The Christmas Eve Snowfall

In the interests of objectivity, regular Hanover Pictures reviewer Will Griffin has had to step aside, as he is the writer behind new project The Christmas Eve Snowfall. The task of reviewing this latest work now falls to me: brother of the writer and lifelong friend of the producer/director. Hello, objectivity!

There is a definite turning point in the career of director Paul Dudbridge. His early films (Love for the Witness, Den of Thieves, The Last Contract) mined the seam of Teenagers with Guns to a point where even Arthur Scargill was demanding its closure. Entertaining as they were, their similarity suggested a limited vision but then came Projection to prove that Paul was a filmmaker experimenting with genre, style, tone and atmosphere, and doing so with confidence. Compare his early almost-trilogy with his later output; Projection feels nothing like Coldharbour, Coldharbour nothing like Katie’s Mission, and Katie’s Mission nothing like A Christmas Eve Snowfall. We are well past the days where we could guess which tools Paul had just learnt to use (Hello Dolly!), our intrepid filmmaker now exploring within himself instead of within the South Bristol College Media Department Equipment Shed. Snowfall is his finest work.

Heading for uncharted territory with an almost boneheaded optimism, this adaptation of Will Griffin’s poem is a new peak for Hanover. It shouldn’t have worked. It needed to be handled sensitively, to be romantic but not schmaltzy, to capture the themes of love and loneliness with subtlety, and, with no dialogue, it had to avoid looking like a cheesy montage from a Christmas episode of Baywatch. That it succeeds is a minor miracle, and an indication of the talent at work.

The source material is probably the best effort from Will Griffin’s life-is-a-lonely-loveless-misery phase. I won’t lie, folks; when I first read it I blubbed like a baby. Will has an absurdly romantic view of romance, and a childlike love of Christmas, leaving his cynicism behind in the womb for his younger brother to marinade in for nine months. Cards on the table, gang: he’s a soppy bastard. Soppier than a Care Bear painting love hearts with treacle. But by some miracle he sidesteps it all in his writing, producing a poem that really is romantic, really does remind us of the magic of Christmas, and really does deflect any cynicism you throw at it. It’s honest, its emotions familiar without feeling clichéd, its structure perfect for the story, and it never feels like a rhyming dictionary was called into service.

This is a great adaptation. The title sequence is beautiful and immediately hits the right note: a close up on a candle, drifting credits, tender music, a dissolve to a gentle blizzard… great stuff. The opening segment, of happy humans doing Christmassy things is just the right side of cheese, and then comes the voice: “Magic lives in Christmas nights, in frosted dawns, in fairy lights…” Joss Ackland has the perfect gravely drawl to make our spines tingle. We’re so used to seeing him play the bad guy you’d half expect him to be terrifying in real life but here he shows a tenderness that is perfect for the film. His voice, and Will’s words, are the core of the film but Paul excels himself with the room he is allowed. This is not a word-for-word translation; cameras that dive into the sea and tempt us down, bookend montages and a reflection in a window that would spoil the finale if I gave more detail, show that this is a creative man at work. The final shot, where a tree decoration practically winks at the camera, is too much, but marks the only misstep in the piece. Add to that the further advances in music and visual effects, and consider the coup that Ackland’s casting represents, and you have a filmmaker scaling new heights.

The acting is… facial. There’s not really much for anyone to do but look in shop windows and laugh while ole gravel voice reads out loud but, God Almighty, can Ben Pavord quiver his lip. As he stands on a lonely cliff top we are utterly convinced his bottom lip wants to kill itself, taking the rest of him with it. He is matched by on-screen soul mate Lisa Ruthven, convincing as a lonely singleton surprised by love and the chance to finally get some on Christmas Eve. The only gripe I have with the cast is that it doesn’t include me, but that’s what you get for moving house shortly before production starts. I could have laughed at a shop window, and I would have believed the window was funny. I worked on a backstory. But I digress. Ben gives a stand-out, as he did in Katie’s, and no doubt we’ll see more of him soon.

But this is not a film for the cast. Its nature makes it a showcase for its writing and direction, and happily these are its greatest strengths. This is exactly what Hanover should be about. The story fits the available cast, the idea fits the available budget; making action thrillers puts it in the same bracket as Hollywood blockbusters and it’s all but impossible to compete. The Christmas Eve Snowfall is a showcase for the talent behind it, and that talent is hitting its stride.