Little Moment, Big Meaning: 1 - Arthur Christmas

This is a new series of articles I'm doing where I pick a relatively small moment from a movie that I think has a great meaning in the movie, at least to me. The moment in question could be a little thing the actor did, a lighting decision, something in the background, anything. This could be a moment that speaks volumes about a character, the story, the themes, anything like that. With that said, since it's still the Christmas season, and this was the film with the moment that inspired this article series, Arthur Christmas (2011, dir. Sarah Smith).

As some of you know I've already done a review of this film, which you can read here, and I'm sure some of you are wanting me to cover a different Christmas film, but I noticed something about the film when I made this picture the cover photo for my personal Facebook page,

This scene takes place in the office of the eponymous Arthur (James McAvoy). Which is much more cramped and modest when compared to the main control room and sled that are occupied by Arthur's older brother Steve (Hugh Laurie) and his dad Santa (Jim Broadbent).

These large and high tech bases are obviously more modern and are of grander scale. But one difference I noticed about Arthur's office and the other offices is that pretty much everyone is working through their computers, while Arthur isn't. Obviously Arthur has a computer on his desk and given that his job is writing return letters to children who wrote to Santa you'd think he'd use it to make his job I tiny bit easier, but instead he decides to hand write each letter.

To me this can represent the characters of Arthur and Steve very well. While Steve does the deliveries in a quick and time efficient way it's all rather impersonal. While Arthur is taking his time and hand writing each letter to the child, knowing that it would mean the world to hear back from them, and making it a hand written letter can mean so much more than just printing out a form and just filling in the blanks. Which is something that Steve pretty much does later one when he decides to deliver the missed child their gift, though it turns out to be the wrong child. 

He doesn't even notice it's the wrong child until after he's done reading his dull and impersonal statement letter. 

In the end, even though Arthur is clumsy and makes mistakes, we see how he is clear fit for the position of Santa because he wants to take the time and make it special to each child. While Steve, who is technically more competent and organized, is just a guy who does stuff by the books and thinks about the numbers and not who those numbers are. 

It's stuff like this that really do add a lot to a film.

What do you guys think of this series? Want to see more of this? 

If so let me know in the comments and feel free to mention movies that have great little moments like this. 

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Thanks for reading.