Film Reviews

The merry*

• Rating:
• Director: Christian Carion
• Starring: Daniel Bruhl
• Details: UK/France/Belgium/Germany/ 116mins (15s).

Merry Christmas is based on the true story of a cease-fire in the trenches of WWI, when French, Scottish and German soldiers dropped their bayonets and rifles to share one night of whiskey, chocolate, football and personal stories on Christmas Eve. The event shook the allied armies to the core, with some officers being tried with treason in the aftermath, while the German regiment were sent to the Russian front as punishment. To personalise the story and give it added heart, director Christian Carion homes in on three individual narratives: a Scottish soldier's guilt at leaving his brother to die in No Man's Land (who still sends letters home on his brother's behalf); the friendship between an orderly and his Lieutenant, who awaits word on his new-born son; and a love story involving two German opera singers. Not that it needed added heart: Merry Christmas is a full stocking of spine-tingling moments. The French soldiers standing up one by one as opera singer-turned-soldier Nicholas (Benno Furmann) carries a Christmas tree aloft across No Man's Land to the Scottish trench, Diane Kruger singing a carol in Latin (as it is the only language all involved will recognise), and the invitations to hide out in one another's trenches after simultaneous advanced warnings of shell bombardments. Merry Christmas, although takes place in the midst of blood and death, is the most festive movie this year. Unmissable.

Review by Gavin Burke