When the war broke out during the summer of 1914, millions of men were taken by surprise and caught up in the ensuing maelstrom. And then Christmas arrived, with its snow and its stream of gifts from back home and from the army brass. But the surprise wasn’t to be found in the generous parcels that littered the trenches.
On this particular evening, a major event was to have a lasting effect on the destiny of four characters: a Scottish minister, a French lieutenant, a German tenor, and a Danish soprano. These stars of the era find themselves at the heart of an unprecedented fraternizing between soldiers from the German, French and British trenches. All will put down their guns and leave their trenches behind as they go to meet the enemy, shake his hand and exchange cigarettes or chocolates, and wish him Merry Christmas.
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Joyuex Noel = Merry Christmas (French)
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It’s the name of a movie I watched this
afternoon. It’s the GSC French Film Festival!
Yes, it’s a French movie. No, I don’t
understand French (of course, I can always read the subtitles).
.
The whole movie was in three languages, in a little English (with heavy Scottish accent), a bit German and mainly in French.
.
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It was WW1. And it’s Christmas Eve. The
Scotsmen started celebrating in their trenches (lubang kat tanah). Then one
German started singing opera and walked out of his trench to fraternised
(berkawan). Then the French came out with their wines and champagnes. And they
had a good time.
.
On Christmas day, they buried the dead,
played football, poker and drank wine. All these in the middle of a war! It
tells you that these people are fighting somebody else’s war.
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This is one of the few movies that can
actually make me shed a tear or two.
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On the whole, the movie was excellent.
There were good character developments, the actors are really good (the actors
obvoiusly didn’t sing, but they do look the part), the pace of the story was
just right, most of all it has the tear factor.
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And the song were good too. I especially
loved the Scottish song, I’m Dreaming of Home.
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Oh…oh… There was also Diane Kruger. You
know queen that cause all the war in the movie Troy? But there was
this sex scene with the lead actor that was censored! The GSC employee simply
use a piece of paper to block the projector during that scene. Stupid fella!
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All in all, i’ll give it a 10 out of 10. Simply
because of the tear factor and the meaningful story. And it’s in the ‘Yuan Wu
Favourite Movies’ list.
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