IMDb listing
Filmweb.pl listing*
Silent Night (orig. Cicha Noc) [2017] [IMdb] [FW.pl]*(directed and screenplay cowritten by Piotr Domalewski [IMDb] [FW.pl]* along with Helena Szoda-Wozniak [IMDb]), which swept last year's Polish Eagle (Poland's equivalent of the Oscars) Awards and played here recently at the 2018 Polish Film Festival in Los Angeles, tells a contemporary immigration story that almost all immigrant families could relate to.
The film begins with Adam (played wonderfully with a mix of still wide-eyed youthfulness and appropriate not completely upfront shiftiness by Dawid Ogrodnik [IMDb] [FW.pl]*) on the bus, near the end of his 20 hour ride from Holland, on his way home to rural Poland for Christmas. At the last larger provincial town before arriving at his parents' family's farm/stead somewhere in the lovely, if, it's December after all, now largely frozen Polish countryside, he gets off the bus and ... rents a car, a big one, to, of course, impress his parents when he arrives. He's of course video recording everything along the way because ... (1) that's what young people do nowadays ;-), capturing everything that they're doing and (2) he's gotten word from his wife / girl-friend (unclear) but in any case "significant other" Asia (largely off screen but played briefly by Milena Staszuk [IMDb]) that she was expecting and so ... talking to the picture of the ultrasound that she had sent him, Adam wanted his new child to see what he was doing to prepare for his/her arrival.
He arrives with the big (rented) car. The parents (ma' played by Agnieszka Suchora [IMDb] [FW.pl]*, pa' played by Arkadiusz Jakubik [IMDb] [FW.pl]* ask, "is this your ride nowadays," he responds "tak (yes)." They shrug. It's _almost as big_ as some other neighbor son's car that they saw a number of weeks back ;-). "Welcome home son... BTW why has it taken you so long to come back to visit us again?" ;-)
Well, Adam isn't coming home altruistically, he has "a plan." He's gotten it into his head that "if the family just sold grandpa's house" and _gave him the money_, he could "start a business" out there in Holland and "when it started paying money" he'd pay everybody back. ;-). Besides, he's "becoming a father" he's _trying to be_ "responsible." What could go wrong? ;-)
Well, the first problem is that ... grandpa , ever drunk though he may be and with a touch of the cancer (played gleefully in ever-smiling clueless fashion by Paweł Nowisz [IMDb] [FW.pl]*) _isn't dead_ yet ;-). Secondly, Adam's younger brother Paweł (played by Tomasz Ziętek [IMDb] [FW.pl]*), with whom Adam never got along, had his own plans for dying, but still not dead, amiable grandpa's house: He was going to use it to setup a barber shop inside (yes, out there in the placid Polish countryside, where next to no one would come by... ;-). Pa' who like Adam, spent much of his adult life "working abroad" sympathizes, somewhat, with Adam's plan but tells him: Convince Paweł and your older (and married...) sister Jolka (Maria Dębska [IMDb] [FW.pl]*) that your plan's a good one and I won't stand in your way. Jolka's husband Jacek (played Mateusz Więcławek [IMDb] [FW.pl]*) pointing to the impressive wedding ring on his finger, of course, has "a few things to say..."
Amusingly, there's younger 12-13 y.o. sister named Kasia (played with wonderful not really knowing what's going on innocence by Amelia Tyszkiewicz [IMDb] [FW.pl]*) who like grandpa "doesn't really matter" here. The expression of pa' for whom Kasia was "the apple of his eye" when Kasia picks-up the violin to begin playing "Silent Night" (it's all playing out during Christmas after-all) and then ... as she continues ... is absolutely priceless ;-).
Ma' for her part is frustrated in her role of (once again) managing the needs / egos of all these men -- her husband, her two sons, her daughter's husband and even "grandpa" (her father or father-in-law, unclear, though it _is_ clear that she's ultimately "the caregiver" there) -- all of whom she clearly seems to understand, at the end of the day, to be losers anyway. She appeared to be _not_ particularly happy to see Adam "drop in" from Holland for Christmas. His unexpected visit seemed to simply add (and as far as she could see, _unpredictably_) to her burdens of cooking for and then getting through the family's Christmas Eve (oplatkis and all).
There are some fun twists in the story. And as I wrote at the beginning of my review here, pretty much EVERY IMMIGRANT FAMILY could relate to its characters.
As Tiny Tim ends Dickens' Christmas Carol: "God bless them, everyone." They / we certainly need it ;-)
* Foreign language webpages are most easily translated using Google's Chrome Browser.
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