If the Christmas Movie could be construed as a genre, its catalog is underwhelming to say the least. Stories draw strength from conflict, but most Christmas movies keep tensions to a minimum lest holiday cheers be dampened. The assumption is people watch Holiday Movies for uplift; they want to be blissed out, not pissed on. Expressions of Christmas are merry, affirming, aglow with warmth. Yet, what works for Christmas carols, cards, dinners, parties, and gift-giving doesn’t work with a story. A story that is mostly cheerful would be a dull affair, like a Stepford Christmas, too ‘perfect’ and ‘flawless’ to sustain interest over time. Then, it’s hardly surprising that most Christmas movies are utterly forgettable. The Hallmark formula works as greeting, not narrative.

Besides, for all the happy celebration(and commercialism) of Christmas, its observance is of a religion as dark as it is bright. The myth says Jesus was born in exile, spared Herod’s sword(that slaughtered many a first born), and birthed in a manor after his parents were turned away time and time again. And even though Christianity offers hope, a glimpse of Heaven, it was only by way of the torturous struggles and deaths of Jesus and the Apostles. The Son of God was destined to die at the age of thirty-three.

Given those considerations, a fuller appreciation of Christmas requires a degree of darkness and agony. It’s no wonder the Peanuts Holiday Special, A CHARLIE BROWN SPECIAL, is one of the exceptions in the mostly miserable Christmas ‘canon’. Charlie Brown, the social pariah, knows something about persecution, and Linus is just eccentric(or oddball) enough to see what others don’t see. HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS and FROSTY THE SNOWMAN also work their (dark) magic by blending hope with horror. Despite their obligatory happy endings, they push to the edge of the abyss before light prevails over darkness. (FROSTY is especially disturbing. A little girl risks her health, indeed endangers her life, by traveling to the cold north to save Frosty, and Frosty risks his ‘life’ by entering a greenhouse to save the girl. Magic finally intervenes and saves the day, but it’s somewhat reminiscent of Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Little Match Girl”.)

Then, it’s hardly surprising that the most memorable Christmas movies and Christmas-season movies(where the relation to Christmas is incidental, secondary, or even non-existent) tend to be plenty dark, even disturbing. Scratch the surface of Christmas/Christianity and there’s as much hell as heaven, even if it’s a hell frozen over with snow and frost around the shortest day of the year.
For some reason, despite having originated in the Middle East(and having first spread to the warmer climes of Europe), the festivities of Christmas became most closely associated with the dark frigid North, what with even the myth of Santa Claus with his residence in the North Pole with elves and reindeers.

In the modern era, most of us don’t fear the cold with our heaters and cheap gas(and plenty of food and cheap winter-wear), but one could imagine what the cold meant in the pre-modern world when freezing and/or starving to death was a real possibility. Even the idea of going to the outhouse in the middle of winter sounds worse than in hell where, at the very least, the toilet-seat is warm.

Still, one can appreciate the attraction of Christmas lights in the deepest and darkest recesses of winter. Or, the reassurance of Christmas carols in the frosty air over a landscape blanketed in snow. The contrast between the birth of Jesus, aglow with the promise of eternal life, and the dark North, barren under frozen fields, makes for a special formula. No wonder even those celebrating Christmas in warmer climates without snow nevertheless go for snowy tropes of Christmas. Furthermore, death has a cleansing quality. In the jungle, death is always followed by more life in an endless incessant cycle; what need for ghosts in the jungle when life of all kinds are over-abundant? The ghostly gains clarity in the forlorn world of death where one’s imagination is apt to conjure apparitions to approximate the semblance of life, like the ghosts that fill up the empty Overlook Hotel in THE SHINING. Cold dark winter kills but also halts decay and lends of promise of a blank slate(symbolized by snow), a new beginning, and indeed, what is Christianity without the dream of Year Zero, the day when all spiritual debts are wiped clean and all could attain their place in the eternal hereafter through the life-death-life of Jesus?

The most famous Christmas story is undoubtedly A CHRISTMAS CAROL by Charles Dickens. Tim Burton’s THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS(a pile of garbage) was lauded for its clever juggling of Halloween and Christmas tropes, but A CHRISTMAS CAROL is no less a work of horror than DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE(and THE SHINING). My introduction to the story was by way of the movie musical SCROOGE(with Albert Finney, 1970), which, to the eyes of a child, was pretty frightening. Even the moments of nostalgia are painful and depressing, reminders of what was lost or betrayed.
The twisted irony of A CHRISTMAS CAROL stems from the comfort, cold but real enough, of being a stingy and wretched bastard without a care for the world. Ebenezer Scrooge may be an A**HOLE, but he needn’t lose sleep about the world because he’s made peace with the humdrumness of everything and everyone, in a way, including himself. With all the money he’s accumulated, he even denies himself a decent meal.

