This is an abridged version of a review I wrote for Christianity Today Movies. To read the rest of this review, click here.
Writer/director David Wall, who looks astonishingly like a young Robert Redford, also plays the lead role of Father Jonathan Keene, an emotionally aloof priest every bit as cold as the snow-draped Cape Cod fishing village he visits the week before Christmas. A “hitman” for the archdiocese, Father Keene is on a mission to do what he does best: shut down a local parish no longer deemed financially viable. The parish priest, Father Simeon Joyce (Sean Patrick Brennan), is a faithful but disillusioned, hard drinking priest who blatantly thumbs his nose at church regulations in deference to caring for his flock. Keene’s classmate from seminary, Father Joyce’s heart is in the right place even if he’s lost the will or know-how to keep his church alive.
For reasons even he cannot understand, Keene decides to give his old friend one last chance—use the holiday season to prove that the church is well attended and financial viable or else he will bolt its doors come the New Year. The two agree that a live Nativity is a good way to draw the locals and they go about choosing from what few elderly parishioners the church has for the Holy Family and attendants. The townsfolk turn out to be a quirky ensemble of eccentrics, oddball characters who would feel right at home in Garrison Keeler’s Lake Woebegone. Drawing off of the same charming elements that make the plot of A Charlie Brown Christmas such an enchanting treat each Christmas, the parishioners preen and prance, imagining themselves actors of Shakespearian caliber while Keene looks on, his decision all but made.
Father Keene is Ebenezer Scrooge in a clerical collar, a judgmental Grinch who “hates the people side of things” and is afraid to show the slightest softness. The truth is, the obedient but troubled Keene has a dark secret and a serpentine road to a calling he never desired. He uses religion as a way to hide from his past and atone for his sins. Only one person in the town seems to know how to penetrate his hard exterior. Marjorie Worthington (Kerry Wall, the director’s wife), the local librarian, is a woman with a painful secret of her own, a dubious engagement to local money, and a very palpable draw on Keene’s heart. He desperately wants her for the part of the Madonna but it is clear that he also wants her for her.
As the live Nativity idea, like the church, falls apart and Father Keene becomes ever more entangled in the lives of the villagers, everything builds toward Marjorie’s grandmother’s legendary Christmas party where the impossible becomes possible, miracles masquerades as mayhem, and redemption and forgiveness are but a hair’s breadth away. I admit I was unprepared for the film’s emotional denouement, one that, like the film entire, maintains its beauty and power in the midst of its deceptive simplicity.
It is wonderful to see Gener8Xion Entertainment producing something other than its usual ridiculous, religious apocalyptic fare (The Omega Code, Megiddo). The Christian releasing company behind the lavish but timid One Night with the King has here picked up a film whose power lies in its simplicity as a modern parable. Blending A Christmas Carol with Charlie Brown, It’s a Wonderful Life with Waking Ned Divine, Gener8Xion Entertainment has adopted a film that will probably have an extremely limited and financially inconsequential release, but represents a satisfying step forward for religious filmmaking all the same.
Despite a mostly even script and some very pretty cinematography, Noelle is not without its faults. It’s a good thing that we become engrossed in the act of the townsfolk putting on the life sized crèche, because the idea of a giant nativity as the sole means of saving a church from financial ruin is a silly conceit that never feels remotely believable.
All of the actors, with the exception of Brennan, do a terrific job. Brennan is sporadic at best, competent one moment and an obvious amateur the next. While the film is never crippled by his portrayal, the scenes in which he is a part do suffer somewhat. It is the talented triple-threat of David Wall who is the strong core of the movie’s success. His fine acting, authentic script and capable eye have produced a film that generates a beautiful message without the sort of heavy-handed moralizing so indicative of the vast majority of Christian fare.
Noelle balances wit and pathos, legalism and relationship, guilt and grace in such a way that will ring true in both your heart and your head this yuletide season. The film will amuse and enchant, reminding us that miracles, in this season more than most, really do exist, and that the true meaning of the Christmas is close at hand when we embrace the gift of grace that is a child.
© Copyright 2007 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.
