Here’s what I don’t understand. The critics were savage on the movie when it came out. They said simply awful things, none of which are true as far as I can tell. It is not syrupy, not predictable, not trivial, not canned, and not sentimental. It is the opposite: bracing, surprising, serious, provocative, and truth-telling.
These vaunted elites cannot even recognize a good movie when it comes along. My worry is that the poor reviews might discourage people from seeing it when they should.
The movie tells the story of a small village in England with a long tradition of belief. Every 25 years, an angel shows up at a candlemaker’s shop and touches one candle. The person who lights that candle and prays has his prayers answered. It is a core belief—or superstition—of the entire town, with generations of believers.
The town needs a new pastor for the local church, and a scion of the community recruits him from London, where she finds him dishing out soup to people in need. He is deeply reluctant to take the job because he has undergone some changes since he first entered ministry.
When he accepts the job, we find out what those changes are. He is a strong believer in community service. He believes in serving others and good works. He is a nice person with a big heart. He is lacking in one thing and one thing only. He no longer has faith. He doesn’t believe in miracles. He doubts every mystical aspect of religion.
In other words, he is an archetype of the social-gospel intellectual. Such people believe in the fruits and forms of faith but not the faith itself. They are forever secularizing the content and anxious to strip away anything that smacks of superstition. We’ve all known plenty of such people. They are nice folks but tack toward rationalism and can even be inadvertently cruel in their efforts to disabuse people of faith.
We are not talking about the village atheist here but something less overtly threatening, because they do believe strongly in the power of charity, compassion, and good works.
When the minister arrives, he finds out that it is the 25th year in which the angel is said to arrive and touch the candle. He cannot hide his disdain for the tradition because, he says, it can only result in disappointment. When people find out that the miracle is a fake, they will stop believing completely. He takes it upon himself to end the tradition entirely.
That turns out to be harder than he thought. No one wants to give up the belief structure that forms the philosophical and community core of the town. People are proud of their belief and do not appreciate this new guy, however nice he is, running around telling people that their tradition is rooted in a self-evident lie.
The new pastor is also a technological modernist who thinks we are moving away from candlelight in any case and turning toward electricity. In the middle of Advent, he has the church rewired for electricity, upsetting the whole community. I get it: This would upset me too!
The new system reduces the demand for candles from the shop. The husband and wife have an idea. They will give away the candles, telling each recipient that this particular candle is the one touched by the angel and therefore can bestow miracles. They are careful to tell people not to reveal this to others. As a result, many people in the community are holding on until Christmas Eve to light the candle.
Do you see the interesting drama being set up here? I’m not giving spoilers, but I must report the spectacular scene on the fourth Sunday of Advent when the new pastor turns on the lightbulbs for the first time. The bulbs could not sustain the current—a very common problem in those days—and every bulb blew up, creating an unholy calamity throughout the church.
People ran out screaming that the devil had been unleashed in the church. They were sort of right!
Meanwhile, everyone is holding tight to their own candles and hoping for miracles to come. At some point, the candlemakers discover the real candle that had been touched. The scion of the community lets the couple know of a feature of the tradition about which many had forgotten. In the past, the candle was given to the pastor of the church who had lost his faith. She suggests that the same happens here.
Again, I won’t give the spoiler, but I can discuss the one predictable but still wonderful turn of events. All the people who believe in the candle miracle do, in fact, experience a miracle by virtue of their own faith and works. Their candles were just candles and nothing more, but believing them to be mystically powerful, people acted on their ideals and dreams. Families are reunited, healings occur, old enemies become friends, a boy who could not speak finds his voice, and so on.
The pastor, too, finds his faith, and we discover, too, why he lost it. It was due to a deep tragedy in his family life, one so powerful that he asked the eternal question: Why would God allow this to happen? Having no answer, he decided that God had somehow abandoned the world.
In any case, it is a lovely movie in so many ways, not only reinforcing the need to do good for others but also reminding us that adding a faith dimension to this imperative strengthens it and provides the strongest possible rationale and purpose.
I’m profoundly aware that filming these days is very often using green screens with CGI and that it is likely that this one used some of that. Still, it is, in fact, shot on location in the Isle of Man, so gorgeous cinematography. There are other great moments, such as when a man drives up in the earliest version of the Stanley Steamer. The town is in shock. So wonderful.
The ubiquity of candles in every room throughout gives the movie a warm glow. Human beings have a deep desire to be around fire. This is where all electricity fails and candles excel. This is why they have made such a huge comeback in dining culture, even in the most fashionable urban environments. The opening scene features a tremendously beautiful and detailed image of a candle being lit, with the smoke from the match rising up behind after the flame grows. It’s truly unforgettable.
Sure, the movie has an innocence about it. Unlike today’s critics, I happen not to think that this is a downside. We need a bit of that back. Bundled with a beautiful story about revived faith and a community tradition, we really do have the makings of a movie that can be watched every year during this season.
