Silent Nights

Silent Nights (2016)

*** (out of 4)

A Salvation Army worker finds herself falling in love with a refugee from Ghana even though it means her relationship with her mother might fall apart. Soon as her love begins to blossom she learns a secret about him.

SILENT NIGHTS comes from Denmark and for the most part it's a nice film that contains some very good performances. With that said, there's no question that the message it's trying to give is quite mixed to say the least. The film is about refugees who come to a new country in hopes of making money for their families and we deal with that subject as well as some of the abuse they receive. The film certainly wants to preach about how people should be helped yet the refugee here does some questionable things to where it's somewhat hard to fully like him. With that said, the film is good for what it is and the two lead performances make up for any flaws in the story.

I love short movies, and have an annual tradition of watching every short nominated for the Oscars each year. However, this entry was so bad, it has got me wondering if the time has come to stop. Because this film is so abysmally dreadful, that it's painfully obvious the award has absolutely nothing to do with quality any more.

I won't go into much detail about the hamfisted way the filmmakers tries to jam their message down the viewers throat, as other reviewers have written more than enough about that.

But even if you were to take all the clunky propaganda out of the story, and focus instead on the actual filmmaking, you'd still be left with absolutely atrocious craftsmanship. The acting is bad, the directing is bad, the editing is bad and the soundtrack is bad.

But worst of all, is the screen writing. I mean, COME ON! How is it possible to write such drivel, and not have anyone punch you in the face? The only explanation I can think of, is if the screenwriter is five years old. And indeed, there are many scenes in the film which support that theory, most notably when a grown woman brings a grown man home to her apartment, and actually starts running around a Christmas tree singing children's songs! WTF? It felt like it was supposed to be a remake of the Tom Hanks movie Big (1988), where a kid has his body transformed into an adult, but still has the mind of a child. And as fun as that might have been, I'm pretty sure this was not the filmmakers' intention.

Rather, it's just a political piece about a subject which people are so terrified to debate, that they will celebrate an excruciatingly bad film in fear of what someone might say of them if they dared point out what utter trash it is. YUCK!

This film is about a woman who volunteers with the local Salvation Army shelter as well as a man she meets there who is a refugee from Ghana. Although she feels sorry for the guy, she unwisely falls in love with him despite many warning signs that he is not the best boyfriend material. Little does she know that he's also already married and has three children!

This film is 'Oscar bait', as the subject is homelessness and refugees in Europe and it has a reasonable chance to win. However, I found the story and its message to be muddled. In some ways, your heart really goes out to the guy…but he repeatedly also behaves terribly. And, the lady also believes quite foolishly and it makes it more difficult to care about either of them. So viewers might (like me) think that the moral of the story is confusing. Additionally, there are some adult elements that make this one you don't show your kids. I especially disliked seeing the leading lady cleaning up after her mother defecated on herself and felt this scene could have been handled a lot better and not so vividly. Call me crazy, but I don't like seeing images of old drunk ladies crapping themselves.

By the way, this film, despite being Danish, most of the dialog is in English—the only one of the five nominees in English. This is very unusual as most years several of the nominees are American short films.

If you lived during oppressive regime like a soviet block was, you would recognize propaganda movie on 1000 yards. On our equivalent site of movie ratings this has 20%, here its just voted up by blind liberals etc. It is a bad film with bad story and obviously its main goal is political agitation. In the end it completely backfires because people are getting fed up of this.

There are lots of conflicting messages here: first of all, exceptions don't make the rule. Secondly, the political message of the movie, very left-wing, almost increasing insanity to vote for their party. That is just plain sad. Finally, as movie the thing is fine but only if you'd recognize that romantic movies are just plain nonsense; unless you'd want values to disappear in the West. Altogether, this movie is either so good it is bad or so bad it is good.