One might even argue there’s a kind of integrity to his stinginess as he isn’t into blings and things, indulging an ostentatious life. In a way, he’s no less severe on himself as on humanity. He’s like an extreme version of the Protestant Work Ethic, all work and no play(or pay). If “All work and no play” drove Jack Torrance crazy in THE SHINING(even though one could argue it was really “all play and no work” that really did him in), it made Scrooge what he is, a success if judged strictly on economics.
He’s a living cliche, the ultimate embodiment of the nose-to-the-grindstone. Why should he get soft and sloppy about others when he’s been hard on himself all his life? He could afford sumptuous feasts but consumes just enough morsels to keep ticking. He could afford all the heat in the world but keeps the temperature to a minimum in his office and his bedroom.

Scrooge is horrible, but it shields him from the horrors of the world, as a sense of horror begins with caring. Elemental low-intelligence cold-blooded creatures know no horror. They lay thousands of eggs and don’t care if their spawns are devoured by other creatures. But warm-blooded mother-creatures do care about their young, and so, there’s the horror of a mother-moose watching her calf torn apart by wolves or the horror of a mother grizzly watching a male grizzly kill her cubs. The more you care, the greater your sense of horror.

It’s no wonder that the horror genre owes a cultural debt to Christianity, one of the most caring religions. Judaism cares about Jews but not about goyim. So, when Yahweh destroys countless goyim to advantage the Jews in the Exodus out of Egypt, we feel no horror. It’s all about the Hebrews, not the goyim. Who cares if goyim die of pestilence, famine, fire, or sea water? As long as Jews, as the Chosen, inch closer to the Promised Land, the hell with the goyim regardless of horrors they suffer at the hands of Jews(backed by Yahweh).

In contrast, Christian Mythology preaches that Jesus has a profound love for all humanity, carrying the cross for the suffering of all peoples in all places at all times. It’s no wonder the Jesus-character is seriously neurotic in THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST. It’s a burden enough to care about one pair of dog and cat, but imagine if you had to care about all the dogs and cats in the world. Consider all the dogs and cats living in misery around the world. Imagine all the dogs used in dog-fights by ghastly Negroes or all the cats boiled by ghoulish Chinese. Think of all the dogs abused by Muslims on account of what Muhammad said. Think of all the stray dogs freezing in the cold or awaiting sure death in Anti-Cruelty Societies.

In our time, some of the people driven most crazy are those who’ve come to care most about the Planet, especially in regards to ‘climate change’. In Paul Schrader’s FIRST REFORMED, one guy even commits suicide because he can’t face it anymore. Once one begins to fret about the world, the concern can grow into an obsession, a full-blown pathology. Then, it isn’t difficult to understand the unclear boundary between Christian morality and pathological puritanism.
A Christian believing in Heaven and Hell(where the unsaved are condemned to burn for eternity) may feel compelled to save as many souls as possible from the horrors of hell. Such zealotry against the horrors can be horrible in its own way, which explains why many Christians through the ages have been a thorn in the arse, not least during the Prohibition Era.

In that sense, Ebenezer Scrooge’s horribleness rather limits the extent of his personal contribution to the horrors of the world. He’s horrible for not lifting a finger to help his fellow man, not for wielding a cudgel to set the world straight(and very possibly doing even more harm in the bargain). He certainly won’t turn into one of those radical socialists prone to by-any-means-necessary ruthlessness to create heaven-on-earth.

At the very least, he’s free of the illusion of ridding the world of ineradicable horrors. Indeed, suppose the story had been reversed: Scrooge is a compassionate and caring man who weeps for the world and does his utmost to care for his fellow men and women. He’d be like the missionary family in HAWAII(with Max Von Sydow and Julie Andrews) living in self-denial in service to humanity, a bunch of childish savages into volcano worship. If indeed Scrooge were so compassionate and generous, people would take advantage of him left and right.

Compassion in A CHRISTMAS CAROL is worth its price in gold because it was written during the Industrial Revolution when many people were deprived of what-we-now-take-for-granted; people were without much in the way of social services, much of which were provided by the church and charity organizations.
But, with the advent of the Welfare State in the West, as well as philanthropy and public largesse, what’s happened to the masses? One of the main problems among the black underclass is obesity, even wanton obesity of hippo magnitude.

In a revisionist version of A CHRISTMAS CAROL, the compassionate Scrooge might be haunted by more horrors than the stingy Scrooge is in the original tale. At least in Dickens’ time, the poor had a sense of fear & shame and were reluctant to make outright demands, like when Oliver Twist pleads if he could have a little more. Contrast that to A CLOCKWORK ORANGE(directed by Stanley Kubrick) and SID & NANCY(directed by Alex Cox)? What hath the Welfare State wrought? With the loss of dignity(by way of dependence + shameless hedonism), the working class lost self-respect(compensated by rage and resentment), which had been a moral capital for the have-nots and have-lesses, like in Norman Rockwell’s paintings of the Simple Man. Likely, the kindly and compassionate Scrooge of the revised A CHRISTMAS CAROL would have turned Thatcherite and kicked everyone’s butt at the end.

