I'm not quite sure as to why this is often regarded as the best Canadian film ever, but I enjoyed it nevertheless. It took me some time before I started caring about any of the characters, but when it was over, I realized that I had actually ending up liking it anyway. The look of the film is spectacular, and I don't think that I've ever seen a movie that felt more like winter, so the visuals were a handy distraction whenever the story seemed to be particularly slow in developing. To be sure, there were more than a few scenes when things seemed to be progressing rather slowly, but in the end, I would say that it was a good way to spend my time.

The flip side of the jollier Christmas is this sobering, low-key, funereal Eve day slice-of-life spent in a blink-and-you-will-miss mining town, where a boy orphan named Benoit (Jacque Gagnon) helps his "uncle" Antoine (Jean Duceppe) and "aunt" Cecile (Olivette Thibault), their teenage boarder, Carmen (Lyne Champagne), and clerk/assistant, Fernand (Claude Jutra, also director of this film) prepare the general store for its holiday-themed opening, complete with model manger scene in the store window, lights, and festive décor. Prior to this, Benoit helped Antoine (also an undertaker) prepare a miner for a Catholic funeral (Fernand dutifully receiving orders from Antoine and obeying without being sore as well). Benoit even serves as a bored altar boy going through the motions of a day as a priest rarely pays him much mind as he himself does his deeds quietly. The film hints at a tension between the miners of the town and the mine that hasn't given them raises and serves as a beacon of burden resting high above their home on a mountain nearby, like a looming thundercloud. Then there are the revelations that come as the day settles and Benoit does some growing up. Like how a drunken Antoine just unleashes his disappointments (no real child, a job in a poverty-stricken town, an undertaker when he would have rather been in charge of a hotel in USA instead of a general store in a small spot in Quebec) like a gushing wound bleeding forth, having to operate the horse buggy as Antoine is useless when the casket of a dead young man falls off (Benoit has a cast on one of his arms, and his attempts to get Antoine to help him fails), and discovering Cecile and Fernand fooling around while they are embracing adulterously; these events are life-altering and unexpected. Carmen and Benoit flirting (there's even a moment of sexual awakening as a horseplay leads to Benoit copping a feel of her breast while Carmen is okay with that, until embarrassment eventually causes her to flee), and her disgusting pops showing up to retrieve her income working at Antoine's store (the poor state of the people is especially noticeable here) are a glimpse into what this blossoming woman currently has going on in her own life. But what appeared to be a marriage somewhat solid (Cecile and Antoine), the film lets us see behind the curtain, and it proves to be a façade potentially fracturing.

The cold, gloomy environs of the location, a local populace beholden to a mine that is unhealthy and unappreciative to its employees (the film is set right before a strike), and the solemnity of an introverted boy rarely vocal and more introspective are significant attributes to one of Canada's most celebrated films. Set in the 40s, the director perhaps deserves particular praise for the evocation of time and place, how authentic and realistic the characters are presented (it is as if we are time-warped right into a different era), and the dreary, colorless presence of a low income, grind-it-out, discouragingly dismal everyday existence for the miners who see no real light at the end of the tunnel. The final scene where Benoit looks into the window of the mother who lost her son when he just fell ill bookends the gravity of just how difficult life in the setting is.

The subplot of a miner who grows restless and tired of the job goes a logging, leaving behind his family for what he considers a brief spell, not knowing his son would soon be dead upon return. That kid is the one put in a casket by Antoine and Benoit, with the undertaker inert and almost unaffected by the loss for the family (Antoine eating away at a supper prepared by the mourning wife is rather troublesome). When Antoine later can barely stand, a pitiful mess, Benoit seems to have lost all respect for him. Later, when he sees Cecile for who she really is, Benoit seems totally defeated…these people he looked up to are truly flawed and disappointing. Fernand and Cecile trying to tip-toe around what Benoit saw by appealing to him delicately, it failing miserably, proves that the kid has grown up and not duped any longer. My favorite scene has the sophisticated beauty married to the mine accountant arriving at the store looking for a corset, with the guys truly in awe of her.

This isn't quite the best Canadian film ever, IMO. I won't get off track and name 3 or 4 better. Just a couple of nights before I'd seen "The Bicycle Thief", the highly rated Italian classic, and there are some parallels. Both filmmakers shot their film in a specific time and specific place, with minimal resources in terms of sets and cast. And the result in both cases is fascinating and a joy to watch for the realistic setting and characters alone. The lingering shots over faces and landscape almost make this worth watching on its own. That being said, this one isn't quite in the same league as the Italian classic. The movie is shot in a frigid, barren Quebec asbestos mining town. That frigidity is contrasted with the warmth of the people and the eye of the filmmaker Claude Jutra. Basically, what you get is a series of vignettes that are likely nostalgic recollections of Jutra - not ha, ha funny - but poignant, and probably sometimes difficult at the time, but now warmed over with the patine of nostalgia. The movie meanders; there is little tension. Somewhere around half to two thirds way through the story begins. Everyone you've met to this point is involved, and you've gotten to know these characters rather well; so have a little patience at the outset. The story is a good one; it will leave you thinking, and it involves sex, love and death, all the basic elements. If you like Bergman, Godard, Truffaut, all that kind of stuff, you won't be disappointed by this.