Directed by Victor Sjöström
TW: Talk of abuse, alcoholism, suicide, illness, death
You're a complicated man, David Holm.
It's New Years Eve, and two people lay dying, one will become this year's carriage driver, the other will be taken away.
This is the interesting mythology set up in the beginning of The Phantom Carriage. The last person to die before midnight of the new year must become the driver of the titular phantom carriage, performing a grim reaper role for the following year until a new person takes their role at the end. While time zones obviously present a complication to this, we're very much working in the world of folklore on this one, and while the film begins with some interesting shots of the carriage driving around the countryside, picking up accident victims, the carriage is actually fairly incidental to the plot.
The plot instead revolves around the two dying people. One of them, Sister Edit, is concerned for the welfare of the other, a man by the name of David Holm. After sending a colleague and friend to go asking around for him, she goes back to resting in anticipation of her death.
David Holm, for his part, is not exactly a well-off sort. Sister Edit's colleague finds Holm drunk with two friends in a cemetery. After telling Holm the situation, he refuses to come see Edit. Afterward, Holm's two fellow homeless friends begin to berate him for his choice. A fight breaks out and Holm is killed in the struggle.
Now here's where the movie kind of changes gears, and where its classification as a horror movie (on wikipedia and other websites) comes into question a bit. When Holm dies, he's approached by the driver of the phantom carriage, Georges (a former companion of David's), who tells him the situation. Holm is the last one to have died in the year and so he'll be the new driver of the carriage. Holm is then guided through a reflection by Georges as he's asked to remember how his life has come to this point.
We're then given an extended flashback which makes up the bulk of the film. David Holm was once a family man with a wife and two children who he seemed to love very deeply. Between edits, we're informed that he was led astray to alcoholism by Georges. After falling unconscious in front of his house one evening, David Holm awakens in jail. The policeman here is really pretty ridiculous in terms of his talking to Holm. He informs David that his brother has committed murder and that somehow this is David's fault for the two of them drinking the night before.
Now if this is where the film stayed, I could see David Holm as a sympathetic figure; in a sort of "one bad choice" kind of way. However, this is based on the previous characterization of Holm as a pretty alright guy only recently convinced to start drinking by Georges. Instead, when David is let out of jail he returns to his apartment to find it empty, his wife, Anna, having left with the children to get away from him. So, what does he do?
He vows vengeance against them. It's such a drastic change in tone and it's like David Holm just dedicates himself to being the most awful person he can from there on out. He is driven into poverty over his country-wide search for Anna and one New Year's Eve, he arrives at a Salvation Army shelter that's just been opened by Sister Edit. Sister Edit is such a bundle of goodness, just happy to do her job for a person in need of help. She gladly lets David stay the night, taking his coat to mend overnight as he rests.
The next morning, David is awoken by another worker in the shelter and is given a breakfast and his newly mended coat. Impressed by the mending, he asks to meet Sister Edit. Upon her arrival, smiling and all anticipation, he rips the jacket apart in front of her, undoing all of her work just to be a jackass. Sister Edit, cinnamon roll that she is, asks him to please return in one year's time on the next New Year's Eve, as she had prayed that their first visitor would find good fortune over the next year. He agrees, seeming to relish the thought of breaking her faith.
Real pleasant guy.
Georges then tells David that he's going to make him fulfill his promise. After working some ghosty-magic, he binds David and takes him to Sister Edit's side. Edit cannot see David, but sees Georges, begging him not to take her before David comes to visit her. David seems to be distraught over her situation, and we're given another flashback.
Over the next year following David's original visit to the shelter, Sister Edit runs into David Holm a few times and despite the fact that she has now contracted tuberculosis from the bacteria on his coat, she is still insistent that he try to better himself. Holm, for his part, grows more and more monstrous as if to spite her. He shows up at a Salvation Army meeting and begins coughing on people, hoping to spread his sickness further.
Just as it happens, Anna is at that Salvation Army event, and approaches Sister Edit about David afterward. Edit is insistent that the two reconcile and manages to arrange a meeting between the two (would not have advised that at this point).
David and Anna reunite and David is surprisingly not a total dick about the situation. The two seem to reconcile and decide to give it another shot. However, we see that a few weeks later David's reverted to his old ways and is now even NOT CONCERNED ABOUT INFECTING HIS CHILDREN WITH TUBERCULOSIS. When Anna asks that he not, he coughs on them directly. Anna manages to lock him in the kitchen of their house as she tries to take the children and leave. David, realizing that he's locked in, reveals the fact that he was an inspiration for Stanley Kubrick's version of Jack Torrance and begins axing the door to pieces. Anna faints before she can get away with the children and David escapes and tries to get his wife awake.
We come back to Edit, who BLAMES HERSELF FOR DAVID'S DEEDS BECAUSE SHE BROUGHT THE COUPLE BACK TOGETHER. David manages to get Edit to see him, showing that he is moved by her admission of guilt and she dies in peace. Georges tells David that she won't be coming with, she'll have a different emissary coming for her, and he and David leave as they have one more errand that night before David is to take over the job.
They arrive at David's house, where he finds that his wife, afraid for their children's welfare due to the fact that she is also dying of consumption, is planning to poison both the children and herself. David, horrified by this, asks Georges to intervene, but Georges tells him that he has no control over the living. After pleading, David suddenly regains consciousness in the cemetery, running home to stop Anna from committing suicide. He arrives and manages to stop her, the two embrace as David mutters a prayer, promising to reform.
This film is complicated for me. On the one hand it is a beautiful film - wonderfully edited, orchestrated, and shot. The concept of the carriage itself is an interesting one, and Sister Edit is a bundle of goodness. But goddamn David Holm is just not a sympathetic character. He may've been at one point, but his actions across the course of the film paint him as a repulsive man who maliciously attempted to make everyone else's life as miserable as he could. I mean, I'm all for film's featuring bleak characters, but I'm a bit more conflicted about this film's presentation of Holm as a tragic character with hope for redemption at the end. While maybe he can reform, his actions seem to paint the picture of a really horrible person over the course of the film, and maybe the film is a bit more like Sister Edit in terms of its certainty that he can reform, but I'm a bit skeptical.
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