No one should die alone. The second film by Dane Christian E. Christiansen “A Night” was made in 2007, but only now caught my eye. After reading the synopsis, Bergman’s “At the Origins of Life” resurfaced in memory, although the storylines are completely different and have no intersections, except that both feature three women staying in the hospital.
Mette is half-hearted, but does not want to be alone, persistently calling the doctor and demanding a weak voice to call her parents to come to visit her. The doctor gives her another sedative pill (which the girl sends to the rest of the accumulated trunks) and asks her to calm down. Mette is no longer too young, but is keeping up with the infantiles’ attention deficit. Panic fear of loneliness and lack of parental warmth does not allow her to humbly and silently experience what is happening. Sarah is the epitome of calm and restraint. She will undergo a severe operation, as a result of which she may remain paralyzed or even die. But the girl has support in the form of an understanding father, unlike Steffany, who has no one. And to be more precise, Steffani avoids communication with her relatives, she is closer to loneliness and complete immersion in herself, who, of course, eat her from the inside, causing wild spasms of consciousness, which will result in an unconscious (and it cannot be otherwise) suicide attempt with the help of Mette tablets. One evening, Steffani admits to her friends that her family and have no idea about the diagnosis of her daughter, and in their notification she does not observe. To which Sarah is annoyed and at the same time sympathetic reacts, daring to leave a note in Steffie’s diary with encouraging and appealing to a reasonable solution, which the girl will find only when Sarah is in a coma after a failed operation.
Nordic restraint inherent in the Danes, seasoned with a pinch of German dryness, mercilessly pushes us into a compressed cell. Hermetic and suffocating atmosphere of the film does not allow you to take a deep breath while watching, as if tightening on the neck of the viewer a transparent thick loop soaked in tears filled with pain and anguish. A kind of emotional torture that severely clogged the airways. Despite the neat and cold sequence of the storyline, the picture can safely be attributed to the model of a multi-layered film, in the sense that the sediment after viewing thickens before a variety of judgments, thoughts and ideas about what they saw. This is usually characteristic of films, each scene of which is stylized in its own way, which eliminates the possibility of getting bogged down in thoughts on a certain topic. The film touches on quite important aspects of human life: death, life, self-control, joy, sadness, forgiveness, dream. But it is the question of forgiveness and settling both internal and external conflict with the most and only loved ones that runs through the whole picture. Adhering to the inevitable drama, the film nevertheless does not seek to strangle the viewer to death with tears, balancing the anxiety with precise doses of the aroma of Christmas comfort and warmth permeated by the tranquility of the chamber, which is especially subtly contrasted with the inner state of the girls.
In this territory of suffering muffled from the outside, but flaming with bright fire inside, it is impossible to stay for a long time, so as not to finally lose oxygen. And it will still be needed, so much unploughed black and viscous filmography ahead. Such a burdensome ballast on the soul only Bergman has a habit of leaving within a full timekeeping. What is there, the property of ruthlessly tightening the noose on the spectator's neck Scandinavians manage like no other.