Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point welcomes viewers into the Balsano family’s annual festive gathering. Four generations of the Italian-American family descend on the home of the elderly matriarch Antonia (Mary Reistetter) in Long Island, in New York state, where eating, drinking and general merriment ensues.
As the night goes on it becomes apparent that this may be their last Christmas together in the family home. As the adults immerse themselves in festivities, teenagers Emily (Matilda Fleming) and Michelle (Francesca Scorsese) secretly break out of the house to hang out with their friends.
Writer-director Tyler Taormina captures the cacophony of family gatherings in some beautifully observed and poignant moments. The ensemble cast (Michael Cera, Elsie Fisher, Maria Dizzia, Ben Shenkman, Gregg Turkington and Sawyer Spielberg) create a layered and tender family drama.
The meandering narrative drifts around universal family issues, from elderly relatives to teenage angst, but the majority of the film takes place in the home.
Festive classics including A Christmas Carol, Home Alone, It’s A Wonderful Life, Die Hard, Miracle on 34th Street and Elf, all consider the home to be pivotal. Christmas films often feature a return home as an essential part of narrative closure.
The quest for home is a popular cinematic theme all year round. But it’s particularly poignant at Christmas when there is a universal, relatable pull to return.
In many Christmas films the stakes (and drama) are raised by making the return home a difficult enterprise. But in Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point, the stakes are not raised in this fashion, in spite of the the film beginning with the dedication: “For the lost. May they find their way home on Christmas Eve.”
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The houses of our childhood resonate through our lives. In 1957, the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard wrote that our house is “our corner of the world … our first universe”.
The desire to return home can represent many things in film, from belonging to identity and a yearning for community. The home can be seen to embody family values – a fantasy of stability in a transient world. But the home can also be a prison, catalyst or gateway.
In Home Alone (1990) the home becomes a weapon to deter burglars. The house swap in The Holiday (2006) enables both characters to move past life obstacles. And the “drafty old house” in It’s A Wonderful Life (1946) is a prize to be cherished.
Christmas movies often connect with the viewer’s nostalgic wish to return to a Christmas past that creates an imagined community. We are drawn to these films as they contain enduring truths that resonate with our lives and offer a metaphorical return home.
This can be seen in Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point. The nostalgia of the family’s past is revelled in with stories, songs and old home movie footage. This is further supported by the soundtrack, which features a haunting Amtrak horn and classic tunes that underscore the sense of a universally shared pop cultural past.
As law professor Margaret Davies once put it: “It is impossible to leave home because the home is not only our physical location … but also our interior architecture, our own psychology, home is in this sense who we are”.
This atmospheric film captures a slice of suburban America which feels eerily transient. It is a nostalgic Christmas movie, but it is also an impressionistic portrait of a universal home.
Jane Barnwell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
