Finding something new to say about Christmas can be a challenge.
After all, we’ve had almost two hundred years of what passes for a modern Christmas, beginning with Victorian England and Dickens and folding in everything from a Coca-Cola-inspired Santa Claus and carols and eggnog and brightly decorated trees, and everyone, well most people anyway, are quite happy with the trappings of the season as they are.
So saying something, anything new can be a challenge.
The cleverness and heartfelt wonder of Canadian production The Last Christmas, a new animated film which uses a form of limited animation, courtesy of the artwork of immensely talented hand of Dutch artist Emma Wilson, is that says something new by enthusiastically yet quietly embracing with heart and humour lots of elements of Christmas as we have come to know it.
This luscious 25-minute story of love, friendship, giving, hope and future possibility, written, directed by David Schinbeckler, with composition and animation by Logan Schinbeckler, serves up Santa and reindeer, A Visit from St. Nicholas vibes and the hope and inclusive loveliness of the season, all of which are staples in many a Christmas story.
But never at any point in The Last Christmas do you feel as if having all those traditional elements there feels wildly unoriginal or hackneyed and been-there-done that.
In fact, what you do feel, apart from a heartwarming sense of wonder and love by the metric ton, is a deep sense of people who know that it is possible to do something new and different with a season which tends to embrace nostalgia and the certainty of certain elements with gusto, mostly as an antidote to an often unpalatable, nasty present reality.
In The Last Christmas, Gramps is sitting in his chair an hour or so before Christmas Day, when he realises that he has forgotten to get gifts for his six-year-old grandson who it appears lives with him (this is just supposition but at one point the grandson wanders into his grandfather’s workspace, half-asleep with no sign of a parent intercepting him) and whom he clearly dotes on.
Christmas looks ruined until Santa crashes right outside Gramps’ barn, his sled wrecked, his reindeer befuddled and presents and sacks of gifts scattered all over the deeply-snow-covered yard.
Using rhythmically exquisite poetry, narrated by John Cleese, to tell its story, The Last Christmas serves up a beautifully enchanting but groundedly real story of Santa at the end of his time in the role, with time and online shopping almost making him irrelevant, of reindeers who need freedom and a chance to live their best non-sled pulling life and two men, one from the North Pole, another from a snowy island in Canada, finding a unique friendship which changes and enriches both their wildly divergent lives.
The Last Christmas is a thing of real visual beauty, with artwork which immerses you in the story in an endlessly compelling way, and of narrative heart, taking festive elements that have been used a thousand times before, even the saving Christmas riff, and giving them new, vibrantly nuanced and cosily happy life.
With poetry that skips off the tongue and evokes a wondrous sense of a magical moment, the kind that only Christmas can provide in its bubble removed from the harsh realities of life, The Last Christmas is a complete and utter joy with animation that delights, comforts and surprises, a story which takes well-used narrative beats and makes them feel new again, and characters who remind you that the world can be a magical place and that even Santa can move on and Christmas change and all the magic of the festive season will still be there to enjoy and to warm our souls when we need it the most.
The Last Christmas streams on Apple TV.