When Your Holidays Are Naughty and Not So Nice
It feels like Christmas came out of nowhere this year. I haven’t put up the tree yet, and it’s mid December. What’s the point? Let’s face it, some seasons you feel like the world is your snow globe while other times the jolly fails to follow after the holly. And for those moments when you need extra wine in your wassail to get through the season I offer up my own Holiday Hostage movie: In Bruges.
At its prickly surface In Bruges doesn’t seem like a holiday movie. Two contract killers Ray (Colin Farrell) and Ken (Brendan Gleeson) are hiding out in Belgium while waiting for instructions from their terrifying (but weirdly principled) boss Harry (Ralph Fiennes).
Despite this context, however, the twinkling lights, holiday decorations, and the lead character arcs very much follow the Christmas movie template. Ray and Ken encompass both ends of how people behave during the holiday season: the merry makers and the misanthropes. Ken, acting with all the patience of a parent with a teenager, does his best to show Ray a good time around Bruges. They tour medieval sites and visit the art museum, having philosophical conversations about mortality while looking at iconic Flemish paintings. But while Ken and Harry describe Bruges as a dream (“like a [bleep] fairy tale,” per Harry), Ray feels like he’s purgatory–until he meets Chloë (Clémence Poésy).
Thankfully, the movie doesn’t take a Hallmark turn, but continues on its melancholy and increasingly maniacal twisty path. The not so nice characters who have all done beyond naughty things grapple with the consequences of living by a code of ethics and what happens when you violate them.
So if you’re still ambivalent about the holidays or you’re coming down from all the sugar cookie highs let In Bruges be that rascally mate. The kind whose company keeps you ruefully chuckling even as the Christmas cheer changes to contemplative and nostalgic as we head towards the end of year and, anxious but hopeful, into a new one.
Want more from our Hostage Holiday Collection?
Catch up on the Although Things Explode It Really is a Christmas Movie series