If A CHRISTMAS CAROL is the most famous piece of literature on Christmas(and served as the basis for several decent movie adaptations), IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE became the most beloved Christmas movie(as, for awhile, it entered the public domain and was aired almost non-stop near around Christmas time). Unlike the main character of A CHRISTMAS CAROL, George Bailey of Frank Capra’s movie is a good guy(and his adversary, Mr. Potter, is the Scrooge-like cold-hearted bastard), but Bailey’s Christmas Crisis is as jarring, if not more so, as that of Ebenezer.

In certain respects, IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE is darker because, whereas one could argue Scrooge got his just desserts for humbugging Christmas, George Bailey is driven to ruin despite his good deeds. His story is like the song by the Animals that goes, “I’m just a soul whose intentions are good, oh lord please don’t let me be misunderstood.” If Scrooge is punished for not caring enough, Bailey is ‘punished’ for having cared too much, which seems all the more unjust.

Like the Dickens tale, IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE veers into areas resembling the horror genre. Bailey is granted his wish by Clarence, a guardian angel, but ironically things turn out to be worse(though some people might disagree and prefer Pottersville, with its cheap liquor and easy women, to Bedford Falls where the only show in town seems to be THE BELLS OF ST. MARY).

At any rate, as in A CHRISTMAS CAROL, it’s the dark and even terrifying aspects of Frank Capra’s movie that make it so powerful, a classic case of No Pain, No Gain, or no triumph without tragedy. Unlike in most milquetoast holiday movies, the emotions in IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE are put through a wringer, and the happy ending is fought for and won, like an honest buck. Nothing is taken for granted.
And even though Bailey has been a standup guy all his life, it’s the journey through the dark soul of the night that truly awakens him to the blessings of his life. For all the good he’s done for the community, a small town of ‘nobodies’, there was always the burden of obligation and self-denial, a repressed resentment of missed opportunities and the sacrifice of his true calling. He wanted to ‘see things’ and ‘lick the world’ and rub shoulders with the winners, especially as he exhibited from childhood all the hallmarks of a natural leader, someone born to win.
As a young man, he had the ambitions of Howard Roark(of Ayn Rand’s THE FOUNTAINHEAD, though Roark is also met with adversity, albeit for different reasons) but had to settle for communitarian obligations.

According to Jesus, it isn’t good enough to do good; one must do it from the goodness of one’s heart, and this was only half-true of George Bailey because, deep down inside, he’d always resented being stuck in nowhereville. Despite his attachments and affection for the people of the community, he really wanted to leave them behind and go be with the success, fortune, and/or power, the Manhattans and the Hollywoods of the world.

Privately, he resented the townsfolk, seemingly ungrateful at times, for whose benefit he sacrificed his ambitions, even his honeymoon. He also carried considerable load for his lovable but bumbling uncle. Then, it’s hardly surprising that when the scandal looms over the missing money, he takes it out on the whole community, including his wife and children. They all held him back, and now what does he have to look forward to but scandal, loss of reputation, and even prison time? All the repressed bitterness over the years bursts forth, in part revealing that, for all his decency, he’d never been truly pure of heart. It is then that his wish, granted by Clarence and the Boss Angels, serves as ‘punishment’ by clearing his vision to the wonderful things in his life, what he’s always underappreciated as, at best, modest compensation for what he really could have gained in life. (Akira Kurosaw’s IKIRU certainly owes something to the Capra touch.)

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE is likely the darkest Christmas movie, but it’s also the greatest with nothing coming even remotely close. It isn’t merely the best in the ‘genre’, hardly much of a praise in and of itself given the lousiness of most holiday movies, but one of the greatest movies ever. Most people have forgotten movies like WHITE CHRISTMAS(with Bing Crosby), which play it safe and ‘inoffensive’. Likewise, most Biblical movies tend to be dull because they go for middlebrow respectability. In a scene in the Coen Brothers HAIL, CAESAR!, we see how the studio is eager to gain the seal of approval of various Christian factions(and the Jews too). It’s almost like a work-by-committee, filtered of all the elements that might make a movie challenging and thought-provoking.

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE was something of an oddity as it was made with relative artistic liberty by a short-lived company controlled by the film-makers themselves. Its great success was THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, and one of its undoing was IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, which was maybe too dark for Christmas(and postwar attitudes). Over the years, however, the Capra movie has come to tower over William Wyler’s, perhaps overrated for its timely subject and theme.

Of course, the element of struggle is relative, and even a molehill can seem like a mountain in skillful hands. Take the 1983 movie A CHRISTMAS STORY(incredibly by Bob Clark who was previously responsible for an abomination called PORKY’S) where the main conflict revolves around a boy’s dream of a BB gun as a Christmas gift. The other conflicts involve daring a kid to stick his tongue on a steel post, decoding a secret radio message, punishment over having said something naughtier than ‘fudge’, writing the perfect class essay, fleeing the local bully, and meeting a department store Santa. None of these is a matter of life and death, but A CHRISTMAS STORY works wonders because its author, Jean Shepherd, never forgot what it was to be a child. What adults regard as silly or trivial could be the gravest matter to a kid, as if the fate of the universe hangs in the balance. The local bully could be the face of the worst evil imaginable. Santa and elves could make dreams come true, and radio shows & comics could fire up the imagination of minds yet to yield to jaded cynicism. And some item or toy for Christmas could be like the holy grail, an answer to one’s prayer, the source of eternal happiness. And of course, a routine punishment could be like the worst persecution ever, as when Ralphie’s imagination goes into an overdrive of self-pity and guilt-fantasy upon the soap-in-mouth punishment. A CHRISTMAS STORY captures the ridiculousness of childhood that becomes apparent only in hindsight.

