When you reach a certain age, it’s customary to think about the condition in which we’re leaving the world for the next generation. I’m not talking about educated activists, politicians, philosophers, or geniuses. I’m talking about the regular people who start their lives by wondering how they are going to make ends meet and hope that they are privileged enough to seek retirement when they are in their twilight years. I suppose those who are boomers now didn’t get to be existential until maybe they were in their 40s or even 50s. Speaking from personal experience, millennials probably did the same when they just about hit their 20s. For Gen Z, it likely happened when they were teenagers. And, as proven by The Night is Dark and Colder than the Day, Gen Alpha has it the worst, as they are filled with dread and only a tinge of optimism while approaching the nerve-wracking prospect of adolescence. Despite not being violent or overly dramatic, the film is certainly not for the faint of heart because it’ll compel you to reflect on if the kids of this world are doing alright.
Christina Friedrich’s The Night is Dark and Colder than the Day technically doesn’t have a plot. The director had worked with the children featured in this film while filming Zone, and apparently these kids asked her to help them make their own film. So, Friedrich gathered them at their school gym and simply got them talking about their personal thoughts. After that, she sent a questionnaire to each of them regarding luck, time, dreams, wishes, abilities, and fears. Once Friedrich got her answers, she seemingly took them on an excursion, then the kids were allowed to dress up as their favorite creatures, and then she built a really loose narrative around it. Therefore, the end product is a mix of documentary-style interviews, where you see these kids getting surprisingly personal about their deepest, darkest secrets, and then something that’s more fantastical and whimsical, in order to give audiences some respite from the endless barrage of stomach-churning pondering and musing. In addition to all that, the film also delves into the relevancy of faith and religion in this era of humanity through the perspective of these children, which will probably shock you quite a bit.
More than anything else in the film, I think it’s that last bit that intrigued me. You see, I’m an atheist, but at the same time, I respect people who use religion and faith for the betterment of their lives and that of those around them. Anybody who misuses religion to spread hatred and violence and teaches their kids to do the same from a very young age is despicable and has no place in a healthy society. With all that said, for the past few years, I’ve been wondering why there’s a sudden uptick in young kids believing in God and devoting themselves to complicated rituals. I thought that it was simply a case of traditions being passed down. But then I noticed that kids with no family history of religious practices were talking about sacred wisdom and spiritual teachings. I assumed it was an aftereffect of the current socio-political climate. However, some of these kids were oblivious to the propaganda being peddled by politicians and the media. It’s only after watching this film that I came to the realization that believing in God is probably the only way that’s left for these children to deal with the everyday horrors of life.
Just think about it for a second. Every preteen kid out there has experienced the COVID-19 pandemic. A major chunk of their childhood has been about Zoom classes, fretting about health, quarantining, and the ever-present specter of death. And when they regained some form of normalcy, their minds had been altered to such an extent that they didn’t even know how to function like normal youngsters anymore. Then there’s the economy. With the exception of the developed nations, things are so bad in terms of education, jobs, healthcare, and the price of basic amenities that parents are failing to shield their kids from the cruel reality that they are living in. Forget about buying one’s favorite toy or watching the latest action film on the big screen; they have to think about their weekly expenditure. And, as if all that’s not enough, these kids are witnessing several bloody wars unfolding in various parts of the globe simultaneously. So, it’s pretty natural for them to believe in an all-powerful entity to generate hope because they’re certainly not getting it from the so-called leaders of a nation. If that’s not deeply depressing, I don’t know what it is.
I suppose everyone is familiar with that thing old-timers do where, if you tell them about the struggles of your school life, they’ll say how they used to scale a mountain to go to school or study under a streetlamp before their final exams, just to prove that they’ve lived through harsher times. But as I grow old and I listen to kids, teenagers, and job seekers talk about the kinds of uphill battles that they are facing on a daily basis, I can’t help but think that I had it so much easier. I was probably as financially privileged as the kids that are in The Night is Dark and Colder than the Day, and, thanks to my parents or how things were back then, I never worried about losing my loved ones, being forgotten, or dying by suicide. So, seeing these babies talking about crying in order to avoid getting too overwhelmed is heartbreaking. I am well aware of the fact that our world and society have gone past the point of no return. People are still producing kids at an alarming rate and putting them through hellish circumstances. And there doesn’t seem to be any policies being applied to change this horrible status quo. Yet, for the sake of these kids, we have to try to bring some form of positive change. They don’t deserve the present and the future that we are handing down to them. We have to do right by them so that these children can have fantastical dreams instead of nightmares.
