The Polar Express
Written and directed by Robert Zemeckis
Based on the book by Chris Van Allsburg
With Tom Hanks, Chris Coppola and Nona Gaye
REVIEW BY NICOLE HILDER
The Polar Express is a tale of Christmas Eve re-education. A mysterious train takes a bunch of children to the North Pole to prove that (dammit, Virginia), Santa exists.
The children could be viewed as the metaphor for people who, when on the verge of abandoning their belief in capitalist representative democracy, are scared back into supporting the reactionary "war on terrorism".
At the behest of an impatient conductor, the nameless kids are ushered inside the train with a menacing "All Aboard!" speech invoking US President George Bush's "you're either with us or your with the terrorists" ultimatum. Hero Girl, the children's de facto leader, is a dead ringer for US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. She even takes over driving the train from hapless rail workers.
This is a politically and technically disturbing film. Seeing Tom Hanks morphed onto a 12-year-old cartoon boy's face is disconcerting enough, but why Zemeckis uses imagery reminiscent of Hitler's Nuremberg rallies to show Santa during his North Pole send-off is inexplicable. The clumsy attempt at addressing why poor kids don't get visited by Santa is ultimately cruel and the scene where a battered Ebenezer Scrooge puppet attacks Hero Boy for being a non-believer is totally freaky.
The Polar Express lacks the community spirit and humanism of the best Christmas classics. The message of blind faith, though seemingly harmless in the context of Santa, may trouble those of us who this principle used to justify mass oppression.
From Green Left Weekly, December 8, 2004.
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