Silent Night. (15.)
Directed by Camille Griffin
Starring Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Roman Griffin Davis, Lucy Punch, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Sope Dirisu, Annabelle Wallis and Lily-Rose Depp. 90 mins
Silent Night has a lovely premise: a group of perfectly punchable middle-class brits (played by a cast of, what you may feel to be, perfectly punchable middle-class Brit actors) and their spawn, meeting up in a nice country house to celebrate Christmas; before dying in a world-ending catastrophe. The way it mimics the moves of a Richard Curtis rom-com – a group of racial and sexually diverse best friends who are exactly like each other gathering for a social occasion accompanied by cheesy music and jovially excessive swearing – just makes it that bit more adorable.
The first half of writer/director Griffin's debut is deftly done. The initial hints that this is not another normal Christmas are skillfully dropped and there's a casual cruelty to the way those who are new to the group (two girlfriends, Depp and Howell-Baptiste) are gently ostracised. The situation is certainly contrived - the world-ending cataclysm is too neat - but that we would try to carry on more or less as normal and refuse to truly accept that the train was bearing down on us even when it's about a metre away is just so believable. In the second half, this lighter touch gives way for something closer to a sledgehammer. The cataclysm is an environmental one and Knightley and Goode's eldest son, Jo Jo Rabbit himself Griffin Davis, assumes the position of moral compass, lecturing the grown-ups on their selfishness and stupidity.
Shifting the tone in a black comedy away from levity is a tricky operation and I think audiences will resent it. Particularly as this is a black comedy that covers some very, very dark territory; to avoid painful deaths the Government has issued the whole nation (except homeless and illegal immigrants) with suicide pills. I think it needs a lighter touch to get us through turning a British Christmas into Hitler's bunker. Or maybe humour is the wrong way to go about it. Comedies about the unthinkable were acceptable when it was still unthinkable; maybe now it is another way for us to distract ourselves. The film also seems to offer, presumably unwitting, support to the anti-vaxxers.
There is something though quite stirring in this portrait of the ghastly British middle classes stubbornly and instinctively remaining ghastly and middle class right up to the end. What a country we were.
Directed by Camille Griffin
Starring Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Roman Griffin Davis, Lucy Punch, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Sope Dirisu, Annabelle Wallis and Lily-Rose Depp. 90 mins
Silent Night has a lovely premise: a group of perfectly punchable middle-class brits (played by a cast of, what you may feel to be, perfectly punchable middle-class Brit actors) and their spawn, meeting up in a nice country house to celebrate Christmas; before dying in a world-ending catastrophe. The way it mimics the moves of a Richard Curtis rom-com – a group of racial and sexually diverse best friends who are exactly like each other gathering for a social occasion accompanied by cheesy music and jovially excessive swearing – just makes it that bit more adorable.
The first half of writer/director Griffin's debut is deftly done. The initial hints that this is not another normal Christmas are skillfully dropped and there's a casual cruelty to the way those who are new to the group (two girlfriends, Depp and Howell-Baptiste) are gently ostracised. The situation is certainly contrived - the world-ending cataclysm is too neat - but that we would try to carry on more or less as normal and refuse to truly accept that the train was bearing down on us even when it's about a metre away is just so believable. In the second half, this lighter touch gives way for something closer to a sledgehammer. The cataclysm is an environmental one and Knightley and Goode's eldest son, Jo Jo Rabbit himself Griffin Davis, assumes the position of moral compass, lecturing the grown-ups on their selfishness and stupidity.
Shifting the tone in a black comedy away from levity is a tricky operation and I think audiences will resent it. Particularly as this is a black comedy that covers some very, very dark territory; to avoid painful deaths the Government has issued the whole nation (except homeless and illegal immigrants) with suicide pills. I think it needs a lighter touch to get us through turning a British Christmas into Hitler's bunker. Or maybe humour is the wrong way to go about it. Comedies about the unthinkable were acceptable when it was still unthinkable; maybe now it is another way for us to distract ourselves. The film also seems to offer, presumably unwitting, support to the anti-vaxxers.
There is something though quite stirring in this portrait of the ghastly British middle classes stubbornly and instinctively remaining ghastly and middle class right up to the end. What a country we were.
