Thanksgiving doesn’t have the biggest reputation among major American holidays. This time of year is often most notorious for conflicting family conversations, and marketers tend to take it coldly. It’s not that other big holidays are perfect or impossible to have a good Thanksgiving. But Thanksgiving doesn’t have any of the joys of Christmas or fun Halloween parties to make up for its shortcomings. It’s hard to get away from how often this holiday is known more than anything for screaming matches and burnt turkeys. Perhaps that is why Hollywood often avoids making films dedicated to this holiday. Peopledrama 2021 director Stephen Karammakes it clear that there’s a lot of cinematic potential to be extracted from Thanksgiving-specific horror.
What is “People”?
An adaptation of Karam’s award-winning play of the same name. People chronicles the Blake family as they gather in the cramped New York apartment that Bridget Blake rents (Beanie Feldstein) and her partner Richard (Stephen Youn). Eric’s parents are present at the event (Richard Jenkins) and Deirdre Blake (Jane Hoodishell), as well as Eric’s sister, Amy (Amy Schumer), and decrepit grandmother Momo (June Squibb). From the outset, people make passive-aggressive comments about each other, with simmering tensions simmering beneath the surface of most interactions between family members. It only gets worse the longer the day goes on.
It is not difficult to understand why many chose not to see People when he first debuted last year. On a practical level, its release has fallen out of the sight of even the most dedicated movie fans, as A24 decided to release it on Showtime on Thanksgiving Day 2021, along with a small number of theatrical productions. But even if it played in hundreds of theaters across the country, it’s unlikely that audiences would rush to watch it. It’s a dark film that aims to put viewers in an uncomfortable position and unflinchingly tells the story of a family held together by scotch tape. The same stuff that makes People however, less sought after by the general public, it’s also what ensures it’s such a perfect Thanksgiving movie.
How ‘The People’ Captured the Awkwardness of Thanksgiving
People perfectly captures the awkward and contentious atmosphere of a typical Thanksgiving gathering. Karam’s dialogue is so adept at writing human dialogue, rife with subtle undertones of condescension and accusation, punctuated by occasional outbursts of open antagonism (namely, Brigitte’s repeated comments about her mom’s weight). Meeting relatives for the first time in almost a year is often a chance to open old wounds and rekindle old rivalries. Karam’s letter accurately paints a vivid picture of how this antagonism manifests itself in large and small forms over the course of a typical Thanksgiving.
Not only in the dialogues Karam captures the controversial atmosphere associated with this holiday. visual style People also perfectly captures the key aspects of this holiday, which is especially impressive since many adaptations of plays often use standard camerawork that does not require additional thought. However, Karam avoids this convention by filling People with a reserved and icy style of cinematography that often prefers to shoot the film’s protagonists in wide shots taken from afar. The audience often stays at arm’s length from these characters, just as members of the Blake family emotionally distance themselves from each other.
This patient journey with camerawork has the added bonus of highlighting the awkwardness we all felt during Thanksgiving dinner. In editing, there is rarely a quick cut. Nick Howey provide the viewer with an opportunity to avoid exposure to harmful words or phrases exchanged between loved ones. We are locked in a room and must take the full force of each blow. It was a bold risk for Karam to forego flashy cinematography for such a dialogue-heavy film, but in doing so, he managed to establish that this film could perfectly capture the challenging Thanksgiving atmosphere.
Nearly all of these visuals are captured in the cramped interior space that Bridget and Richard now call home. Even with his penchant for long shots, Karam still makes the claustrophobia of this environment palpably obvious to the viewer. In this place, there never seems to be enough space in any room, and even the corridors outside the apartment are cramped rather than cozy. This is an important part of why People works just as well as a Thanksgiving movie, as this visual reinforces the feeling that these people are trapped with each other for the day.
Many traditional Thanksgiving movies usually take place in upper/middle class residences that offer spacious backdrops for family strife. Even when things get incredibly contentious, there’s usually a huge backyard or an equally large guest room where both characters and audience can find solace. Nancy Meyers can be a joy, but it’s not ideal for every story. Per Peoplesetting the action in an apartment where you can practically feel the walls closing in on you ensures that tension between family members is very strong and inevitable.
The Emotional Difficulties of Thanksgiving in “People”
People doesn’t paint a better picture of families or Thanksgiving. This is understandable given how stressful both of these elements can be. But there’s a reason many of us still get together with blood relatives on one Thursday every November. While some families are undeniably too toxic to stay around, for many people families are something you cannot live without, just as you cannot live with them. People learns this in the final episode depicting Eric trying to fix the power outage in the apartment. Convinced that he can fix it himself, he ventures into a dark void where the entire screen is swallowed up by an endless black sea. As he tries to navigate this dark realm, Eric is overcome with grief. Luckily, Brigid eventually enters his apartment, finds his father, and the duo leaves the house together.
For most of its runtime People became the perfect Thanksgiving movie for its unwavering approach to unspeakably awkward social interactions. But this final episode reinforces its status as a typical Thanksgiving movie, reminding viewers that we still need our family. No one travels this world alone, it just leaves us, like Erica, in a darkened apartment: heartbroken and not sure where to go next. Whether it be blood relatives or found family, we need the people closest to us to understand a world that is often incomprehensible.
Thanksgiving can be a time for incredibly embarrassing political digressions from that uncle or scathing criticism of your physique from your cousin, but it can also be a time to appreciate the people in your life who make the darkness of life more bearable. It’s unimaginable that they could coexist with the more toxic parts of Thanksgiving, but in many cases they do. Accepting this complexity, with such nuances perfectly handled by a superb cast, is one of the many reasons People talks about this turkey holiday with much more success than the usual Thanksgiving movie.
Source: Collider
