It looked like a goofy Christmas comedy - starring Zoolander, after all - and it only had 4.5 on Rotten Tomatoes, so I was not expecting much, just a festive laugh with the kids.
My friends.
It is not a goofy Christmas movie.
It's sad.
It's happy.
It's beautiful.
It's about the innate value of humanity in general, and about your own humans in particular, and about four specific boys and their own sweet wild talent.
It felt a lot like the book The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (I haven't seen the movie yet, but I heard it's playing in theatre now). If you've ever fallen in love with the Herdmans, I think you'd also fall in love with the Kicklighters in Nutcrackers.
If you've ever seen Beasts of the Southern Wild, there's a particular trick that the filmography does - it seems to tell a second story over and above the main story. The characters speak and talk and the plot unfolds, but the camera captures people in an intimate, kind, golden way that gives us a glimpse of their astonishing, deep, whole-person beauty and value that has nothing at all to do with looks or clothes or setting.
Sometimes I feel like I get that camera setting in my eyes, or on my heart.
After each of my babies was born, I had this sleepy-mama dual vision where I would see people around me, and at the same time I could see them as their baby selves, tiny and helpless and dependent. I felt so proud of them for coming so far, for surviving and living and being themselves against all the things that could have knocked them down or turned them sour. I walked around in love with the world and saw everyone with so much tenderness.
And I just think that if a camera can see and show us the depth and beauty of a person, and if I can see the world so tenderly and with wonder, even if it's just for a short time, how much more tenderly must God see us all, with his eternal perspective and his infinite love.
Merry Christmas, friends.
Xo.
PS Let me know if you see Nutcrackers, and what you think. Do you agree with me about the loving way the camera holds and reveals people in this movie?
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