Very spoilery. Venture in at your own risk, once you’ve paused to put out the recycling. (My review is here.)
The theme
Despite Silent Night‘s COVID similarities, this is about climate change. It’s just that (a) humans have a penchant for looking for patterns and connections with our real lives, and (b) by now one cataclysm starts to look very much like another in how we respond to it.
The focus is on Art, and a big part of writer-director Camille Griffin’s film is the burden we are leaving for the next generation. There’s an expectation that the young can sort everything out, tied up in the praise we lavish on them for their willingness to put action before words — while we* still, like Sandra and Nell, point out to them that it wasn’t really our fault. Silent Night also examines privilege, how it helped get us here and how this issue is so big that eventually even wealth won’t save your life, unless you really are the super rich (or a pet owned by the super rich — the Queen is assumed to be in her bunker with her dog food). It might, though, get you a better death.
*a general we rather than a specific we, I would hope of my readers.
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The ending
This burden on the young is really brought home in the very last scene, when the camera rolls over beds of bodies in the big house, family snuggled together who all took their pills. Only there is one (at least one) survivor: Art.
The boy wakes up surrounded by his dead mum, dad and brothers. He is literally left to deal with the complete mess of the older generations.
So why is Art still alive? First of all, he never took his suicide pill, because his mother Nell assumed he was already dead. Earlier, he ran off into the night and discovered a car with a family of four in it, all dead: mum, dad, baby and toddler. There were suicide pill packets opened on the dashboard, but also the first wisps of toxic gas drifting around the car. While it seems clear that the family succumbed to the pills not the cloud (they hadn’t haemorrhaged, once of the final signs before death) Art is exposed to the first tendrils of the killer cloud. His parents rush him back into the house, and Nell holds him on their bed as Simon dashes around trying to get cokes with the right level of coldness for the twins to take their pills. When she looks at Art, his head drops back and is revealed to be covered in blood. He has haemorraged, and looks dead, but isn’t.
Maybe outside Art received just the right amount to activate his immune system to fight against the bigger dose he’d receive from the big cloud when it arrived? Maybe he was somehow already immune? Maybe the cloud was losing toxicity as it rolled on? Maybe it targets the old rather than the young (where young = innocence)? Perhaps Art was right to question the scientists and the accuracy of their predictions? (I like to think of the teacher Art mentions in an anecdote, who had to apologise to a classmate for getting something wrong — perhaps he then got a job in government.)
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The friends
Let us reverse to the night before. As agreed previously, the family groups go off to their own rooms to die with their loved ones. Throughout the film, any deviation from the party line is slapped down (though whispers continue); their solid pact to take their pills in the same house is only solid when they all agree. The weak links are two of the outsiders: Sophie and Art, who question agreed decisions. (Art may be part of the family but he has the status of the outsider. On one of the film’s publicity stills, everyone, including the children, are dressed up to the nines — except Art in his jeans.) By the end, Sophie is forced to accept the party line.
Alex has been asleep in a chair after too much champagne. Her partner Bella tries to get her to take her suicide pill but she vomits it up, and there are no spares. Bella is terrified of the death awaiting Alex if she doesn’t take her pill, so persuades her to spend their last five minutes dancing in the kitchen. Bella then stabs her with a kitchen knife. As Alex lies dying on the floor, Bella lies next to her, having taken her own pill, waiting to die.
Tony and Sandra lie down on their bed with their daughter Kitty between them. Throughout the film, the needy Sandra has been desperate for affection from Kitty. They take their pills, but Kitty realises she hasn’t got her Kitty doll, a Christmas present from her father. She goes off to retrieve the doll, but when she comes back her parents are dead. She lies down between them, her doll saying “I love you Daddy”, while Kitty finally cuddles her mother.
James and Sophie are in their room, and James tells Sophie that if she refuses to take her pill he can’t either, as he won’t leave her to suffer alone. We see them take their pills then kiss.
Simon and Nell are with their children in one bedroom waiting to take their pills. But the twins object to sharing a can of coke to wash them down with, then declare the coke too warm. Eventually, individual cans and ice are provided by an increasingly frantic Simon, rushing up and down to the kitchen, and the twins and parents swallow their pills. Nell has been cuddling the catatonic Art in her arms in the bed. They assume he’s sleeping but when they try to take him to take his pill, see his blood-covered face and think he’s already dead.
The cloud rolls in, then the next morning Art suddenly opens his eyes. Is he the only one left?
There are other questions too. What of everyone’s parents? We see Nell’s mum, and find out in their final video call to her that she owns the grand white country house the families are staying in, yet she’s decided not to be with them. Presumably some of the characters have living parents. They seem to hover out of sight, each older generation ghosts of Christmases past, before we had to worry about global warming.
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The house
Its solid walls and the old money that bought them can’t, for once, save its inhabitants. Nell explains to Art at one point that the toxic gases would always find their way into the house and kill them.
We barely venture outside, with everyone holed up indoors. It’s a metaphor for society (particularly its wealthiest strata), as its inhabitants try to retreat into their wealth, only slightly acknowledging what is happening as they drink and dance, and declare it wasn’t their fault. When Art runs off and Nell and Simon are forced to follow their son further into the dangerous outdoors, and they come across the car containing the dead family, it makes them face the reality of what is happening.
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The rich!
Attitudes to climate change among those most responsible are highlighted through metaphors through the film, with Art (and to a lesser extent the other children) forcing the adults to unwillingly face up to what is happening.
There is talk but no action (Simon merely pays lip service to the cruelty of leaving illegal migrants and homeless people without the minor relief of suicide pills); walls of silence (in the film, retreating to the country house); and deflection (Nell and Sandra absolving themselves of blame to their own children). In reality, climate change is still often presented as something ordinary people should solve by recycling, and cancelling their one overseas holiday, rather than as a situation primarily driven by business and industry. Yet it is the very rich who not only tend to own the means of production which have contributed most to climate change, but also personally use more resources.
Okay, I’m off to order a hazmat suit (recyclable, obviously). Merry Christmas!
Silent Night is in cinemas and available on download now.