Most Christmas films fixate on a kind of frantic joyousness that’s foreign to most people’s real experience of the holiday. Far more authentic is the reserved melancholy that director Charles Poekel thoroughly explores in Christmas, Again. The film centers on Noel (Kentucker Audley), an upstate man who spends the holidays selling Christmas trees out of a trailer on the sidewalks of Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Early in the film the inside of the trailer is introduced in a long shot interspersed with blinking colored light from the outside decorations, forming a stark contrast with the drab interior. Poekel lingers on this shot, a beautiful visualization of exterior cheer masking an empty interior. With no home in the city save the trailer, Noel feels something of an interloper – he has glimpses into the lives of others and facilitates their holiday cheer, but he must remain figuratively and literally outside.
As the title poetically implies, the film isn’t simply about Christmas, but about Christmas in the context of other Christmases, how the holidays force contemplation, welcome or not, about the passing of time. Noel is a veteran at selling trees; he knows all the distinctions between different firs and ably manages some less invested friends in the business. When one customer asks how long he’s been doing this and Noel tells him five years, the man responds that he’s never done anything for five years, bringing a potent mix of emotions to Noel’s face. Poekel directs with a light touch and excels at fleshing out the narrative organically, through conversation and implication. Returning customers keep asking about that nice girl from last year and we learn that in years prior Noel had a girlfriend selling trees with him; snapshots from that happier time are in the background in the trailer.
This is primarily a contemplative, rather than plot-driven film, but the approaching holiday gives an inherent shape to the film and a slight narrative emerges around Noel’s encounters with Lydia, whom he finds passed out on a park bench one night. After helping her to the trailer and allowing her to sleep there, she returns first confused, then grateful, then angry, because he has unknowingly caused trouble with her boyfriend. As a sidewalk salesman, Noel has no control over who visits him and must try to please every customer, from a condescending man who sends his wife photos of every tree to an over-enthusiastic woman who wants the same tree as the Obamas. Through it all, we see every pang of emotion that crosses Noel’s face, courtesy of Kentucker Audley’s perfectly modulated performance. Noel is withdrawn against his own desires, trying to simply endure the season, but feeling its pull regardless, and Audley ably communicates these contradictory impulses. Christmas, Again is a film both quiet and strong, where small moments cohere naturally into powerful feelings and reflection; it’s a needed rejoinder to the Christmas film canon.
