Home By Christmas

Homegrown talent Martin Henderson plays ‘young’ Ed and manages to strike the balance between mischievous adventurer and well-intentioned family man, in Home by Christmas, a remarkable new film by NZ director Gaylene Preston…

This remarkable film by NZ director Gaylene Preston weaves a personal tale of family history combined with the horrors of World War Two into a cinematic memoir nothing short of phenomenal.

Wearing three sizeable hats as writer, producer and director of the film, Preston certainly had no small personal investment in the project as a whole.

The story follows her parents’ tumultuous early years of marriage, after her father on a whim enlisted in the army on his way home one day in 1940, lured by the carrot of retiring young with an army rehabilitation loan. Retorting to his baffled, pregnant young wife that he would be ‘home by Christmas’, neither evidently had any idea of the journey they were about to embark on.

The story alternates between interviews between Preston and her father Ed (played to convincing perfection by Tony Barry) and flashbacks to a wartorn 1940s. In an interesting twist, Preston’s real-life daughter Chelsie Preston Crayford is cast as her own grandmother Tui in the film – bringing to the table a hauntingly authentic portrayal of what was no doubt the lonely reality many wives and mothers at the time were faced with.

Homegrown talent Martin Henderson plays ‘young’ Ed and manages to strike the balance between mischievous adventurer and well-intentioned family man. After Ed leaves, Tui is left to raise their son who is born after Ed is taken as a prisoner of war in Italy where he spends the majority of time he is away from his home of Greymouth.

When Ed is declared missing, Tui is faced with the prospect of a future of single motherhood – which shifts with the scandalous introduction of another man into her life in Ed’s absence. When Ed returns the couple face the task of patching back together a marriage which has been on hold for four years, and for Ed, meeting his toddler son who views him as a stranger.

“A unique blend of fact and fiction that reflects the secret loves and enduring spirit of a generation,” Home By Christmas is a beautifully shot, realistically told, and – thanks to the heavy usage of archived war footage – almost painfully realistic view of the lives and loves of a New Zealand family interrupted by international conflict.

This film is sure to be an important fixture on the landscape of New Zealand filmmaking over the years to come and is a must-see for Kiwis everywhere. Preston’s dedication to recording for posterity her family’s story indelibly onto film is our good fortune – and I for one will be recommending it wherever I go. A moving story told to stunning result.

By Jaimee Abict, April 2010