MIDNIGHT CLEAR (2006) – DVD Review

Ever been alone on Christmas Eve?  Christmas Day?  Ever felt the loss of someone you love so badly you don’t think you can ever go forward with your life?  Ever been at the end of your rope and considering something really drastic?

I can’t imagine anyone living who hasn’t been there at some time in their lives.  As part of my post duty orders here at We Are Movie Geeks one of my tasks to  shine a light on movies that never quite found an audience.  Independent, foreign, low budget, direct to video, under the radar films that deserve a wider audience.

And, it being the Christmas season I personally am always looking for something new for the holidays.  How many times can you watch Christmas Story?  National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation?  It’s A Wonderful Life or Christmas Carol?  Actually quite a lot apparently, those are all great movies.

But here is a movie set during Christmas Eve, with a great message of love and forgiveness and redemption,  that I had never heard of.  Midnight Clear (not to be confused with Midnight Clear from 1992 directed by Keith Gordon and set during Christmas in Europe in WWII, a fine Christmas movie in its own right. )

This Midnight Clear is a movie with a very human message, from a Christian viewpoint, that can be enjoyed by anyone, no matter what their personal beliefs might be.  When I say Christian I don’t mean this is a “preachy” movie, far from it.   Midnight Clear has a simple message, that small acts of kindness, especially around the holidays, can make someone’s life, can actually save someone’s life.

To begin we have five characters introduced whose paths will cross one Christmas Eve in an unnamed town.  The credits thank the city of Roanoke,  Virginia but the town has no name, on purpose I’m sure, this is Anytown USA, North, South, East, West, location does not matter.  Even though it is set at Christmas there is no snow on the ground and only one character wears a coat.  Doesn’t matter .

We meet Lefty (Stephen Baldwin) first sleeping off a drunk in the parking lot where he works, or where he used to work.  Lefty is not having a good Christmas Eve, at all.  He is known to be unreliable; his boss fires him, on Christmas Eve.  He meets with his wife’s lawyers, his wife left him two years previously.  It does not go well, he has no legal representation of his own,  can’t afford a lawyer, he lets it slip that he is living in his car, got fired from his job, he will probably never see his kids again.

He returns to work to retrieve equipment that may or may not belong to him.  This is some of the funniest stuff in the movie.  Having worked as a security guard I love the guy portraying company security.  If I had to chase somebody on foot I doubt if I would try and carry a cup of coffee with me!

Lefty (and he is not left handed, he explains to the lawyers why he is nick named that, doesn’t help his case at all.)  Takes the equipment and trades them to a fence for a few dollars, a bottle of hooch (of course he is an alcoholic) and a gun.  A gun so hot “you might catch fire holding it.”  Yes, Lefty has something very bad in mind.  I have to say at this point, and I never dreamed I would actually write this sentence, and mean it, Stephen Baldwin is excellent as Lefty. I, and apparently many other movie fans, always thought of Stephen as the least of the Baldwin brothers,( although Billy sure can be annoying!) He gives the performance of a lifetime.  Sincerely, if this were not a “church” movie and had found a wider audience Baldwin could, and should, have been nominated for an Oscar.

Even though Lefty is obviously a “loser” by most people’s standards we never lose our sympathy for him.  We never stop hoping that somehow he can get his life back on track.

We also meet Eva, (K Callan) an older woman, estranged from her family, alone on Christmas Eve and making preparations to take all of her medications at once and end her misery.  She even makes a call to her Dr., and in a very subtle way, makes sure that her questions about her prescriptions will not arouse any suspicions.  She closes her bank account, it only had $9  and change anyway, sets out all the dry cat food for her cat and gets ready to punch her own ticket.

Kirk (Kirk BR Woller) owns a quick shop outside of town.  He has to work  on Christmas Eve, his only employee called in sick.  He built his store outside of town with the promise that the city limits would soon reach his little store and he could sell it at a profit and live the good life.  Of course that is not working out.  He works long hours, has no one to spend Christmas with anyway and has to keep an eye out for customers who would walk out with merchandise.

Mary (Mary Thornton) used to go to church.  She used to have a functioning husband as well.  She and her only child, Jacob (Dominic Scott Kay) visit her husband, Rick (Kevin Downes) brain damaged after an accident, on Christmas Eve one year ago.  She admits to her husband, even though he is medicated and damaged to the point of imbecility, that life is hard, that she misses him, even though he is sitting right in front of her.

And then there is Mitch,(Mitchell Jarvis)  a youth Pastor at the local church.  He is tasked with taking the youth group around town to sing Christmas Carols and hand out small gifts to the church members who don’t come to church anymore.  In each gift packet, among other items is a 20 dollar bill, crucial in the last 15 minutes of the  movie.  Mitch is having a crisis of faith to say the least, he openly wonders to his pastor if it’s worth it to bring the youth group to people’s homes, they won’t come to church anyway.  He admits to the youth group that singing Christmas Carols is “dorky.” And Mitch carries a load of guilt; somehow he was involved in the same accident that damaged Mary’s husband Rick.  In fact Rick was the youth pastor before him, and was much better at the task.

Mitch doesn’t think he can fill Rick’s shoes.  We never learn if Mitch was somehow responsible for the accident either, and again, it does not matter.

On this particular Christmas Eve these five people will affect each other’s lives in profound ways, just by being kind, just by listening, just by being there, just by doing the simplest act of kindness.

