Thanksgiving creates the ideal opportunity to explore complicated family dynamics in film. The holiday takes people with complicated relationships and histories and crams them into an uncomfortable setting where they don’t want to be. Whereas Christmas at least offers distractions from direct conversation in the way of gifts and carols, the cornerstone of Thanksgiving is sitting around a table to eat and speaking directly with family. It’s the perfect recipe for drama.
The following films take place on or around Thanksgiving and use the holiday as a way to explore the intricate relationships between families. Some of them end in tragedy. Some of them end in hope. But they all have turkey and pumpkin pie.
No, this isn’t I’ll Be Home for Christmas with Jonathan Taylor Thomas. Home for the Holidays is directed by Jodie Foster and features some big names in its ensemble cast including Holly Hunter, Robert Downey Jr., Anne Bancroft, Claire Danes, and Steve Guttenberg. Just before heading home for Thanksgiving, Claudia finds out she’s fired from her job and her daughter is going to spend Thanksgiving with her boyfriend. All on her lonesome, Claudia is off to spend a few days with her overbearing parents, closeted brother, judgmental sister, and seemingly crazy aunt.
Home for the Holidays is a relatable Thanksgiving slice-of-life. Everyone watching the film has been to a Thanksgiving like this, has family members like this, and has had conversations like the ones on-screen. The film pays close attention to its characters and how they relate to one another. Claudia loves her family but really struggles to make it through the weekend. That’s a little funny and a little sad, which makes it a lot like real life.
Pieces of April stars Katie Holmes as April Burns. As a troubled teen, she lost touch with most of her family. She now lives in New York City with her boyfriend, Bobby. In an attempt to reconnect with her family, she invites them to her shabby apartment and offers to host Thanksgiving dinner. To complicate matters further, she has an extremely tumultuous relationship with her mother who is dying from cancer and probably won’t make it to another Thanksgiving.
The story is split into three concurrent plotlines that join together at the end. The first is April attempting to cook her turkey after the oven breaks at her apartment. The second involves April’s family making the long car ride to New York City on Thanksgiving Day. The third is April’s boyfriend running a mysterious errand. The film does a fantastic job of mixing humor, such as April going apartment-to-apartment in an attempt to find an unoccupied oven on Turkey Day, with the more poignant scenes dealing with the estrangement of her family and her mother’s imminent death. Family is family, for better or for worse.
The Ice Storm is directed by Ang Lee and is based on the Rick Moody book of the same name. Much like Home for the Holidays, it features a star-studded ensemble cast (Tobey Maguire, Kevin Kline, Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood, Katie Holmes, and Sigourney Weaver, just to name a few) and takes place over Thanksgiving weekend. Set in the suburbs of New Canaan, Connecticut in 1973, the film follows two families as they attempt to find happiness in things that end up leaving them feeling even more miserable.
Teenagers experiment with sex, drugs, and booze while adults try shoplifting, adultery, and key parties on for size. Much to no one’s satisfaction. In the background of all the personal and family drama, news clips of Nixon and Watergate are shown on the TV. The Ice Storm uses these families to explore the changing cultural landscape of the early ‘70s. Without moderation, it’s easy to overindulge. This is true for turkey, whipped cream, and all other manner of sins.
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