As we close out another year on this great blue marble, I’m reminded of an annual event in the film world: the December doldrums. This is that week, which creeps in every year just before Christmas, when theaters seem to be holding their collective breath. People are busy shopping the last-minute sales, and many studios are holding back their biggest pictures fr Christmas Day releases, when those people eager to escape the over-warm bosom of family throng the malls for a few hours of escape.
But even as that wave of conspicuous consumption washes over us all, there are a few places that are celebrating the spirit of quiet giving. If you find yourself needing a little break this week, the Valley’s venues have you covered.
Easthampton arts spot The Platinum Pony truly takes that spirit to heart: the venue, which combines a performance space and cinema with a restaurant and bar, often screens films free of charge. This Sunday, they’re showing two wildly different films about people finding their place in the world (and finding someone with whom to share it). First up, at 4 p.m., is the Will Ferrell holiday comedy Elf, about an orphaned boy who ends up at the North Pole after stowing away on Santa’s sleigh. Adopted by Papa Elf (Bob Newhart — why isn’t Newhart in more movies?), young Buddy finds life among the elves difficult as he grows into six-foot-three Ferrell. When he learns that his biological father is working at a children’s book company in New York, the overgrown elf heads out to reunite the family. One problem: Dad (a bristly James Caan) is on the naughty list.
At 7 p.m., the Pony brings in something a little more unusual. The Shop Around the Corner is a 1940 film from director Ernst Lubitsch, with a story that modern viewers might best recognize as the plot of the 1998 Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan movie You’ve Got Mail. In Lubitsch’s film, James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan star as two employees of a Budapest gift shop who can’t stand each other’s company. But after the store is locked up for the night, the pair run off to write notes to their anonymous pen pals, not realizing that they are, in fact, writing each other. The film is based on Miklós László’s play Parfumerie, and while Stewart and Sullavan might seem like unlikely choices to play a Hungarian couple, the film is charming enough, and the rest of the ensemble good enough, that one can forgive some of the odder choices in the casting.
If you want a second helping of Stewart, both Amherst Cinema and Cinemark Theaters are screening It’s A Wonderful Life this week. This holiday chestnut has always seemed over-roasted to this reviewer — perhaps director Frank Capra was overcompensating for the four years he’d just spent making propaganda films for the government war effort — but there’s no denying its staying power. In it, Stewart’s small town building-and-loan man is on the brink of suicide following a business disaster, but hesitates when a guardian angel shows him the effect his life has had on others. Its screens Sunday and Tuesday in Amherst, and Sunday and Wednesday at Cinemark.
If you’re looking for a story of spirituality that might run a bit deeper, Hartford’s Real Art Ways cinema is hosting the documentary Awake: The Life of Yogananda this week. Filmed over three years and in 30 countries, the film limns the life of Paramahansa Yogananda, the Indian guru whose book Autobiography of a Yogi became a cultural and spiritual touchstone for generations of followers. By using his own struggle as the basis of his teaching, Yogananda brought ancient Vedic ideas into the modern world of self-help, giving many their first foothold in the sometimes hard to parse tradition. The yogi died in 1952, but his teaching and example continue to inspire millions to this day.•
Jack Brown can be reached at cinemadope@gmail.com.