Mary and Jacob are on their way to her Mother’s house for Christmas, their car won’t make it.  They stop at Kirk’s Quick Shop, which is not a garage.  Kirk looks at the car and works on it anyway, he has nothing else going on.  During their time together we will learn a lot about both characters.   Kirk BR Woller is a seasoned pro, you will recognize him immediately, he has been in a lot of television and movie projects.

And I must say I was not familiar with Mary Thornton.  According to her bio on IMDB she doesn’t work very often but here she is luminous.  We feel every bit of her pain and loneliness on Christmas Eve.  When she opens up to Kirk while he is working on her car it is shattering, Kirk is kind enough to leave her alone in her grief for just a few minutes.

Eva’s plans for suicide keep getting interrupted, first by a Meals on Wheels lady, a delightful cameo from Victoria Jackson, of Saturday Night Live.  She accepts enough food for six people and the scene of her sitting alone in front of an entire turkey is another heart breaker.

In getting ready to try her self destruction again the Christmas Carolers, led me Mitch, interrupt her.  Mitch is shrewd enough and caring enough to notice that something is wrong.  He practically begs her to come to church.

I have to say at this point, I am technically not a church going Christian, far from it.  I have been practicing Nicheren Buddhism since 1984 and it suits me fine.  I am convinced it has made me a happier and better person and helps me get through every day.  I was raised in the Baptist Church but lost my faith at a young age and “wandered in the wilderness” for quite some time.  There was a time in my life I would have never watched Midnight Clear, just because of its connections to the church. And I can totally identify with Mitch and his struggle to get people to come to church.  I was an SGI leader for quite some time and a lot of my time was taken up with trying to get people to come to meetings!  And making home visits, which Christians do as well.  Common ground if ever there was.

Mitch brings his youth group back to church, Eva was their last stop.  He opens up to his pastor (Richard Fancy) about his doubts concerning the value of what they are doing.  At this point I have to mention as well, I reviewed a documentary for We Are Movie Geeks some time ago called God Has Left the Building, documenting the decline of Christianity in this country.  4000 Churches a year close their doors in the USA.  This might sound strange coming from a Buddhist but I would love, and welcome, a revival of the kind of Christianity that went into the making of Midnight Clear.  A Christianity based on love, forgiveness, redemption, salvation and compassion.  That could and should be the basis for any religion, not hatred and passing judgment.   Buddhism certainly salvaged and redeemed me.  I know for a fact that Christianity, Islam, other schools of Buddhism, can do the same for anybody. Heck I even worked for Scientologists for a couple of years, and they were very nice people to work for!  And I am not fan of L Ron Hubbard’s gibberish, believe me.

And Lefty?  Lefty drinks his bottle of booze, loads the stolen gun and prepares to do something drastic, he tries to pull the trigger on himself, in a scene that is tough to watch, he can’t do it.  Again, Baldwin is so good in this it is tough to see this guy’s misery.  He walks into Kirk’s store while Mary and Jacob are there fully intending to rob the place.  Jacob’s greeting of Merry Christmas to Lefty changes everything.

Through the entire movie Lefty cannot even put gas in his car.  He makes one last stop, at Eva’s, who is his Mother.  She sits in the dark, finally ready to drink her tea made with all her medications mixed together.

Astonished that her good for nothing son has returned in order for her to wish him a Merry Christmas, Eva pours the prescription potion down the drain, feeds Lefty from her bountiful dinner and they talk about the family.  This is when the movie starts to offer hope, for all the characters.  Lefty and his Mother just talking about the other members of the family is hilarious.

Lefty offers to take her to church, but he doesn’t have any gas money, she has the 20$ from the youth group carolers.  Kirk gets Mary’s car running, even though it’s too late for her to go to her Mother’s.  Lefty and Eva stop at Kirk’s store, Lefty ditches the gun, uses the money to buy gas and they leave the dinner on Mary’s car, Lefty having heard Jacob say he was hungry.

And Mitch?  Mitch is gratified beyond all belief to see Eva and her son at the Christmas Eve service, just one person, showing up, just being there, can make a difference in someone’s life.

Quite frankly I am astonished Midnight Clear is not better known and widely seen.  Maybe its confusion with Keith Gordon’s movie.  Or maybe a lot of people would not watch it because it’s a “church” movie.  I might set foot in a church once or twice a year for a wedding or a funeral, and I adore this movie.  I have watched it several times, and not always at Christmas.

I wish there was some way that every man, woman and child on this planet could see Midnight Clear.  Were it within my ability to do so I would arrange a screening for everybody, and I mean everybody.

I don’t care what your beliefs are, Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Moslem, Buddhist, Hindu, Confucius’s, Atheist, Agnostic or a sun worshipping nudist.  Midnight Clear’s message applies to everybody, everywhere.

Namely, can we please be kind to each other?  Can we just show our concern for other people?  Every character in Midnight Clear, at some point, asks every other character “are you alright?”   Sometimes that’s enough, just show you care, to somebody, especially when they need to know that someone does care.

Midnight Clear has a couple of special features, a directors and writers commentary that is excellent and a making of documentary.  I cannot recommend this movie enough, please see it, with your friends and family members.  If you love it as I do make Midnight Clear a new holiday tradition at your home.

And a Merry Christmas too all, and to all a good night!