It wasn’t on my list of likely occurrences that a nostalgic and sentimental holiday movie would provide some of the year’s sharpest characterizations on film and also boast a strikingly original narrative form. But this paradoxical blend turns out to make perfect sense in “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point,” a finely crafted and achingly romantic memory piece, directed by Tyler Thomas Taormina. It’s set sometime in the two -thousands in the fictional Long Island town of the title, where members of a large Italian American family, the Balsanos, come together to celebrate the holiday. Written by Taormina and Eric Berger, who both grew up on Long Island and have been friends since middle school, the movie checks the genre’s boxes—long-awaited reunions and poignant separations, hearty festivity and romantic intimacy—but it does so in a way that provokes bracingly complex emotions and frames them in the snow-globe-like quotation marks of reminiscence.
この記事は The New Yorker の November 18, 2024 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
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この記事は The New Yorker の November 18, 2024 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
THE ST. ALWYNN GIRLS AT SEA SHEILA HETI
There was a general sadness that day on the ship. Dani was walking listlessly from cabin to cabin, delivering little paper flyers announcing the talent show at the end of the month. She had made them the previous week; then had come news that the boys' ship would not be attending. It almost wasn't worth handing out flyers at all—almost as if the show had been cancelled. The boys' ship had changed course; it was now going to be near Gibraltar on the night of the performance—nowhere near where their ship would be, in the middle of the North Atlantic sea. Every girl in school had already heard Dani sing and knew that her voice was strong and good. The important thing was for Sebastien to know. Now Sebastien would never know, and it might be months before she would see him again—if she ever would see him again. All she had to look forward to now were his letters, and they were only delivered once a week, and no matter how closely Dani examined them, she could never have perfect confidence that he loved her, because of all his mentions of a girlfriend back home.
WHEELS UP
Can the U.K.’s Foreign Secretary negotiate a course between the E.U. and President Trump?
CHARLOTTE'S PLACE
Living with the ghost of a cinéma-vérité pioneer.
MILLENNIALS: WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
Fame is fickle, and no one knows this better than millennials. Once, they were everywhere—in television laugh tracks for “The Big Bang Theory,” in breathless think pieces about social-media narcissism, and acting the fool in 360p YouTube comedy videos. Then—poof! Gone like yesterday’s avocado toast.
ANNALS OF INQUIRY: CHASING A DREAM
What insomniacs know.
THE MASTER BUILDER
Norman Foster's empire of image control.
INTIMATE PROJECTS DEPT. THE GOLDFISH BOWL
There are roughly eight hundred galleries that hold the permanent collection of the Met, and as of a recent Tuesday morning the married writers Dan and Becky Okrent had examined every piece in all but two.
ON AND OFF THE AVENUE - Top of the Class
Whenever I consider “taking a class,” as a grown woman living in New York City, my mind immediately turns to “The Ladies Who Lunch,” the show-stopping number from Stephen Sondheim’s 1970 musical, “Company.”
LAUGH DEPT.PRECOCIOUS
In \"The Great Depresh,\" Gary Gulman's documentary-style comedy special about his lifelong struggle with depression, a camera crew follows him to his childhood home in Peabody, Massachusetts.
L.A. POSTCARD - GHOST TOWN
On most weekday afternoons, U.S. Route 101, which slices through the city of Los Angeles, thrums with traffic, brake lights blinking like those on a Christmas tree. Several days ago, as wildfires ravaged the city and the surrounding county, a haze of smoke filtered the sun like a silk scarf over a lamp. It was eerily smooth sailing from Silver Lake to Exit 9B, Hollywood and Highland, near Runyon Canyon Park.
