Short Film Showcase: "The Christmas Light Killer" Takes a Wry Peek Behind the Curtain of Holiday Magic
To paraphrase Tom Wolfe, you can't have Christmas again. For many kids, Christmastime is the ultimate drug. It's the one time of the year that they're allowed to believe magic is real, and that their wishes will be granted by the stout embodiment of generosity. The older I get, the more I chase that original Christmas feeling, and the further away it feels. Don't get me wrong, I unabashedly love the holidays, but age inevitably tinges holiday cheer with wistful melancholy. In that way, I find myself relating to the affable cynic at the center of filmmaker James P. Gannon's documentary short "The Christmas Light Killer."
Every night, James D. Cochran, the star of the short, witnesses how the sausage is made and it's soured him on the whole affair. Christmas means being joyful and sweet, but sometimes life just doesn't cooperate. When you're forced to think about Christmas every moment of the day, you begin to see the cracks in the mannequin smiles frozen onto everyone's faces. Cochran controls the holiday magic, and because of that, he just can't see it anymore. Knowing how fake it all is, hearing the whir of the generators power down the cheer in real time, highlights the contrived absurdity of the Christmas spirit. In taking us behind the scenes with him, we become complicit in the holiday lie. We are let in on a secret that we all suspected from the start.
Cochran makes for a fascinating main subject. His documentary deadpan sometimes feels like a put-on, as if he's playing a self-aware character on The Office, but the feelings he expresses are so universal that they cut through the artifice. He wants us to think he is funny because he is so odd and different, but he underestimates how compellingly relatable his naked yule cynicism comes across.
Cochran is the star here, but Gannon's photography gives this short some added depth. Gannon plays with light and focus in a way that makes even the cheesiest attractions of the drive-through light show pop. That juxtaposition of twinkling beauty and Cochran's almost gleeful eagerness to snuff it out makes this short something special. The film is funny and at times, surprisingly wistful, and I think it perfectly captures that hard-to-define feeling adults get around this time of year. The holidays have an uncanny ability to embody both the best and worst of human nature, the extremes of generosity and selfishness. With this small film, Gannon and Cochran pull that strange dichotomy into the light allowing us all to laugh at it together, if only for a few minutes.
