A dramatic family piece surrounding a Christmas table where things are bound to slip up with sub-par sound design.
Sure, let’s just stick a bunch of people who secretly despise each other around a table to chit-chat, keeping up a façade of amicability and maintaining the illusion of a perfect Christmas, that definitely won’t turn disastrous. We do this every Christmas, and we never learn, like stuffing a group of starved cannibals into a room together and watching them having at each other… alright maybe this metaphor is a trifle too far, but you get the idea, I’ve got to shoot a further target so you can see what I’ve missed.
And of course, not every family is so, and to them I envy and commend you, so for your express enjoyment, here is a film exactly about such spirals into aggression and loathing that take place around the dinner table on December 25th (24th as is the case in Poland). Cicha Noc (2017), Silent Night, plunged me into a household where the air is thick with passive aggression, furtive odd glances behind with the fires of vituperation burn, off-handed remarks hurled between characters as they express in the most puzzling ways their reluctance at allowing the focal character to sell their grandfathers house. His intentions of selling the house are sound and actually very smart but as the family come to grips with the fact that he’s leaving for good, they scramble to stop him leaving the nest. Atavistic family values are poisoning this bunch, holding them back and trapped in a land where they’ll only drive each other mad. As the vodka begins to flow like water down some characters throats, naturally, matters exacerbate themselves and it’s hilarious to witness.
Stylistically, the film isn’t all that, I wasn’t blown out of my skin by the adroitness of the camerawork, apart from some rather wonderful frames within frames and the penultimate image of their Christmas on fire. The colour palette doesn’t adventure outside of the pale blues and greys, for good reason as this isn’t a cheery Christmas at all and certainly not silent. I found the acting convincing and was engaged enough with the characters to take on their indignation towards one slight or another. The sound is where my troubles start (and end really), the diegetic sound is less sound and more vibrations funnelled through a knitted sweater, where natural ambient sounds were as exuberant as the dialogue which for me steamrolled the depth of the soundscape.
So, as the passive aggression turns to ugly violence, betrayals and abuse are unveiled, this family is torn apart and resemble bloodied tinsel. The youngest daughter serves almost as a stand-in for the audience where she’s the most disconnected from all the bad noise that resonates throughout the house, and her violin rendition of Silent Night summarises within a few discordant screeching notes the state of their Christmas.
As the tintinnabulations of the bells fade away, the dust settles and the wails die down, I say this is a wonderful little character piece about dysfunctional Christmases and people who really shouldn’t be within each other’s orbit at all. With Christmas just around the corner from me writing this, I hold my breath for what end of the gauge this Christmas will be on, craziness of calmness.
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