Because most Christmas movies are generic and forgettable, individuals have their personal picks of seasonal favorites. I wouldn’t be surprised if THE GODFATHER is on many people’s list, not so much because of a few scenes of Christmas but of the celebration of family and tradition. Another favorite may be DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, a wintry epic. In some cases, a certain movie may be associated with Christmas because of its release. Brian DePalma’s SCARFACE for instance. Woody Allen’s RADIO DAYS, though Jewishy, also makes for a good holiday movie. There’s also FANNY AND ALEXANDER, framed by Christmas festivities, even though it’s a nasty piece of work, an artistic vendetta against his father and a confused mystical mumbo-jumbo about Jewish magic.
Among my personal picks for the winter season are EYES WIDE SHUT, MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE, THE SHINING, WICKER PARK, METROPOLITAN, EMPIRE OF THE SUN, PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED, MCCABE & MRS. MILLER, SECRET GARDEN(1993), CARLITO’S WAY, MAKIOKA SISTERS, ZATOICHI MEETS YOJIMBO, and THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES.

Most of the movies listed above aren’t about or only incidentally related to Christmas, but a good number of them were released in the winter season and/or are evocative of moods of that time of the year. It’s certainly true of THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES, though it could qualify as a genuine Christmas movie, albeit a twisted one. Like A CHRISTMAS CAROL and IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, its impact owes to the darker aspects, and it could also qualify as a Halloween Movie. It is categorized in the Horror genre after all, though its release in late January of 2002 failed to capitalize on either.

Still, it’s a different and unusual kind of horror, and some may argue it belongs more in the mystery genre despite the occultism. It might even be categorized as science-fiction as the mothman, to the best of our speculation, could just as well be a force of physics(or psycho-physics) as of the spiritual realm. An expert in paranormal phenomena explains that the ‘mothman'(and similar or related manifestations) are REAL enough but, as yet, beyond the means of man’s ability to predict and measure. The mothman(or mothmen?) may freely intrude into and manipulate our worlds(physical and psychological), but we cannot enter theirs; and if some individuals caught glimpses into something extraordinary, it was only because they were allowed or ‘invited’, a double-edged sword that heightens awareness, threatens madness, or both. Or, the glimpse of the mothman can come by way of tragedy, past or future, that places a person, physically or emotionally, in the gray zone between the living and the dead. In the case of the protagonist, it’s as if his psyche was dealt such a severe blow from a personal trauma that it edged toward the netherworld.

Unlike most in the horror genre, THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES isn’t about victims of what are clearly evil spirits. Rather, the mystery that seems to gradually gather into critical mass seems rather ambiguous, wise and beneficent as well as menacing and sinister. Furthermore, the protagonist is an active seeker, in pursuit of than in flight from the mysterious force, though he may be less interested in the phenomenon itself than what it may reveal about his trauma.

While there have been movies about paranormal investigators and the like, most stories in the horror genre aren’t about asking for trouble but trying to escape or seek refuge from the madness. Like people hiding from flesh-eating zombies, running from the pod people(of the BODY SNATCHERS movies), or seeking a loved one’s release from demonic possession. In CARRIE, the heroine’s paranormal powers are neither good nor evil. If channeled and used for the good, she could have been like a superhero-type, but she’s shy and awkward and represses her talents, especially as her mother deems them a demonic force. Real evil in CARRIE isn’t supernatural but all-too-human, embodied by the religious craziness of Carrie’s mother and the slutty-bitchy-nastiness of Carrie’s schoolmates. It all ends in tragedy when Carrie, in a state of shock, releases her power in the most destructive way, cathartic but going off like a bomb.

Unlike most horror story archetypes, the two male characters of THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES find themselves tantalized by the ‘messages’, much like the unlikely hero of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND with his growing awareness and even pride as one of the special ‘select’, a ‘chosen’.
Thus, THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES, though creepy and unsettling in parts, isn’t meant to scare you out of your wits. Rather, it’s to prod the viewer’s curiosity and challenge his/her familiar range of perceptions and emotions. In confronting the deeper and darker truths beyond the comfort zone, there’s the danger of panic, even madness. One needs to break free of conventionality to see and feel more but faces the danger of losing one’s mind, even life. Plenty of artists who pushed the envelope ended up mad, and the history of spirituality is rife with half-mad seers and gurus.

