Hard to know whether to say too much or too little about this sadly and undeservedly neglected gem. We are apt to develop special feelings for films about special occasions, especially Christmas, and this one's a prime example. With the usual blockbusters (A Christmas Carol, A Christmas Story, Miracle on 34th Street, White Christmas, A Wonderful Life),The Gathering is among the very finest evocations of the magic Christmas can work.
In a nutshell, Adam Thornton (Ed Asner), estranged from his wife Kate (Maureen Stapleton) and their 4 children, finds just before Christmas that he is about to die from an incurable illness, and wants to clear up loose ends while he can. This sounds like a recipe for the most mawkish kind of tripe, but if there is anything truly miraculous about this film--and there is plenty that is wondrous--it's that the writers avoid such slush, and in a delicately understated but highly believable way at that. (And when I say "delicate," I do not mean "fragile.")
There are no ghosts here as such, but Thornton's wife and family serve as a nexus of past (wife and the family home), present (the children) and future (the grandkids), so it's not entirely without reason that Thornton at one point grumps "Add a bah,humbug and I'd sound just like Ebenezer Scrooge." This is a highly sublimated, and sublime, reshaping of the Scrooge theme even if it does lack the spectacular CGI that many Christmas films seem to feel they must inflict on us these days.
There are many pitfalls and the script adroitly avoids every one of them. On Christmas Eve, the abrasive elder Thornton son (Lawrence Pressman) divines the reason behind the reunion his parents are holding for their fragmented family. In less capable hands, the consequences of his realization that his father is dying could have made this film degenerate into pure crap, but the means the writers adopt to keep that from happening are as satisfying as they are visually dazzling. (Simply put, father and son are able to fashion a long-delayed celebration of their relationship thanks to an unusual gift to the elder Thornton from the doctor and longtime family friend who diagnosed his illness.) Next day, Thornton realizes that his son now knows the truth and his quiet acknowledgment is affectionate and fatherly, man to man without the least bit of sugar. And yet, that sequence can still bring tears. As astonishingly adept, and flawlessly acted, as it is profoundly moving.
The cast is superlative with nary a misstep. Asner and Stapleton move unerringly through the many nuances the script demands. The 2 elder children, Pressman and Gail Strickland, are the more antagonistic to their father, but (especially in Pressman's case) convincingly work their ways through and around their enmity. The younger girl (Rebecca Balding) skilfully balances her own matrimonial and money problems with devotion to her birth family. The reconciliation Adam most urgently desires is with his younger son Bud (Gregory Harrison), a draft dodger living in Canada. Bud's arrival (with a wife and baby whose existences are unknown to the family) is delayed by distance and again, could have dragged the film into pathos; but it's handled, and acted, with simple restraint and profound conviction.
Generally overlooked is John Barry's unobtrusive but finely evocative score, minimalist in concept and keyed to dramatic situations rather than personalities. Some of its repetitive motifs are only 3 notes long, but they will linger.
I withhold a full 10 points for 1 reason. Thornton is supposedly near death--he has maybe 90 days---but still can heft both grandchildren at once, and runs around a snow-filled back yard pulling the pair of them on a sled. Whether he's got cancer, an inoperable brain aneurysm or kidney failure, it doesn't quite add up. There are one or 2 minor goofs, oddly enough in the same scene. The elder daughter arrives outside the family home with a suitcase and brightly wrapped gifts. When Thornton embraces her she drops everything into the snow and, when they walk into the house a moment later, she's still empty-handed. In the same sequence, the family maid is seen in one shot carrying a tray of egg nog glasses, preceding Thornton and his daughter into the house; in the very next shot she appears again, still carrying the tray but now following them into the house.
I make do with a DVD bootlegged from the inferior VHS tape; as long as the film isn't released as a decent DVD, I figure it's every man for himself. I used to think The Gathering vanished from the airwaves because the mainspring of the plot is Adam's imminent death, which might be seen as unsuited to Christmas. But now I wonder if it isn't simply because the film is so wonderfully gentle and understated--lacking the overheated punch of, say, that ghastly musical Christmas Carol with Kelsey Grammar that was dumped on us a few years ago. You can have your punch and welcome to it, if that's what you like. I'll take The Gathering any time, thanks.
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