Sunday, December 14, 2014

Otto and Jim


Mack Hall, HSG


 

Otto and Jim

 

Sainsbury’s is a fairly new company in England, having been around only since 1869.  Now a large supermarket chain, its annual Christmas television mini-movie ad of three or four minutes is a minor marketing custom.

 

This year, on the centenary of the first Christmas of World War I, Sainsbury’s little Christmas film, wholly free of advertising, is set during on the Western Front in 1914.  With snow falling on the battle area and soldiers shivering in the muddy trenches at night, an English soldier opens a package from home to find a letter, a picture of a girl, perhaps his wife or girlfriend or sister, and a bar of chocolate. 

 

From across the mud and snow we hear German soldiers singing “Stille Nacht.” The English soldiers join in, but of course in translation as “Silent Night.”  It sounds hokey, but the director makes it work, and the singing really did happen in several places along the battle line a century ago.

 

In the grey, cold morning, our fictional English soldier climbs a ladder, waves his hat, and clambers out into No Man’s Land, almost provoking a fight.  But a German soldier quickly realizes that there is no attack and tells his comrades not to shoot. 

 

Our young English soldier and our young German soldier, followed by others from both sides, approach each other slowly, slowly, hands always in sight, and then meet in the wasteland between the trenches.

 

“My name is Jim.”

 

“Mein name ist Otto.”

 

Otto and Jim, both monolingual, can only shake hands and beam at each other over shared photographs until someone begins a footer match. For a brief hour English and German soldiers pose for pictures, play footer, and beam at each other a great deal because when you don’t share a language you can at least beam.  An English sergeant and a German sergeant are standing together beaming approval at the merriment when everyone hears shooting from down the line.  Hasty farewells are made, Otto and Jim shake hands one last time and wish each other “Happy Christmas” and “Frohe Weihnachten,” and everyone trudges sadly back to their duty stations.

 

As Otto resumes his position on the fire step he discovers that Jim has slipped his precious chocolate bar into Otto’s coat as a gift.  Back in the English trench, Jim wryly observes that all he will have for Christmas dinner is a bit of hardtack, and that’s okay.

 

And that’s it.  The end.  Sainsbury’s made a moment, and made it good.

 

The film is overlaid with better-than-average insta-emo music, and there is no advertising.   The weak, greeting card-ish “Christmas is for sharing” at the end is a clumsy and entirely redundant appendage.  The sharing was in the film; the producer compromises the moment by spelling it out. Further, both those who love this Christian holy day and those who, obedient some script, loathe it, can agree that there is far more to Christmas than a bumper sticker.

 

A hundred years later Otto and Jim, and now Jim’s girlfriend, are still on duty in “some corner of a foreign field,” while those who sent them there will, as  always, spend Christmas in comfort and safety decking the halls with their resumes and graduate degrees. 

 

Young soldiers on watch all over the world will know Christmas more truly than anyone because of their isolation and loneliness.  Remember to send them pictures and letters and maybe a bar of chocolate for Christmas again this year.

 

-30-

 

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