Thornton and Zwigoff have the perfect touch for this material--they never try to force us to get behind Willie's feelings, to hate the kids as much as he does by making them obnoxious (as in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971), for instance) and that makes it all the more liberating, because we don't feel the push of moviemakers desperate for a hit. And Thornton comes through as never before. He has a down-home quality that other actors can only try to synthesize but nevertheless always registers as a self-conscious actor, a Harry Dean Stanton who preens over his artistry. In Bad Santa Willie's depressive alcoholic self-pity somehow enables him to relax. His enclosed quality suits this cut-off man but he's also working the comedy in a more instantly enjoyable style than he ever has. His reactions to the kids, in which he alternates muttering with yelping, his indifference giving way to hostility and foul language with surprising rhythmic changes, are fast, unfussed-over marvels.
Willie's reactions to the children plainly call to mind W.C. Fields--his peerless comedy short The Golf Specialist (1930) is worth seeing for the bit in which he tries to grab a little girl's piggy bank alone. Fields was cagey, and even repulsive, but at the same time a juggler, a mountebank, a Ziegfeld star, and always in more direct contact with his audience than a thespian like Thornton. But Thornton, a meatless soupbone stewing in the southwestern heat, is so good I didn't wish the movie had starred Fields (who would, however, die all over again of envy at the uncensored dialogue). Thornton brings such a distinctive style to such relentless material that I became greedy for it--I felt I could listen to him blurt obscenities at the most inappropriate moments forever.
At the same time, Willie is clearly in need of redemption and it's bound to come in the form of a child who reaches him through his haze. What keeps the movie on track is that the child, played by Brett Kelly, is also ironically unlikely for his part. In as much as he's a depressed fat kid who's picked on by the other kids and whose father is in prison, he's prime for a "heartwarming" surrogate father story. But he's also yucky in the way kids can be (the first time he sits on Willie's lap he sneezes chocolate ice cream onto his beard, which Willie never bothers to clean off) and pesky, asking Willie why he doesn't look like Santa.
Article comments
1 - Al Barger
Really outstanding and thoughtful analysis, Alan. It's definitely got me thinking backwards through the Chaplin movies.
I tend to think of irony as a subset of humor, but your explanation of it doesn't seem to imply that at all. Most intriguing.
2 - Alan Dale
Thanks for the comment. Irony has a lot of overlap with comedy, esp., I think because it works by incongruity, which is one of the main tools of comedy. Double Indemnity is a classic American example of the wrong man for the wrong job with the wrong outcome model of irony, is an ironic version of a tragic situation, and feels like a nightmare while it's happening, but when I think about it afterwards I always feel that I'm laughing with Billy Wilder at MacMurray's foolishness. Irony is also on a continuum with satire: irony is the more reticent, mysterious end, satire the more explicit end. Irony can also be grouped with comedy over the issue of the protagonist's status with respect to the audience: in irony and comedy we tend to look down at him whereas in tragedy and romance we look up at him. It's all pretty fluid, though--all the genres are constantly spilling over into each other. Makes it more interesting to think about.
3 - Eric Olsen
Thanks as always Alan, the book looks very impressive, feel free to link it from Amazon.
4 - Frantic Freddie
NO THANKS!