Indeed, Willem Dafoe’s Jesus in THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST seems as repulsed as attracted to the great calling. At times, it isn’t certain if the ‘message’ is from above or below, not least because God works in mysterious ways and the Devil isn’t above playing the angel, even feigning the voice of god, to lure men, even the possible ‘Son of God’.
The spiritual cosmology of the Torah and the New Testament insists on the Good and Evil, with God as the good(indeed the absolute and perfect good) against Satan as the absolute in evil. By some accounts, Talmudic Judaism disfavored such spiritual ‘binary’ in favor of a more fluid and spectral interpretation, i.e. instead of Good vs Evil, a spectrum whereby one ebbs and flows with the other. Such a mindset could have influenced the late modern Jewish view of sexuality that eschews the ‘binary’ of man and woman in favor of ‘fluid’ definitions, leading to ever more ephemeral categories of hair(or air)splitting nuttery.

If the spectral conception turns sexuality into a joke, it nevertheless makes for a fascinating approach on spirituality and cosmology. After all, even science says energy and matter are really two sides of the same coin. The idea of opposites is useful(and necessary) for mankind, but what may appear diametric on the surface may be integrated underneath. (For sure, both political parties in the US, for all their superficial spats, work as the ‘uniparty’, the strings of which are pulled by the dark forces of Jewish Supremacism).

To sum up the plot of the movie, THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES follows John Klein(Richard Gere), a star reporter of Washington Post(and TV pundit), who mysteriously finds himself in the small town of Point Pleasant(West Virginia) where he learns, from the police officer Connie(Laura Linney) and various locals, of strange sightings and occurrences that have some folks worried. From several(and increasing number of) accounts, something strange seems to be afoot, but they are still too far between(if not exactly few) to warrant widespread panic, let alone national attention. Though certain patterns have emerged as to the nature of the ‘events’, none has been discernible as to the when and where it might happen next. Despite the increasing number of eyewitnesses, it’s clear most people in town remain clueless and just go about their daily routines. And even most people who’d experienced the phenomenon did so only once and treat it like a freak accident that likely won’t recur, a matter of past tense. In most cases, it affects people at the individual level, which could be a credibility issue but for the fact that a good number of reputable people have reported similarly strange happenings that may or may not be interrelated. Still, Connie, having lived there all her life and knowing most townsfolk to be good decent folks, has no reason to doubt them. She cares about them and has pride of community.
In the 19th century and early 20th century, when many urbanites had migrated from or were only one generation removed from the countryside, they felt a connection to the soil, from which all humanity sprung. But now, with so many urbanites and suburbanites separated from the soil by several or many generations, something essential has been lost. When people become alienated from the soil, they lose a deeper sense of reality, which partly explains the degeneracy that has gripped the modern world.

Klein turns amateur sleuth and utilizes all his investigative skills to gain a better grasp of the strange events. Among the locals, he uneasily but eventually befriends a working class fella named Gordon Smallwood(Tom Patton) who comes to believe he has been specially chosen as a medium to receive certain messages.
Throughout the movie, the messages or ‘prophecies’ remain ambiguous and could be interpreted as warnings or threats, blessings or curses. The ‘name’ by which the entity makes itself known to Klein the urbanite and Gordon the townie is ‘Indrid Cold’, but then, Mr. Cold says his(or its) essence depends on the who and the why of those he(or it) chooses to interact with. A part of John Klein wants to drop the whole thing and return to his routine(as a Washington Post reporter), but another part of him just can’t let it go and feels this great need to know.

Klein even contacts an ex-specialist in paranormal phenomena, Alexander Leek(Alan Bates), but is advised to stay away from Point Pleasant as something tragic is about to happen there. Leek says he abandoned the field as it destroyed his family life and career. As tantalizing as the ‘messages’ may be, Leek warns Klein that they will be misinterpreted, possibly doing more harm than good. But such warnings only strengthen Klein’s determination to solve the mystery and perhaps save the lives of townsfolk by averting a disaster, be it natural or man-made.
When his boss at the Washington Post, sounding agitated over Klein’s prolonged absence, calls his motel and assigns him to interview the governor who’s about to visit a local chemical plant, Klein connects the dots and is absolutely sure that something terrible is about to happen there, as one of the ‘messages’ warned of a great disaster on the Ohio River, along which the plant is located. But as things turn out, nothing happens, and Klein is as disappointed as relieved. Then, he receives another ‘message’ that his dead wife Mary will call him at home, and Klein leaves Point Pleasant, probably never to return, for D.C. It’s Christmas Day as Klein waits for the phone call, but right before the designated time, Connie calls and convinces him to return to Point Pleasant to spend Christmas there. Klein finds many cars stalled on the bridge due to fault traffic signals. It dawns on him that the great tragedy on the Ohio River is about to happen just then — the ‘mothman’ was right, after all — on the bridge, which soon collapses and takes thirty six lives. But in the melee, Klein spots Connie whose police car falls into the river and pulls her out of the river.

THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES is a movie of ideas, at least by genre standards. It’s about the subjective nature of reality, not so much in the conventional sense of everyone having different perspectives and backgrounds. Rather, the subjectivity is of a peculiar kind, a rare gift or curse of awareness by way of factors arising from within and without. The ‘visitations’ by the ‘mothman’ clearly affect the lives of individuals of Point Pleasant, West Virginia in the movie. Whether these ‘encounters’ could be deemed as good or bad is anyone’s guess.
Still, one gets the impression that the nature of most of these experiences were external, i.e. people going about their ordinary lives suddenly ambushed by weird phenomena. The explanation provided by Alexander Leek(Alan Bates), a specialist in the paranormal, is that strange sightings usually occur in an area about to be met with disaster, and that may account as to the various inexplicable activities around Point Pleasant.

The case of John Klein(Richard Gere) is somewhat different. He’s never been to Point Pleasant before, but an odd set of circumstances led him there where his car broke down in the middle of a road. He is a cosmopolitan urbanite, very much an inside-the-beltway creature whose specialty is national news and political commentary; he’s also a regular on political news shows. He’s the type with little interest in flyover country, of which Point Pleasant is emblematic. Much of America is a passing blur to a man like Klein whose focus is on prominent figures of power & wealth and the big issues of the day. Even as a critic whose articles and commentary sometimes ‘make them sweat’, he swims in the same pool, a sea of sharks than a river of minnows. A man of some success, in the second scene of the movie he’s house-searching with his wife despite living in a nice house already. They’re very much in love and perhaps hoping to raise a family in a more spacious nest.

Even though most of the movie takes place in Point Pleasant, it begins in Washington D.C., the center of the world, a point of commonality with THE EXORCIST. For those with a passing knowledge of what the movie is about, based on or inspired by actual accounts of strange phenomena in Point Pleasant prior to a bridge collapse, the obvious question would be, what does a story set in Point Pleasant have to do with D.C., two places that are worlds apart by just about every metric.
The simplest answer is one of audience identification and the fish-out-of-water scenario. The average moviegoer, especially for a work such as this, a kind of horror-art-film, is more likely to be an urbanite(or suburbanite) than a small town resident. Besides, people like to identify with the smart and successful than with a bunch of ‘losers’(though, to the movie’s credit, the townsfolk aren’t depicted as a bunch of toothless simpletons).

Also, it’s more interesting to watch a worldly and skeptical person be challenged by mystery than an ignoramus who is less likely to raise interesting questions and just fall under its spell. (That said, even though educated urbanites scoff at idiots who fall for Televangelists, they’ve become suckers for even stupider cults like Negrolatry, Globo-Homo, and ‘trust the science’ calling for endless booster jabs in the arse.)
And, there is instant tension, the meat-and-potatoes of drama, in watching a big city professional in a small-town setting, much like in GROUNDHOG DAY, IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT, INSOMNIA, WICKER MAN, LOCAL HERO, and other such movies. Even in IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE as George Bailey(James Stewart), though a small-town man all his life, has the spirit of an adventurer and conqueror. (One wonders if the alternative-reality nightmare in the Frank Capra movie was one of the inspirations for the plot of THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES. Remarkable is how Capra balanced abject horror with doles of humor.)

As it turns out, however, Point Pleasant in the movie is sufficiently up-to-date on social trends and cultural matters due to the ubiquity of electronic media all across America, indeed the world. (It certainly explains why so many new immigrants in the US arrive already ‘Americanized’. They grew up on American pop culture through TV and media.) The townsfolk aren’t really hicks in the conventional sense, and Connie, the town’s woman cop, instantly recognized Klein as a TV news personality.
Still, the difference between the two worlds is palpable as everything in Point Pleasant seems somewhat lagging, shabby, and run-down, especially as this is small-town America remade by socio-cultural degeneracy and globalism(though at the time of the movie’s release, the fruited plains had yet to be planted with fruity flags). It’s not exactly Bedford Falls of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, if ever such a place really existed as something other than Americana.

One thing for sure, if small towns in old Hollywood movies were portrayed, even idealized, as heart-and-soul tributaries feeding into urban lakes, later they were increasingly depicted as peoples-and-places forgotten by time(despite the fact that rural folks became more connected to the global center via electronic media, satellites, and the internet).
One reason is that the US used to be more of an agricultural and manufacturing economy, in which small towns played key roles in production and as supply chains. But with the rise of globalism, industries once based in small towns have been outsourced to other countries. Even though THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES doesn’t dwell on such matters, the socio-economic details of Point Pleasant don’t paint a pretty picture. It looks like a town just barely holding on to a semblance of stability. Indeed, if not for the real-life disaster sensationalized by accounts of ‘mothman’ sightings that led to a book and a movie, it’s likely most people would never have heard of Point Pleasant. Most of the movie, to be sure, was shot in Kittanning, Pennsylvania instead.

For all of the town’s problems, Christmas festivities are cause for celebration for the community, if only for a few weeks of the year. Even though entire blocks of the town seem nearly vacant in daytime, a large enough crowd assembles in the town square for the lighting of the Christmas Tree. But then, strange sightings continue to occur, even increase, as the holiest day of the year approaches.

