decisions.’ ‘Are you an attorney?’ ‘No, I’m actually a highly skilled accountant. It happens around Christmas time...’ ‘So you kill a judge, but it’s...’ ‘Yeah, and all of that’s in there...’ And then I told her the name. And luckily, she loved the book. But she goes, ‘What do you know?
Another Christmas movie. That’s something different.’”

The fact is, Allen frankly admits, he now does Christmas movies because “they’ll pay” him to do them. “I’ve been successful at this time of year,” he says, and with that success comes “a lot of pressure to be the ‘Christmas Guy.’” Pressure not unlike the Christmas pressure which Luther Krank feels, and against which Krank selfishly rebels.

And Allen was drawn to the improbable twist at the end of the movie in which Krank must decide between his own selfish desires to ditch Christmas, or doing the right thing for a neighbor he hates. “It’s a lonely thing to change from selfish to selfless,” Allen says. “That transition, for a human being, is huge.”

But it’s a transition that Allen knows applies in the real world,
too: that moment when “there’s nothing left to hold on to. You reach some sort of emotional bottom. And instead of repeating the same behavior, you decide to move forward to some other behavior. Because the definition of insanity is: doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results. And that’s how most of us live our lives.”

Luther Krank finally decides -- improbably, but still true to real life -- that he’s just had enough. He can remain “petulant and self-absorbed,” focused on getting what he wants; or he can start thinking about the needs of others.

Luther’s moment is one with which Allen is intimately familiar.
“I’ve been there a million times in my life, where someone has reminded me, ‘This isn’t really about you.’”

And that other-centeredness certainly captures the spirit of Christmas, and the film presents it in fine focus in its closing moments. When all is said and done, Christmas with the Kranks offers up values that are good for more than just one day a year.

It’s a pity, to be sure, that our society can’t observe the number one Elf rule to treat every day like Christmas. It’s a smaller pity that Kranks serves up little else of holiday cheer or humor on the way to its valuable, if Santa’s-shop-worn, conclusion.

Continue:
—Interview with Dan Aykroyd
—Trailers, Photos
—About this Film pdf file
—Spiritual Connections

National Treasure

LINKS
—Overview
—Trailers, Photos
—About this Film (PDF)
—Spiritual Connections

You can believe what you want. You’re a grown person.

National Treasure is the kind of movie in which Arctic temperatures don’t consistently cause the moisture in your warm breath to condense. It’s the kind of film in which centuries-old liquid fuel hasn’t evaporated, the kind in which conspirators find the steps of the Lincoln Monument the best place to discuss their illegal and highly dangerous plans. In short, it’s a film not to be taken too seriously, like Raiders of the Lost Ark or The Mummy. Unfortunately, aside from Nicolas Cage (who himself seems to be slumming), neither the characters nor the actors themselves are anywhere near as engaging as in those two films.

National Treasure also demonstrates three other things: first, that Jon Voight hasn’t learned anything since Anaconda; second, that it is possible for Harvey Keitel to repeat himself, simultaneously channeling performances from Thelma and Louise, Clockers and Mortal Thoughts; and third, that Christopher Plummer, lo these many years after The Sound of Music, is still one of America’s most engaging film actors (even if he isn’t American).

But all of this is mere window-dressing for the adventure tale that is National Treasure. At its core, the film wants to heart-warmingly remind us that America’s founding fathers really were decently noble fellows who believed that government, like the “lost” treasure of the Knights Templar, is best when not hoarded but shared of the people, by the people and for the people. And there are times in this movie when the archaic language of our government’s framers actually manages to stir some of that feeling as the overlong story winds its way through various abandoned passages and absurd plot complications.

In order to appreciate the film’s point, though, you’ve got to buy into one basic premise: that all the wacky stories you’ve ever been told are actually true. In Robert Gates’ case, he was told by his grandfather of a mysterious clue left by the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, a clue leading to the treasure of the Masons and Knights Templar—a monumentally historic treasure hoarded under the temple in Jerusalem and discovered there by crusading medieval knights and eventually spirited away to the New World.

Gates’ father, however, is a cynic—darn him! He tells his son, “The legend says that the treasure was buried to keep it from the British. But what really happened was that the legend was invented to keep the British occupied searching for buried treasure. The treasure is a myth.”

In other words, says Gates senior, attractive myths have always been fashioned to keep folks distracted from the truth. Sound familiar to anyone? Sound like what’s always said about White House press releases? Maybe like what author Dan Brown proposes in The DaVinci Code? According to our cultural skeptics, it’s all “bread and circuses,” as the Roman poet Juvenal remarked.

It’s to National Treasure’s credit, I suppose, that Cage’s Gates (who at one point significantly uses the pseudonym “Paul Brown”) doesn’t buy into the old man’s pessimism. “I refuse to believe that,” he replies. To which his father rejoins, “Well, you can believe what you want. You’re a grown person.”

And scores of clerical critics, I imagine, have commended this film for siding with “myth,” for asserting that the outlandish stories of our childhood—like those we heard in Sunday School—are actually true.

But here’s where the Christian myth parts ways with National Treasure’s rather gnostic, hidden-knowledge-dependent approach to the whole subject. The central “mystery” of Christianity has long been revealed: salvation, the True Treasure in Christ, is not just available to the Illuminati or the Masons or Knights Templar, or any other private club. It’s available to all who believe.

So believe what you want. You’re a grown person. But have a clue.

Continue:
—Overview
—Trailers, Photos
—About this Film (PDF)
—Spiritual Connections