According to Sarris’ paradigm of American auteur cinema, let’s say Nutcrackers (2024, David Gordon Green) is of the Far Side of Paradise order. One way to approach its ingeniously structured design is by recognizing its theme, which has something to do with following your heart.
The theme of Nutcrackers manifests itself as a symbiotic redemption plot. This is foreshadowed with the line of dialogue JUSTICE (Homer Janson) first recriminates UNCLE MIKE (Ben Stiller) with by the denunciation “You’re incapable of loving anyone.” So, if Mike’s arc is to realize his bigshot real estate values aren’t what are most valuable in life, then Justice’s is something like gaining the courage and self-esteem to get out of his own way with first love MIA (Maren Heisler), and overcoming his insecurities about performing ballet related to what the other kids will think of him and losing his mother.
I would argue this is Green’s most personal film to date. And his most tearjerker. Nutcrackers, thematically, is also something of a trojan horse in the scrappy orphan genre. Because like say, Addie Pray, the orphan typically is emotionally out of reach and violently defensive because of the justification that too many adults have relinquished or avoided custody of them; if nobody wants me then I don’t want nobody. But the KICKLIGHTER BOYS had amazing parents. Parents who wouldn’t send them to school because that’s where “they teach you how to be like everyone else.” And the clincher in Nutcrackers is that at the end (because of Mike) the boys and all of us are shown that if you had parents who loved you, then even after they’re gone, their love will always stay with you. And it’s the catharsis of that magical profound depiction of love that sets this movie apart. And it doesn’t hurt that in return the boys show Mike how it's okay to not try so hard to be (materialistic?) what he thinks would make him successful in the eyes of everyone else.
In most movies, the second act is the longest and most integral to engaging the audience with its plot; but Nutcrackers’ second act is the shortest. The first act is like Uncle Buck or Home Alone in the way there’s this big two-story house full of kids (and in this case farm animals) where if you’re a kid, you wish you could live. And I never want to leave this house. If Act I is Uncle Mike superficially trying to be a good uncle and figure out how find these kids a home, then Act II is going about it. But it’s here where at the Wilmington Estate we also get to meet Mia. When Justice and Mia are together you feel exactly what it was like to fall in love for the first time. The warmly lit singles of them up at the top of the staircase are tender, romantic, pure innocent melt your shell of cynicism holiday hearth.
It’s great how you just get a hint of ROSE (Edi Patterson) at Wilmington’s because you know it's imminent she’s gonna sleigh. You remember how dark Green can be though when Rose makes that yogurt threat. Anyways, so yeah, Act III is the ballet performance and yes, that’s what you wanna wait for. That’s why the pacing of this movie never wavers. Worth mentioning all I’ll say is the biggest pathos Mike moment for me is that simple utterance of the web page “that I made.” Oh man I’m gonna cry again.
Visually, the defining motif for me is the 4 boys running through a field together. And there’s this amazing scene early on where the boys have this bonfire at night to scatter their parents’ ashes, and there’s this in-camera phaser effect where the glowing flames seem to stretch vertically. It says something words can’t. And there’s a pan over to um I think Arlo frame right close on him and we share in something you wouldn't have thought possible for a movie to be able to.
During and after my viewing of Nutcrackers there are so many jokes I been trying to quote. Instead of an exhaustive inventory of them, I’ll limit it to some of JUNIOR’S (Uly) creative imagination’s best crop. What does he say at the Nativity? “…and that was the first time the baby Jesus knew what ice cream tasted like. And Creamy’s only present was a tombstone.” That’s my kind of comedy. And when Mike is reading Junior’s composition book, the line about a bunch of people went to a party at Ronald Reagan’s house and Junior says “why not?” with such truly enthusiastic wonder it’s infectious; that timing is art. The set-up and non-sequitur payoff is all over Nutcrackers, and what Green is a master at getting through improvisation.
It’s like when Rose is mentioning how if Mike were to ever want to visit the boys and she could provide lodging accommodations, “I have a foldout couch… in my bedroom.” Maybe I shouldn’t say it’s so much a non-sequitur punchline as much as it’s a sophisticatedly clever unexpected one. (And the pullout couch zinger kinda goes back to an Eastbound and Down joke that uses a deceptively innocent into more overt type pick-up line to similar effect.)
In closing, Nutcrackers shows us how to wreak havoc if it’s fun. And reminds us how to love. Justice loves to dance. Junior loves to write. To love to be able to be yourself, pursue your creative passion, and find people that mean something to you prove to be what we leave celebrating after the film’s over. So, it’s only incidentally a holiday movie (shh don’t tell anyone). It’s not life-affirming, it’s the poetry of look at all life can be, and has been the whole time right in front of us.
11/16/2024 The Murphy Theatre
Wilmington, OH