The Christmas setting is as integral to THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES as to EYES WIDE SHUT, though for less perverse reasons. Still, it’s twisted enough, at once subverting and affirming the themes associated with Christianity. Even if we remove the ‘mothman’ and related mysteries from the equation, it’s profoundly odd that an entire civilization has been founded on myths that became more real than reality for countless people, even to the point of fueling wars and conquests in the name of Christ.
And, think of the socio-cultural transformation in the West during the Christmas season. The various decorations and ornaments, along with the glimmering lights and enchanting carols, generate something more than mere pleasantness and bliss, a feature of all holidays; they conjure up a magical dreamscape, whether as a reminder of the miracle birth of Christ or the anticipation of Santa on his sleigh(or appreciation of Clarence the guardian angel in IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE).

Christmas time is more than a holiday as, especially true of children, it’s a season when one is allowed to suspend the ‘humbug of reality’ and believe, at least for a week or two, that humanity(or at least Christendom or Christmas-celebrators) can regain a state of renewed faith and grace. It is as much an altered state of mind as an elevated state of joyousness. Something strange happens, akin to a collective hallucination. The Christmas Tree adorned with shiny & colorful objects and lit up with electricity has become one of the most magical and iconic images around the world, even in non-Christian lands. And, traces of the Spirit-of-Christmas linger long after people grow out of childhood, and many try to recapture the magic for their own children.

Observance of Christmas goes well beyond remembrance, celebration, and good times associated with, for example, the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving. It means to be touched by the holy spirit(in the literal sense). The same could be said of Halloween, except that for all the spooky costuming and whatnot, no one takes any of it seriously, whereas Christmas is associated with what is still the world’s biggest religion. Whereas Halloween is merely demon-play, Christmastime has a way of inducing people to renew their faith. It is the one time of the year when good many souls drop their guard and are receptive to the holy grace of God.

But then, from the perspective of paranormal theorizing, couldn’t such an openness of the soul during Christmas create vulnerabilities, portals for less hospitable spirits to slip through as well? These darker spirits need not be demonic as there’s plenty in the mythology of Christ that is dark and unsettling. Take bringing Lazarus to life from the dead. A miracle to be sure but unseemly, like some zombie-voodoo.
And, in order for the mythology to be complete, Jesus had to be tortured and crucified, as harrowingly depicted in Martin Scorsese’s THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST and Mel Gibson’s THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST, where Jim Caviezel’s Jesus gets whupped real bad, even worse than Tuco in THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY. The holiness comes by the way of horror.
And in their purity spirals, certain sects of Christianity are prone to condemning anyone and anything who isn’t Christian as demon-possessed, i.e. all the world is a house of horrors without the grace of God as they define it. Such a mindset may explain Christian culture begat some of the greatest works in the Horror genre. And of course, there are Jews who, to this day, regard Jesus as a sorcerer and emissary of Satan than the Son-of-God, a ludicrous and demonic notion to the Jews.

THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES conveys the various dark ambiguities inherent in Christianity(especially around Yuletide) and in its perverse mutation, the Western Horror Genre. Not only does Christmas open up portals to magical spirits, often pagan(therefore ‘demonic’)-in-origin masquerading as Christian icons, thereby allowing passage for the dark, along with the radiant, spirits, but its cheerfulness is based on a childlike denial of reality, a protective mental shield against the world that is what it is.
There was the famous case of the Christmas Truce in World War I where the two opposing sides, which had been slaughtering one another, made belief for a day that they were all brothers under the skin in their faith in Christ.
There was the 1984 cultural event of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” by Band-Aid, rather silly question to ask about a part of the world where Western-style celebration of Christmas would have been rather alien. Moreover, there was the ridiculous conceit that a bunch of self-absorbed, vain, and narcissistic pop idols could make a difference in a war zone and alleviate the suffering by rhapsodizing about Christmas while ignoring all the grim realities of the situation(as well as the unresolved problems at home). Still, at the emotional level, it was understandable given the state of mind induced by the spirit of Christmas, in equal parts, hopeful, caring, faithful, infantile, yearning, dreamy, magical, a kind of return to innocence by way of the reenactment of the birth of Christ and anticipation of Santa coming on his sleigh to eat cookies and fill socks.

All the more reason why Christmas can be the saddest time of the year. Its hallowed festivities and aura of sanctity, albeit much of it via commercialism, remind people, even lapsed-Christians, some Europeanized/Americanized Jews, and pagans(who believe the magic is really of indigenous European origin), that they should share in the ‘tidings of comfort and joy’. But, what if one is alone, by circumstance or even by choice, perhaps in fidelity to and/or ‘guilt’ over a lost one, in which case the joy could be a distraction from the fact that a loved one’s absence?
John Klein is such a case. His success and good looks(though middle-aged) would easily make him the life of the party on any occasion, and yet, a part of him fears that renewed happiness may drive a wedge between himself and his wife’s memory. Even two years after her death, which is when the bulk of the movie takes place, Klein limits his social interactions, especially of the romantic kind, outside his professional life. We sense that, between the time of Mary’s death and his ‘accidental’ arrival at Point Pleasant, time has stood still in his private life. It’s sort of like Noodles’ answer in ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA when Fat Moe asks him, “What have you been doing all these years?”: “Been going to bed early.” Klein has kept busy for those two years with his job but has been unable to move forward in his personal life. It doesn’t help that, just prior to the auto accident that led to the discovery of her brain tumor, they couldn’t have been happier in their love and future prospects. But then, it all fell apart during Christmastime. Despite his success and good looks, the middle-aged Klein may have thought himself fortunate to have met a woman like Mary(obviously a Christian reference)as the love of his life, a meeting of souls than merely of bodies. Success and true love, followed by family, what more can a man ask for?

