This Underrated Christmas Movie From Last Year Features the Daughters of Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg

Holiday films have been made for so long that it feels like the genre has very little room to innovate, particularly when it comes to saying something timely about what the Christmas season means to people. There’s a point in which the cliches have become so recognizable that even the most charming attempts at reinvention can feel hopelessly outdated. However, Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point is a radical contemporary imagining of a holiday-centric story because it doesn’t follow a familiar narrative format at all. Rather than trying to congeal the complexities of the holiday season with an upbeat story, Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point takes a deep dive into all the chaos, confusion, and renewed feelings that can occur over the course of one evening for one particularly chaotic family.

Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point doesn’t belong to just one genre because the holidays don’t mean the same thing for everyone. When examining how different generations react to such a monumental moment in their culture, it makes sense that their misadventures would take different forms. The beauty of Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point is that it embraces a sense of empathy and compassion that is best embodied by the holiday season. While it may not be possible to completely connect with every single character, there’s something profound and thought-provoking about each of their respective journeys.

’Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point’ Doesn’t Follow a Traditional Structure

Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point centers on the extended members of the Balsano family, who hold a gathering every year at their family home in Long Island. There’s a sense of melancholy and somberness because the family matriarch, Antonia (Mary Reistetter), might be leaving the home that has belonged to their ancestors for generations. When combined with the anxiety of many family members over the state of their respective careers and marriages, the Christmas Eve festivities have become so uncomfortable for Emily (Matilda Fleming) that she decides to leave her parents, Kathleen (Maria Dizzia) and Lenny (Ben Shenkman) at the party so that she can sneak out with her cousin, Michelle (Francesa Scorsese). The teenagers experience an evening filled with adventure, love, and a bit of trouble, in which the fact that it's a ceremonial holiday feels secondary.

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What’s refreshing about Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point is that the film does not burden itself with exposition by trying to immediately explain how each of the characters is related and what is going on in their respective lives. Instead, it chooses to drop in at interesting moments of friction and discourse that represent the chaos that this family causes for one another, even if it's ultimately bound by love. In many ways, Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point borrows from the Robert Altman approach of whipping between compelling moments that feel incredibly naturalistic, and emphasizing an ensemble over any core protagonist. At the same time, some idiosyncratic visual choices hint at something more existential and ethereal that’s related to the destiny of the characters; by keeping these themes ambiguous, Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point allows its viewers to experience the same wonderment and confusion as the characters do.

‘Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point’ Is an Amazing Showcase for Its Ensemble Cast

Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point has an ensemble that is mostly composed of up-and-coming and unknown actors, but the film was bound to receive attention because of the involvement of the children of two of the greatest filmmakers of all time. Scorsese, who gave a tremendous performance as a sharply confident teenager in the underrated HBO series Who Are Who We Are, gives a much softer and more endearing role in Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point that really shines when her cousin forms a connection with the food retail worker Lynn (Elsie Fisher). Also memorable is Sawyer Spielberg in the role of Splint, a member of a rowdy group of adolescents that befriend Emily and Michelle when they stray far from home. Although it's a subplot that could have easily been taken in a generic direction, Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point avoids predictability by adding thoughtful insights about each of its characters.

Although some of the best scenes in Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point are those in which the family is locked into an amusing disagreement, the film features two extraordinary performances from Michael Cera and Greg Turkington as a pair of police officers who are given the rough job of monitoring the community on Christmas Eve. In addition to giving a perspective on the holidays from those who are not part of the large Italian family, this subplot examines how someone can be removed from the spectacle of the evening in a way that often feels melancholy. Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point isn’t a traditionally “heartwarming” film, but there’s value to the way that it seems to collect memories from various perspectives, giving a well-rounded portrayal of how the holidays serve as the culmination of a year’s efforts. If most holiday films feel like a warm greeting card intended to raise the spirit, then Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point is the equivalent of a time capsule that records the sentiments and feelings of a specific moment.

Christmas Eve in Miller's Point