Dark and cold yes, but also vivid and exciting

Rating: 6/10 (18 December 2006)

Lots of people have noted that this is a "dark" or even "creepy" film, and I would like to also propose that "cold" should be added to the list of adjectives used to describe it, and perhaps that instead of calling it "creepy", "dream-like" or "melancholy" would be more apt. In any case, most of us could agree that this film is most definitely not "cheery". I think the underlying reason for this is that this film has an obsession with the not-exactly-Holly-Jolly theme of innocence lost--or at least, innocence in danger of being lost--and then it succeeds in its artistic expression of this theme perhaps a bit too well. This film tends to also be very heavy-handed with its metaphors.
The film starts out illustrating the conflict between the main character's desire to believe in Santa Claus and the rapidly mounting real-world evidence against Santa as anything more than an alluring childhood fantasy used to market toys. And then it illustrates this some more. And some more. After maybe ten minutes of this, you feel like shouting "OK, OK...we get it already!" As the film progresses, the boy maintains what would seem to be an unnaturally high level of incredulity for such a young child in what most children would consider such wonderful circumstances. In fact, he appears so distracted by his struggle to overcome disbelief that he seemingly forgets to enjoy himself on what is, after all, a magic train ride to go see Santa Claus.
Did I mention this film goes heavy on the metaphor? For example, if you edited out all the footage of characters attempting to snatch something precious that is either slipping, falling, or blowing away from their possession, the film would probably come out ten minutes shorter. All this footage of the losing of things and uncontrolled swirling of things in icy cold air is effective as a metaphor for the elusive nature of faith in a harsh and chaotic world for about the first minute in total. The remaining nine minutes of it are just irritating.
It's not all bad, though. The cold and forbidding setting of this film is put to good use. Many parts of the train's journey though the frozen wilderness of what looks like northern Canada are exciting and beautiful in an unnerving manner as the monster steam locomotive from a hundred years ago does heavy battle with some of nature's most unforgiving elements in the frigid dead of night in the remote realms of the Arctic. This sequence includes a particularly vivid moment of the derailed train ice-dancing a crack-the-whip on a frozen lake. It's all very entertaining to watch, although some people will probably find the nearly continual, restless, full-screen motion a bit tiring to watch after a while.
But what about the main character? Did he enjoy the journey to the top of the world? Uh, no. For him, the trip contains an awful lot of struggling to inch forward along (or just avoid falling off from) the top of the train as it hurtles at blinding speeds into very realistically animated heavy snowfall (yes, it'll make you squint) through desolate wilderness in temperatures and motion-induced wind-chill that would have frozen a real person solid in a minute or two. My daughter watched much of this film in my lap, insisting that I wrap my coat around her because she felt cold. I can see why.
The main character periodically receives the assistance of a ghost or guardian angel, of sorts. Rather than a beautiful fairy, he's a haggard old hobo-looking type drinking swill out of an old can. I suppose this way at least the film avoids the good fairy godmother cliché, and this character does fit perfectly with the aesthetic of the rest of the film, providing a vivid blending of the realms of fantasy with a sort of real-world, Harley-Davidson grit.
Santa's workshop is a surprisingly dreary affair. You would think that Christmas Eve up at Santa's complex would be like an over-sized, Christmassy version of Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, teeming with busy, cheery elves and bright colors. Instead, it looks like a cross between an inexplicably abandoned Mont St. Michel and some large-scale industrial site in Elisabeth, New Jersey. Maybe they were going for realism here, because the vast, gloomy factory spaces probably would have actually been big enough to crank out a toy or two for every child on earth. That's my punt, anyway.
This is a film about the fragile and ephemeral nature of childhood innocence and the magic that such innocence makes possible during Christmas. The message it conveys comes across a bit disjointed to me, but it seems to be that, if you succeed in the struggle to maintain your innocence, you'll be a better person for it. The uphill battle this film faced was to overcome the tendency of the questions it posed regarding faith and innocence to drag the film into a conspicuously minor key. For the most part, it lost that battle, but in the process it became a film that can't be confused with any other. In addition to its uniqueness and the otherworldly beauty that often haunts this film, there is also an excellent and sensitive sound-track that reinforces its salient qualities. Whether or not you like those qualities depends on what you're in the mood for, but this might not be the film to see with the relatives to spread the ol' Juletide cheer.