But, it all vanished in an instant, which, however, casts a long spell on Klein who, for all his secular-rational understanding of reality, subconsciously clings to a vestige of hope that he may somehow be reunited with Mary, faintly similar to the Disciples holding Jesus in their hearts after His death.

Even though the main body of THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES concerns Klein’s role as amateur sleuth(albeit with journalistic instincts) into the ‘mothman’ phenomena, at the emotional level it is essentially a love story, albeit a strange one at that because the great love of Klein’s life, Mary, dies fifteen minutes into the story, not even lasting as long as Janet Leigh’s character in Alfred Hitchcock’s PSYCHO.
There are echoes of VERTIGO, but there, ‘Madeleine’, the object of desire, disappears after the halfway mark, whereas Mary, so central to Klein’s sense of completeness, fades almost as soon as she appears.
In this, THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES is similar to OLIVER’S STORY, a rather underrated follow-up to LOVE STORY. The sequel is about Oliver(Ryan O’Neal)’s myriad efforts to put the past behind but the inability(and unwillingness) to do so. Alternately helping matters and making things worse, Oliver meets Marcie(Candice Bergen) who becomes problematic precisely because she has the looks, intelligence, and charm to supplant Jenny, something he cannot allow. Something similar is at stake in THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES between Klein and Connie(Laura Linney) as genuine affection grows between them but which Klein isn’t willing to let blossom into anything more than ‘friendship’.

The romantic aspect of THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES may go underappreciated because the plot is so heavily invested in the spooky stuff. Unlike the camaraderie that develops between Roy(Richard Dreyfus) and Gillian(Melinda Dillon) in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, romance(and its tragic dimensions) is the key to THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES. For all the fondness between Roy and Gillian, his ultimate quest is to greet the Aliens and her obsession is to reunite with her child(taken as temporary ‘star child’ by the extraterrestrials). In contrast, for all the fascination and suspense, the strange phenomena in THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES ultimately serve as backdrop for what amounts to a tragic-romance, a modern retelling of the Orpheus-and-Eurydice story.

Even though THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES touches on some big ideas, it is the dramatization(and mythologization) around those ideas that make it special. Just as stories feed on interesting ideas, ideas are enlivened by stories. If ideas are what counts, there’s little need for fiction, be it theater, novel, film, or TV. Why not just stick to books on science and philosophy?
Even as ideas have the power to inspire people, they on their own have limited appeal, mostly to a relatively small circle of intellectuals, and hardly any currency with the hoi polloi, as well as with those who’re too busy in their endeavors for time and energy for anything else.

Ideas gain in power as ingredients of storytelling whereby they come alive through the adventures and struggles of the characters. It’s no wonder Franz Kafka, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Ayn Rand, Anthony Burgess, and other intellectual writers chose fiction to lend body to the spirit of their ideas. Through storytelling, ideas come to life in the visible manifestations of idealism, heroism, inspiration, sacrifice, nobility, and/or tragedy. A dry academic treatise could expound on the problems of totalitarianism, but could it compare with NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR in impact? The moral and spiritual thesis of Christianity could be distilled into a set of principles, but could it have conquered the world without the mythic drama of Jesus, God manifested in human form? Likewise, Islam isn’t merely the Koran but the stories of Muhammad and his spiritual heirs.

More often than not, a lesser idea brought to life through storytelling is likely to have greater traction than a bigger idea that remains an abstraction. Plato understood, as the ideas of Socrates became inseparable from the way he carried himself, ultimately unto death.
The storytelling could be on the macro level, as in the case of Marxism. Unlike communists before him who merely theorized the organizational principles of socialism, Marx, with ideas borrowed from Hegel, told the story of mankind to demonstrate that class dialectics are the key to understanding the past, the present, and the future. This sense of historical destiny and inevitability, more than the proposal of an ideal communist system, captivated so many hearts and minds. And of course, as time passed, figures such as Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Trotsky(especially among Western intellectuals), Castro, Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, and etc. became characters in mythologized narratives.
For most radicals, it was the STORY of communist struggle than DAS KAPITAL or the Collected Works of Lenin, Stalin, and/or Mao that fired up their commitment. Most probably, more Western Liberals know about the October Revolution from Warren Beatty’s REDS than from any scholarly text. John Reed, the subject of the film, was apparently one hell of a storyteller, and later, Edgar Snow did something similar for the Chinese Communist movement with RED STAR OVER CHINA. And Che Guevara’s adventures that came to tragedy transmogrified him into a Christ-like figure for the international left. Few read Gue