Klaus (2019) and the Warmth of Human Connection
What am I supposed to do, huh? Stay forever in this little town? Hanging out with an old woodsman? Surrounded by crazy people? Never wanting anything more?
Image: https://angelusnews.com/arts-culture/thankfully-klaus-is-not-just-another-secular-christmas-movie/
Netflix’s Klaus (2019) tells the story of a selfish rich boy Jesper who is shipped off to the isolated Smeerensberg as a postman. His only desire is to get the hell off this island where the locals are deadlocked in a centuries-long feud, and so convinces the children to write to the lonely old woodsman Klaus for a toy. However, what comes from it is a tale of deep and loving friendships.
Christmas isn’t about Jesus Christ nowadays, it’s not even about the presents. It’s about the connections that run so deep they generate warmth for the cold winter months. Whether it comes from family or friends, spending time with the ones you love and showing them that you care, is really what Christmas is about.
Christmas films seem to have lost this spirit in recent years; but not Klaus. At the beginning, Jesper has every material thing he could ever want but he is so awfully lonely. He and his father have a loving but strained relationship and he has no real friends. He has no ambition (flunking his classes at the Postal Academy on purpose to avoid responsibility) and no desire for real connections. That is until he reaches Smeerensburg. There he meets sarcastic ferryman Mogens, jaded schoolteacher Alva, the most adorable child ever Márgu and Klaus.
Image: https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/klaus-review-1203392809/
He approaches Klaus in order to trick him into helping serve his self-centred motives; if he can deliver 6000 letters, he’s free to leave. He convinces Klaus to give the children of Smeerensburg the toys that he has hidden away in his workshop in order to bring joy to their lives. However, this sets off a chain of events that changes the town forever; the children play together which, in turn, breaks down the boundaries between the warring families. The children decide to go to school in order to learn how to write letters, giving Alva hope that she had lost when she realised that the feud prevented the children from going to school together. Klaus ends up opening Jesper’s eyes to the beauty of human connection.
The villains of this story are the heads of the families Krum and Ellingboes who refuse to give into this. They want to keep the feud going as long as possible due to tradition and will do it by any means possible; even uniting against their common enemy, Jesper and Klaus. For the purposes of this story, they’re our Scrooges; the old relatives in the corner of every family reunion who seem to revel in the misery they inflict upon themselves. That basically sucks, though. If Halloween was the time for spooky stories and disguises, then Christmas is the time for all that bullshit pretence to be dropped and time to gather together and be with the people you love.
Klaus teaches us that the people you love don’t necessarily have to be blood either. They’re the people who can see through all that bullshit right into the heart of you and love it for all its nonsense. Klaus, our lonely woodsman, doesn’t know what the audience knows (that Jesper is selfish) but that doesn’t matter because he sees into the heart of him and knows there’s good there. Isn’t that something that everyone, deep down, wants? Someone who doesn’t see the worst of us but the best – especially at Christmas?
You can see Jesper’s true self slowly being revealed throughout the movie, it’s loving and sweet and, above all, warm. He’s still himself, just better. And by revealing his true self, he opens himself to the love that he turned away from in the past, gaining a pseudo-niece, the love of his life, a reconnection with his father and a lifelong best friend. This is Jesper’s story obviously but it’s also about the people around him, it’s about everyone he grows to love.
Image: https://www.polygon.com/2019/11/15/20966847/netflix-klaus-sergio-pablos-interview-despicable-me
Because as I’ve mentioned before, that is what rests at the heart of the Christmas spirit; the ability to love the people in your life so openly, as if love is in limitless supply because it is. In fact, that should be something that’s carried throughout the entire year. If you take anything from this article, it’s this; your love does not – and will never - run out, so what’s the harm in giving as much of it as you can to the people who you care about?
By Amandeep Paul.
(she/her)
IG: xx.amandeep
Amandeep is a TV. Film & Entertainment writer @ PARDON! read more about her on our TEAM! page.