If ever there was a film destined to be confused with centrist apologetics (if not outright conservative propaganda), it’s the Romanian director Cristian MungiuS ‘ fjordthe fiery social drama that won him his second Palme d’Or. However, its emotional thrust is contradiction, so any conflicted feelings when looking at it through a political prism are not unwarranted. Based on the uncomfortable unfolding of the courtroom MRI– his previous film, about the mechanics of growing anti-immigrant sentiment –fjord traces the subtlest, most malleable dynamics of modern democracy in a tale crafted as infuriating as it is to provoke difficult introspection.
On the surface, it’s pretty simple. A remote, progressive Norwegian town becomes the new home of a religious couple from Romania: software developer Mihai Gheorghiu (Sebastian Stan) and his Norwegian nurse wife Lisbet (Renate Reinsve). Their strict, evangelical background fuels gossip and prompts an investigation by Child Welfare Services when one of their teenage children shows up at school with unexplained bruises. However, this clash between citizens and the state is not simply a systemic dynamic, but of intractable dilemmas stemming from ideological clashes. If one were to track character arcs and trajectories in a traditional sense, not much would change over the course of the film’s 146 minutes. However, Mungiu’s controlled form and his actors’ carefully restrained performances turn the film’s thematic plateau into an inescapable minefield of ethical quandaries.
While its plot has a passing resemblance to the didactic drama of Bollywood Ms. Chatterjee v. Norway– a film based on real event–fjordHis fiction is designed (in the strictest, technical sense) to appear much more Socratic. However, from his opening images, in which Stan’s imposing, balding patriarch looms menacingly over his children while showing them love, it becomes clear that Mungiu is not only drawing from cultural (and perhaps personal) experience, but is fashioning a particular image that aims to sow doubt and exploit it emotionally. There is an inflexibility in the way the Gheorghius are written, as if they were antonymic embodiments of everything that modern Scandinavian society held dear (from socialist values to a self-proclaimed liberation from religious doctrine). And yet, the detailed humanity with which Mungiu carves even these rigid characters returns fjord from a simple thought experiment to an engaging drama tinged with self-aware humor. It’s hard not to take offense at even the most intense debate between Norwegian secularism and evangelicalism when the tilted cross of Norway’s flag flutters in the wind just outside a character’s window, taking up half the frame. Where you’re going can’t be separated from where you’ve been, so Romanian Mihai might as well personify Norway’s own entanglements with Christian extremism.
More recently, Stan has become the actor, perhaps most at odds with his rise to dominance as a cog in the Marvel machine, amid his Best Actor-winning role in the satire at the Berlinale. A Different Man and his Oscar-nominated turn as Donald Trump IN learner. with fjordhe completes an even more surprising transformation as a terrifying father whose calmness embodies the strictness of his beliefs and whose tough love radiates across the screen with eerie nuances, even (and especially) in quiet moments. Reinsve, meanwhile, pursues her most radiant roles as a modern woman in search of herself in The worst person in the world AND Sentimental value (not to mention A Different Man too) juxtaposing a distinctly reserved appearance with the mystery of how exactly she relates to her domineering husband, her five children of varying ages, and their culture in general, behind closed doors. We only see what Mungiu wants us to see, as if the film were a court docket, but Mungiu’s lead actors create deceptively confident tendencies and, in the process, evoke imaginative possibilities that are sure to instill everything from love to contempt in the average viewer.
The couple’s eldest children, Elia (Vanessa Ceban) and Emanuel (Jonathan Ciprian Breazu), befriend the daughter of their new neighbors, a spray girl named Noora (Henrikke Lund-Olsen), who seems intent on getting them into trouble. Jealousies at school and strange interactions near their respective homes suggest the possibility that their friendship will drive a wedge between the teenage siblings and their parents. But before that narrative can be realized, the school’s attentive staff and the country’s fast-moving legal system act on circumstantial evidence to remove Elia, Emmanuel and their three younger siblings from their parents’ care on suspicion of physical abuse.
Gheorghius’ strict biblical parenting (in a country that is 70 percent non-theistic) informs a cultural stereotype that stands alongside the system’s real concerns. However, once these pre-existing notions are exposed, fjord it does not seek to dismantle, challenge or reinforce them. They are, instead, an essential aspect of the film’s background, existing in a consistent form that imbues the film’s subsequent court proceedings with entirely inescapable predispositions. And yet this predictability is integral to Mungiu’s approach to constructing a saga where answers, especially easy ones, never present themselves. The drama offers enough hints to make sure you jump to conclusions about what did or didn’t happen, in a strict factual sense. But just as quickly, the film expands in thematic scope to pose larger philosophical questions.
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fiord ★★★1/2 (3.5/4 stars) |
It becomes an anxiety-inducing stress test of progressive faith, focused not on the factual “right” or “wrong” of the issue, but on egalitarianism itself and the preservation of democratic liberties when those at stake are objectionable, repugnant, or even harmful in nature. “My beliefs are not on trial,” Mihai says at one point, having spent most of the film happily accepting the support of wild extremists to get his children back. And yet one cannot avoid the feeling that he is right, whether his actions and methods should be disqualifying or not.
As the film goes on, countless principled reasons can be created – as many Norwegian characters do – to see the Gheorghius stripped of their rights as parents, right down to the homophobia that seems to trickle down to their young children. However, at the core of the democratic creed is the equal application of the law, and measuring these values against their most extreme manifestations is an exercise worth engaging in. The specifics of fjordrealistic or otherwise, complicate what equality even means in any nominally progressive society that values broad multiculturalism. It’s hard not to wonder about (and be troubled by) the endless uncertainties Mungiu suggests about the degree to which personal liberties and beliefs can or should be infringed.
Even if there is a legal or moral correctness to the state’s actions, the very context of Gheorghius being a minority in Norway—even if their religion fuels fascism elsewhere, like Brazil or the United States—causes a broad structural reorientation of the film’s drama along David-and-Goliath lines (an even more earnest comparison of the film’s character). And in addition to its dimensions of legality and morality, there is also the emotional element and the human element, portrayed with complex nuances by Stan and Reinsve, and enhanced by Mungiu’s roving camera as he sits us next to them in uninterrupted shots, as observers and participants in the legal proceedings.
Beyond a point, the frigidity of Mungiu’s signature cool-blue palette is also warmed by the multifaceted presence of Mihai and Lisbet, pushing the sensibility in a direction that any nominally liberal or leftist viewer might be understandably resistant to. For basically fjord it is not the pursuit of answers, but rather a confrontation of endless questions about the limits of personal autonomy in a modern civilization that claims to be truly democratic. Even if one believes that the state should be replaced with these responsibilities – as it may very well be after looking fjord– Mungiu’s lens shatters the self-proclaimed Enlightenment of impartiality to reveal the inherent pitfalls of this supposed utopianism.
Such is the nature of human society. It’s friction and fractal. Something, some form of hypocrisy or inconsistency, is always bound to creep in… but what do you do when you get to that place? What can you do? How do you stay fair when the greater good involves inevitable harm no matter where you land? This is the existential despair that Mungiu is dealing with and from which the film’s drama springs.
Perhaps the nature of faith is that, beyond a point, it is unshakable, and few minds will be radically swayed by even the most controversial court case (let alone a politically charged Palme recipient). But in the case of fjordthe film makes it necessary to recognize the cracks in one’s own mental, emotional and ethical bearing contours, if only to prevent their eventual rupture.
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