The Polar Express is my favorite Christmas movie ever. This one absolutely wins me over. I watched it the night before Christmas Eve (and cried, plenty), and afterwards, I made up my mind to write about it.
A review from Robert Ebert (The Polar Express 4/4) encapsulates much of how and what I feel about Zemeckis' film. Some bits:
"The Polar Express" has the quality of a lot of lasting children's entertainment: It's a little creepy. Not creepy in an unpleasant way, but in that sneaky, teasing way that lets you know eerie things could happen. There's a deeper, shivery tone, instead of the mindless jolliness of the usual Christmas movie. This one creates a world of its own, like "The Wizard of Oz" or "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," in which the wise child does not feel too complacent."
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And the North Pole looks like a turn-of-the-century German factory town, filled with elves who not only look mass-produced but may have been, since they mostly have exactly the same features (this is not a cost-cutting device, but an artistic decision).
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Santa, in this version, is a good and decent man, matter-of-fact and serious: a professional man, doing his job. The elves are like the crowd at a political rally. A sequence involving a bag full of toys is seen from a high angle that dramatizes Santa's operation, but doesn't romanticize it; this is not Jolly St. Nick, but Claus Inc. There is indeed something a little scary about all those elves with their intense, angular faces and their mob mentality.
That's the magic of "The Polar Express": It doesn't let us off the hook with the usual reassuring Santa and Christmas cliches.
All true, all right on the nose. I'll say two things: 1) I haven't read this in its original book version written and illustrated by Chris Van Allsburg, which I'm sure is equally wonderful, and 2) the film is extremely touching, visually. Not beautiful, not pretty, not gorgeous - but - touching.
Visually, the story is sparse and cold and doesn't wow us with sparkles and the usual elements of coziness. Nor does it try to by funny. There is no comedy in this film whatsoever and I am in love with that element of it. (That is not to say there aren't parts where you won't laugh. I laughed, plenty. And not because of any punch line, but true laughter, the pure laughter of those slivered moments in which we think we understand existence.) For those of us who know that true feeling of loneliness - not adult loneliness but a child's loneliness - when all the basic amenities of home are met (mom, dad, sister, house, bed, toys) but yet, there is a lack, and that cold blue light comes through the window, first the sad, heavy twilight, then the deeper blue like an opaque denim colored sky, and lastly the darkest royal, midnight blue... and you're alone and young and thinking and these colors surround you and you know no one can are truly relate to what you feel because you are the only one experiencing this lonely melancholy at exactly this time. And somehow, it's scary, but you feel OK.
Well, this movie, for me, captures that rare feeling in the first sequences. And the best part (one of many) comes when the Polar Express gets there, and the young boy runs out of his house and, tentatively at first, decides to hop on that mysterious train. Which is warm and cozy and full of warm light and adventure and is moving and and and... it is also full of strangers. All curious, some annoying, but all there in wonderment together. And the story captures this feeling of communal unknowing - everyone - each child, more specifically, coping with this *not knowing* it in a different way.
Arguably, this movie is not even about Christmas. It is - it is - but underlying it all it isn't. It is about believing in something that you believed in when you were little and then knowing that it's not true and then rekindling that belief in some strange way, doing whatever it takes to find out the real, God-honest truth, even taking some strange, mysterious, and possibly dangerous train away from your home in the middle of the night. For the main character, that's what it's about. The way the story tells it describes this in terms of Santa Claus. Which is endearing and precious because of the culture we grew up in. But there's something more here.
My favorite character (though I love all of them dearly, as if they were real), is the lonely boy. After the Polar Express stops to pick up our hero, it goes on for a while and all the way on the "other side of the tracks" it stops to pick up a poor boy, thin, with shaggy blonde hair, utterly depressed. He misses the train but luckily, his future friend pulls the emergency brakes and let's him jump on. The lonely boy decides to sit by himself in the last car. His story is something I must think more about, but this boy seems to appreciate everything, though it may not seem so on the outside. He has trust issues, but by the end he makes two friends, who he may not ever see again, yet, we now that those friendships will be cherished somewhere other than just in his memory. Somewhere deeper.
So much of this movie reminds me of being little. I had plenty of dreams that turned into odd nightmares of riding long, long, long tracks that would suddenly slide down as if a roller coaster, then winding and winding again, and Zemeckis' Polar Express seems to have incepted those dreams from me in a science fiction universe - that's how immediate my reaction was to them.
There is so much more to say about and write about... like the absurdity of the North Pole. The emptiness of it, like a convention center where the decorations are up but everyone has left, the party ended, until one realizes it has just congregated to another space. The beauty of the North Pole town, a painting of gorgeous townhouse like buildings, but without inhabitants. Waiting to be explored. Inhabited. The entire cleanliness of the place. The hollowness that didn't fear this hollowness.
Here's the key. The Polar Express' three main characters (and arguably know-it-all boy as well) are not like anyone else. Santa knows this. Santa sees them. Acknowledges them. Speaks to them. Makes sure they are presented with something precious and heart-rending. The train conductor - though he acts as if the proprietor of an egalitarian and equal community - knows that these three (or four, with know-it-all) are, indeed, special. The three don't even know it themselves. But they can feel it. It could be something like - that piercing feeling in your heart when - you're sad because - because you're stellar. And perhaps you realize that you are more rare than you, even you in your brilliant form, would like to admit. Because, really, it can be truly lonely. But maybe you meet a couple (or three) new friends that can match that new knowledge. Maybe your Santa, whatever his form, gives you that eternal present, like the boy's bell, in which you can hear (and see and feel and understand and produce), what many others simply cannot.
Do me a favor: see the movie. For fun.
(The ghost character reminiscent of Tom Waits is pretty awesome, too.)
- F
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