At the end of World War II, Hannah, a nurse in a community hospital, believes her husband was killed in action during the Battle of the Bulge in 1944. During a snow storm, shortly before Christmas (1945), when a comet (Da Vico, one that returned every 71 years) is about to return, she finds a lost dog, and takes it to its grateful owners, and then runs her car into a snow bank. Unable to get home, she shelters in a wooden hut (unheated!). When she wakes the next morning, she finds she is now in a very a strange place. Viewers realise immediately that she has travelled into the future, with modern cars, and her 1945 streetscape totally changed. Naturally, somebody calls the police, and she is taken to the local police station because she is possibly suffering from amnesia, or is mentally ill, or is a confused criminal. When the policeman takes her to his own family, rather than leaving her in the police cell, or committing her to a mental hospital, his family are suspicious. Is she attempting some fraud based on identity theft? Has she bought her 1940s clothes at a local thrift store?
Surprisingly, nobody in the modern era thinks to google her name, or her husband's name, or do any practical research that could establish anything she claims about her life in 1945.
Just as surprisingly, the orphan in the hospital who was her favourite patient, is eventually discovered to be an old man who not only remembers her, but still has the old camera, and its undeveloped film, that she accidentally left with him on the evening she disappeared into the snow storm. He helps her connect with her hospital colleague, now a very old woman in a nursing home, who remembers the Christmas comet. There is also some story about the woman's car being found, crashed into the snow bank, with no trace of her.
As the helpful, but baffled policeman takes Hannah around the modern town, the time-travelling woman finds that her hospital building is now a library, and her apartment has become a health food shop selling gluten-free food, and she has never heard of gluten!
Repeatedly, the modern technology, and change in social values are only mildly bewildering for Hannah. But uncritical modern viewers will just be amused. (How would you explain on-line shopping, or googling to find information to a time-traveller?) Along the way, Hannah inspires a return to Christmas carolling in the streets. She also helps the town re-establish its public gazebo and Christmas lights. (Hannah had taken the key to the hospital's storage cupboard with her in her coat pocket when she disappeared into the future. Naturally this meant that nobody used a duplicate key, or called a locksmith. Hence the gazebo decorations and lights were lost, and nobody bought replacements.) There is also a nice connection between the lost dog, Ruffin, that she rescued in 1945, and the unpredictable consequence that the owners of the dog start a business-cum-charity raising golden retriever help-dogs. The business is still operating in 2016, in the same building, using the name "Ruffin", because of the original dog.
Importantly, Hannah's handbag, dropped inside the hut as she clambers through the window into the future, is discovered still inside the hut (with surprisingly little dust or cobwebs). Inside her handbag is a bottle of perfume. This is discovered to have been a popular brand that went out of production in the early 1960s. If Hannah had been scamming, and had bought an old bottle of the perfume in a thrift store, or on eBay, it would have gone bad. This is accepted, by the policeman, as the clinching evidence that Hannah is telling the truth about arriving from 1945: the perfume bottle has also been miraculously transported through time, and is as fresh as she is still young.
Eventually, Hannah considers her options. She could remain in a future she does not properly understand. Or she could try to "go home" to her past. She decides to attempt to return to her own time, by the obvious technique of spending the night in the same wooden shelter (still unheated) when the town is celebrating its restored gazebo lights and the return of the comet. (The comet simply whooshes through the sky, quite unrealistically. But this is a fictional comet, of course.) Back in 1945, Hannah wakes up in the morning, and finds that her husband is not dead, but, after being reported as Missing in Action, he has returned to her - without any official notification, telegram, or phone call. Nor is there any explanation of how google searches in 2016 found nothing about her life, after 1945, or her husband's life or military service records. She simply wakes up, steps out of the shelter, into the snow, finds her car, and suddenly her husband is there with her! She has returned to continue her marred life that google apparently knew nothing about in 2016.
The policeman, who might have become a romantic interest for the time-traveller, remains emotionally sympathetic but uninvolved, through all of Hannah's time with him in 2016. Equally, the time-traveller remains faithful to the memory of her (dead) husband. At the end of the story he takes the time-traveller's advice and connects romantically with his sister's best friend, who he has known from childhood, and happens to have become his policewoman colleague, and has been trying to catch his eye for almost forever.
