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List Price: $14.94 | | Label: Sony Pictures
Salesrank: 2614
Released: November 14, 2006 |
| Our Price: $6.71 |
| Used Price: $5.79 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA nominee for Best Foreign Film, Joyeux Noel (Merry Christmas) tells the true-life story of the spontaneous Christmas Eve truce declared by Scottish, French and German troops in the trenches of World War I. Enemies leave their weapons behind for one night as they band together in brotherhood and forget about the brutalities of war. Diane Krüger (Troy), Daniel Brühl (Good Bye Lenin!) and Benno Fürmann (The Princess and the Warrior) head a first-rate international cast in a truly powerful, must-see film.
Description of Joyeux Noel (Widescreen):
Joyeux Noel captures a rare moment of grace from one of the worst wars in the history of mankind, World War I. On Christmas Eve, 1914, as German, French, and Scottish regiments face each other from their respective trenches, a musical call-and-response turns into an impromptu cease-fire, trading chocolates and champagne, playing soccer, and comparing pictures of their wives. But when Christmas ends, the war returns...Joyeux Noel has been justly accused of sentimentality, but if any subject warrants such an earnest and hopeful treatment, it's the horrors of trench warfare. The largely unknown cast--the more familiar faces include Diane Kruger (Troy), Daniel Bruhl (Good Bye Lenin!), Benno Furmann (The Princess and the Warrior), and Gary Lewis (Billy Elliot)--deliver low-key but effective performances as the movie dwells on the everyday elements of life in the face of war. Based on a true incident (though considerably fictionalized). --Bret Fetzer
Stills from Joyeux Noel (click for larger image)
Joyeux Noel (Widescreen) Reviews:
Affirming the best in our universal humanity 
2009-11-08 - What soldiers are asked to endure during war breaks my heart more and more. I am so very tired of war and war mongering.
My father was called back in the Korean War and went so that his son would not have to take care of unfinished business.
What a horrible waste war is! What beautiful film this is not only in how it is artistically crafted but in the message it brings to life! We are so much more alike than different. We could build such glorious civilizations and monuments to human genius if we would only decide that every human life is precious and deserves to be preserved and nourished. To accomplish that we would all have to look at each other one on one - no nationality dividing us, no religion, no race, no ethnicity. All members on one race - the human race.
How stupid can men and their wartime bureaucracies be?
A cat really was charged with treason, and it was shot to death!
The officers allowing this truce and fraternization truly deserve the epithet "officers and gentlemen". Personal honor meant something more then, I think.
Beautiful picture - stirring and lasting message to all. Thank you very much for this marvelous film. Please do watch it!
Excellent introduction to World War One themes
2009-06-02 - This was the first film in which I saw Daniel Bruhl and Guillaume Canet, and this is also one of the first films (though not the very first) that introduced me to European cinema. While it is sentimental, it benefits from a good script, great cast, and stunning cinematography. While not as hard-hitting as "A Very Long Engagement" or "Behind the Lines", the point to the whole thing is the very unexpected friendships that can grow between two sides during the fighting. It is a film that demonstrates the emotional impact war has on those who fight it, without driving that point home with a sledgehammer. I really enjoyed this film, and it did push me into a greater interest in World War One. While emotionally significant, the film does not make you crave an insulin shot afterwards. I must say this is one of my absolute favorite films, and I have already watched it many, many times .
Amazing movie
2009-05-04 - This movie is amazing I think everyone should watch it. It was a great copy I had no problems with it.
Tragically moving.
2009-04-03 - The true story of the trench warfare's horror and death is broken by the most amazing power of the Christmas truce. How tragic that it was brief.
A deeply moving film.
A Wonderful Look Back
2009-03-07 - This film is a moving dramatization of the spontaneous Christmas truce of 1914, during which soldiers on both sides met in no-man's land, sang hymns, played sports, and exchanged gifts. Needless to say, the generals, warm and well-fed in their far-from-the-front chateaux, were not happy about that and did their best to see it didn't repeat the following three Christmases of the war.
The film is well-done and almost even-handed in its presentation of soldiers from France, Germany and Scotland, except that the French soldiers, for some reason, seem less interesting than the Scottish and German. That's odd, since this 2005 film was apparently a French or Belgian production.
The film's other oddity is that the Scottish officer who participates in and is punished for his role the unofficial cease fire is apparently a Catholic priest (note his use of Latin), as it appears were most of his men. The Scots of that day were mostly Scotch Presbyterian, so I can't explain that little anomaly. Maybe the French/Belgian producers didn't know that. The European intelligentsia of today know very little about religion, hence their instinctive pandering to militant Islam. Religion scares them, so a scary religion seems normal.
Sadly, the Great War in which these men fought has become the Forgotten War. That's unfortunately, because all too many of our modern ills are rooted in that long-ago struggle over mere yards of blasted landscape. The years before the Great War represented the high-water mark in European influence on the world. Europe has never fully recovered from its enormous loses.
-Michael W. Perry, Chesterton on War and Peace: Battling the Ideas and Movements That Led to Nazism and World War II
