Holiday-themed movies have become as intrinsic a part of the season as getting drunk on eggnog and passing out under the mistletoe while relatives sneak awkwardly out the door.

But does a film necessarily have to include persecuted Santas and suicide-preventing angels to be a licensed "Christmas classic?" Before you slip in your well-worn copy of The Bells of St. Mary's or Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, consider some titles from The Pink Smoke's alternative list of movies that touch on the most wonderful time of the year (to varying degrees.)

~ by christopher funderburg ~

"You know lately Cullen, I've been wondering about your attitude, your attitude towards banking, your attitudes towards your co-workers. I don't think I need to remind you of the tremendous responsibility we have."

The Silent Partnerhas one of those set-ups that's so good that you can't believe it hasn't been done a thousand times: a bank clerk realizes his joint is being cased and makes preparations to siphon off a little bit of the take for himself when the job actually goes down. The clerk (Elliott Gould) catches a mall Santa (Christopher Plummer) giving his bank the stink-eye all day and serendipitously stumbles upon a trashed note that appears left over from one of Santa's abortive attempts to rob the place. He sets aside a nice stack of bills near his drawer and when Santa finally makes his move, Gould slips the stashed cash into his lunch box and walks out with his bosses none the wiser. No one has any idea of his little scheme - why would they? Except maybe the mall Santa was planning his heist to coincide with the Christmas season and had certain expectations. Maybe that guy noticed that a healthy chunk of his take is gone. Oh well, he's a mall Santa, if he could ace the job interview to land that job, he must on some level he be a pretty good guy and a not a violent, woman-hating psychopath. It probably won't be a problem.

On an unrelated note, I feel like it's crucial to mention right up front that Gould's oafish, cuckholded buddy at work is played by John Candy. Just seems important. Even though it absolutely is not.

If the presence of a young John Candy didn't give it away, the film is a homegrown Canadian production. It's the best film by Daryl Duke, the George Armitage of the Great White North, and it features a ton of recognizable Toronto locations, one of the few films out there where Canada isn't humiliating itself by pretending to be Seattle or Portland or a rumble in Bronx or the X-Files office. One of the fun parts of going to TIFF every year was spotting locations from The Silent Partner, although I gotta admit all malls look the same everywhere you go even in Canada, so I'm not sure if I ever set foot in the mall, even though I did set my foot in several different malls throughout the years. I mention the Canadian pedigree because one of the more striking aspects of the film is its essential Canadian-ness, a tough phenomenon for us Americans to describe - it's kinda like a midwestern vibe but without the religious undertones; maybe Canadians are like Southerners without the legacy of racism and with hockey in place of football? I mean, it's tough to believe that poutine wasn't invented in Tuscaloosa. And The Band were Canadian and acted like they were from Missouri and it doesn't make them at all seem like a fraud, is what I'm getting at.

The presence of that Canadian-osity in a dark thriller is all the more striking because not only are there very few straight-forward Canadian thrillers (quick name your top five!), but the seediness and danger of The Silent Partner clashes with the terms normally associated with Canada and its Canadians like "friendly," "hearty," and "inoffensive." On the other hand, more than a handful of noted Canadian filmmakers are weirdo perverts: David Cronenberg, Guy Madden, Atom Egoyan, even Sarah Polley is more of a weirdo than some schnook in L.A. trying to sell his screenplay for a kids film about an elite hamster squad. Maybe my fellow Americans and I have Canada pegged all wrong. We thought you guys were up there drinking Molson XXX and watching hockey on tiny black and white t.v.'s with fuzzy reception while ice-fishing out in the wilds of Manitoba but you're really building videodromes and having sissy boy slap parties and brutalizing prostitutes in skeezy bathhouses to vent your frustration after you discover Elliott Gould has made off with some of your loot. You sicken me, Canada.*

I make the Arimtage comparison because like Armitage's best films, Duke's film has a great hook, great performances and an unforgettable villain, but isn't caught up in the mechanics of its story so much as exploring its characters and their emotional lives. The trailer for Armitage's Miami Blues emphasizes that the film is about a criminal impersonating a cop with a stolen badge, but in reality it's not really about that - it's about a man who can't decide who he wants to be. Similarly, The Silent Partner is about Gould's cash-grab switcheroo and Plummer coming to get his due, but in reality it's just as much a romance between Gould and one of his emotionally unavailable co-workers, a realistic story of office politics and the petty frustrations of just trying to exist when you're a comfortable middle-class nobody. Truly, Gould's Miles Cullen is culling miles to nowhere. But it's also very much a Christmas movie, not just in terms of the omnipresent twinkling lights and silvery tinsel - the holiday isn't just shimmering trimmings, but the true meaning of the film.