The moral of the film is that the true meaning of Christmas is timeless. Or that a Christmas comet can make the miracle of time-travel happen - inexplicably! (Enjoy the story, the engaging cast, the almost-plausible details, and ignore the logical holes in the time-travel, and the underuse of modern Google to investigate lives in 1945.)
Surprisingly, nobody in the modern era thinks to google her name, or her husband's name, or do any practical research that could establish anything she claims about her life in 1945.
Just as surprisingly, the orphan in the hospital who was her favourite patient, is eventually discovered to be an old man who not only remembers her, but still has the old camera, and its undeveloped film, that she accidentally left with him on the evening she disappeared into the snow storm. He helps her connect with her hospital colleague, now a very old woman in a nursing home, who remembers the Christmas comet. There is also some story about the woman's car being found, crashed into the snow bank, with no trace of her.
As the helpful, but baffled policeman takes Hannah around the modern town, the time-travelling woman finds that her hospital building is now a library, and her apartment has become a health food shop selling gluten-free food, and she has never heard of gluten!
Repeatedly, the modern technology, and change in social values are only mildly bewildering for Hannah. But uncritical modern viewers will just be amused. (How would you explain on-line shopping, or googling to find information to a time-traveller?) Along the way, Hannah inspires a return to Christmas carolling in the streets. She also helps the town re-establish its public gazebo and Christmas lights. (Hannah had taken the key to the hospital's storage cupboard with her in her coat pocket when she disappeared into the future. Naturally this meant that nobody used a duplicate key, or called a locksmith. Hence the gazebo decorations and lights were lost, and nobody bought replacements.) There is also a nice connection between the lost dog, Ruffin, that she rescued in 1945, and the unpredictable consequence that the owners of the dog start a business-cum-charity raising golden retriever help-dogs. The business is still operating in 2016, in the same building, using the name "Ruffin", because of the original dog.
Importantly, Hannah's handbag, dropped inside the hut as she clambers through the window into the future, is discovered still inside the hut (with surprisingly little dust or cobwebs). Inside her handbag is a bottle of perfume. This is discovered to have been a popular brand that went out of production in the early 1960s. If Hannah had been scamming, and had bought an old bottle of the perfume in a thrift store, or on eBay, it would have gone bad. This is accepted, by the policeman, as the clinching evidence that Hannah is telling the truth about arriving from 1945: the perfume bottle has also been miraculously transported through time, and is as fresh as she is still young.
Eventually, Hannah considers her options. She could remain in a future she does not properly understand. Or she could try to "go home" to her past. She decides to attempt to return to her own time, by the obvious technique of spending the night in the same wooden shelter (still unheated) when the town is celebrating its restored gazebo lights and the return of the comet. (The comet simply whooshes through the sky, quite unrealistically. But this is a fictional comet, of course.) Back in 1945, Hannah wakes up in the morning, and finds that her husband is not dead, but, after being reported as Missing in Action, he has returned to her - without any official notification, telegram, or phone call. Nor is there any explanation of how google searches in 2016 found nothing about her life, after 1945, or her husband's life or military service records. She simply wakes up, steps out of the shelter, into the snow, finds her car, and suddenly her husband is there with her! She has returned to continue her marred life that google apparently knew nothing about in 2016.
The policeman, who might have become a romantic interest for the time-traveller, remains emotionally sympathetic but uninvolved, through all of Hannah's time with him in 2016. Equally, the time-traveller remains faithful to the memory of her (dead) husband. At the end of the story he takes the time-traveller's advice and connects romantically with his sister's best friend, who he has known from childhood, and happens to have become his policewoman colleague, and has been trying to catch his eye for almost forever.
The moral of the film is that the true meaning of Christmas is timeless. Or that a Christmas comet can make the miracle of time-travel happen - inexplicably! (Enjoy the story, the engaging cast, the almost-plausible details, and ignore the logical holes in the time-travel, and the underuse of modern Google to investigate lives in 1945.)
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