Two decades later, what did Love Actually and Elf have to say about 9/11?

Love Actually and Elf are two holiday classics that have been mainstays in Christmas movie marathons since their debuts in 2003.

20 years later, film critics Hanna Flint and Rad Simonpillai join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to dig into these beloved Christmas movies and how well they have or haven't aged — including, how each film tried to respond to the Sept. 11 attack which occurred just a couple years prior to their premieres.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast, on your favourite podcast player.

LISTEN | Today's episode on YouTube:

Elamin: Rad, how many times have you seen Love Actually?

Rad: I haven't seen it since it was in theaters 20 years ago.

Elamin: I cannot cope with the notion that you've not returned to Love Actually.

Rad: Why would I put myself through that again? I remember I watched it with my girlfriend then, my wife now, and even back then I hated it with a thousand fires.

Elamin: Tell me about that.

Rad: Well, going back to that time, bear in mind I was already kind of getting tired of the kaleidoscopic film, the omnibus film, whatever — the multiple threads kind of movies, which were trending.

Elamin: Yeah, the different narratives kind of meet.

Rad: Yeah, the kind of thing that Robert Altman mastered with Nashville and Short Cuts. And that was a real trend at that time — the early 2000s. Right? Especially because of Tarantino and Pulp Fiction, and then Snatch on the British side, they kind of created this taste for these multi-narrative movies, which then —

Elamin: You hate when stories collide. You're like, "That's bad. I don't love this."

Rad: No no, because it became a lazy crutch for filmmakers who had nothing to say: "If I don't have a story to tell, let me just take ten different stories and put them all into one." That's what I hated. But I did try to rewatch this movie again because of this conversation, and I totally forgot the way it responds to 9/11. Both this and Elf came out in 2003, so they obviously have their ways of responding to 9/11.

Elamin: The opening monologue of Love Actually…

Rad: The opening monologue!

Elamin: I have this speech memorized, I'm very happy to recite this for you Rad. But the speech is where Hugh Grant says, "As far as I can tell, no phone calls from the planes as they were going down in 9/11 were messages of hate. They were all messages of love." And you're like, pfft, I hate love.

Rad: No, no, no. I heard that speech as, "Whenever I'm down, and the plane and the towers get me down, I look at that arrival terminal and see all the people who made it to the terminal and that makes me feel good." I was like, oh my God, are you serious?

Elamin: That's a grim reading of that, I think.

Rad: It's basically like, "Let me slap 9/11 on the packaging of my 10-in-1 holiday bulk sale." That was grotesque.

Elamin: Hanna, do you read that speech the same way?

Hanna: Maybe now I do? I mean, it's not 25th Hour, you know?

Elamin: Hold on a minute, don't let Rad bring you to the other side! ... Rad, you were talking earlier about this idea of 9/11 being sort of the beginning point of Love Actually. You kind of see the same thing happening with Elf. What do you mean, that Elf is also a response to 9/11?

Rad: Well, I think the way it happens in Love Actually is so much more superficial, and it's a way for them to build relevance points for something that is not relevant at all. Totally irrelevant is the way I would describe it.

Elamin: Tell us how you really feel. Okay.

Rad: Yeah. But in terms of Elf, I think it's not as explicit. I think it's a matter of knowing that this movie was created in that moment, and kind of in its sentiment is responding to the mood in New York City. It is responding to this kind of cynical mood that has taken over in the aftermath of 9/11. You see little nuggets — the big American flag in the office building, Buddy the elf goes to reunite with his dad who works inside the Empire State Building. The fact that almost every New Yorker is either on the offense or the defense, and then in comes this elf who's just trying to cheer everyone up and make everyone kind of find hope again. The fact that the final scene has Santa's sleigh crashing in Central Park and once again, everyone is hovering around their television sets watching the development that's happening in New York where an aircraft has crashed into the city. It doesn't bang you over the head, but you feel it on a granular level that this movie was genuinely trying to bring people's spirits up after that event.

Elamin: I just can't believe you spoiled the end of Elf like that, but I appreciate that really valuable point you just brought up. I'm curious about movies that came out in 2003, movies that were shot in maybe 2002, and the way that they're trying to be in conversation with 9/11. That's a thing I'm going to go back and look for. 

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Jean Kim.