As we all know, Christmastime is a time of peace on earth and good will towards man and Santa himself usually gets lumped in with the season's feel-good vibes. But that's not Santa's bag: Santa is here to give you what you got comin'. Sure, if you've been a good little boy that means presents; but if you've stolen thousands of dollars from your longtime employer, you better hope all he has for you is a stocking full of coal. That's the true meaning of Christmas: being called to account for your deeds and being judged accordingly. We're all adults here and know [SPOILER] Santa isn't real, so it's up to humanity to breathe life into his awesome myth. In some cases, that means dad staying up all night to assemble a new bike for Billy; other times, it means surrogate Santas ringing bells on the sidewalk soliciting nickels for charity. Christopher Plummer's merry sociopath fulfills the dark side of Mr. Claus, the side that checks the list twice, sees he's twenty grand short and stabs the naughty little boy's beloved pet fish. It might be controversial to say, but Christopher Plummer's Silent Partner character gets the season more than any of these pretenders like Jimmy Stewart and Charlie Brown. If everyone receives love and family and peace on earth no matter their criminal shenanigans, then goodness has no meaning; Plummer is here to fulfill ol' St. Nick's role in balancing the scales.

Of course, you'd have to be a total nutjob to be a full grown bank robber and still believe in Santa. In reality, there's a different tough spot in which Elliott Gould is wedged like an obese North Poler in too tiny a chimney.** If he fulfills his ordained lifetime of meaningless middle-class drudgery, what's the payoff? He doesn't have a family, the swinging chicky down at the office on which he has his eye is romantically entangled with their married boss, there's no one with whom he could share eggnog and carols, no audience eager to listen to him to recite The Night Before Christmas by heart. Just an endless succession of days filling out forms in the bank, each day more the same than the last. If he tries to break out of his stolid existence, he risks not only ruining his career, but incarceration and (once Plummer gets wise) death. The Silent Partner is a moral tale, by one tinged with irony: consent to a noble life of soul-crushing drudgery and get checked off as nice or be naughty to make a grab for greatness and end up on Santa's bad side.***

Maybe the most Christmas-y element of the tale is Gould's late-film fling with a sultry young Frenchwoman half his age. Framed by the mundanity of his office life and failed relationship, his too-good-to-be true rebound romance with this young lady should raise Gould's suspicions - but hear me out: Gould's in a Christmas mood and what is Christmas if not a moment to indulge the illusion of wealth and power, the season in which our most gratuitous fantasies are gleefully fulfilled? When a tawny coquette pretending to be the nurse of Gould's recently deceased father begins to aggressively pursue him, he knows something's up, but chooses the pretend otherwise. Christmastime is when we allow ourselves to buy the bigscreen t.v. we know we can't afford, to imitate the perfect families in obnoxious Lexus commercials who wrap big bows around the luxury vehicles they're gifting out. And dammit, it's Christmas so Gould is going to steal the money, buy a convertible and sleep with the nubile cocktail waitress who obviously didn't take care of his dying father. It's the time of year when we all get to pretend we're not just some schnook dying one day at a time in a 9 to 5, when we can cast off the complications of real relationships and personal failure - during Christmas, we take a posed photo and for a fleeting moment really do appear to be one big happy family.

But Christopher Plummer's the real deal, reality re-dealt. Santa is a reckoning and while you might forget about him come January, he's still there watching, waiting. He sees you when you're sleeping. He knows when you're awake. He's gonna find out who's naughty or nice. all. year. long. By the end of the film, months have passed. Christmas is over and now the bank is advertising Easter deals. His nubile accomplice warns Gould, "He's going to take the money, all of it. And then he's going to kill you just for fun and he's going to laugh while doing it." Is it crucifixion and resurrection time? Will Gould endure the lash and be reborn as a more pure being? Surely, those are all questions for CinEaster. For the moment, let's stay at the foot of the ol' tannebaum, surrounded by our loved ones and presents, believing in the beautiful lies of St. Nick. Just remember to be good boys and girls because Christopher Plummer's brutal, leather-belt wielding rapist is not someone you want coming down your chimney except under the most felicitous of circumstances. Even then, you should probably figure that the gifts he bears come with a downside: just as the credit card bills for that new Lexus and new widescreen will continue to pile up, every stack of cash that Plummer causes to fall into your lap will come with a heady chaser. Better just stick to the eggnog.