“Fjord,” Cristian Mungiu’s harrowing and pointedly provocative political drama, has now been open for two weeks, and I have a question about it: Where’s the debate? Where’s the fervor, the fire, the discussion, the arguments, the noise, the sense that a movie like this one matters? Everyone is talking about “You Can See Everything,” parsing the nuances of deceit and what is reality and should we blame it on Billy Evans? (we should not). And that’s a conversation well worth having. But when I saw “Fjord” at the Cannes Film Festival in May, I thought it was a movie that would unleash 1,000 conversations, including some highly incendiary ones, since it’s a film that cuts to the spiritual-ideological heart of so much of what’s happening today.
Instead…crickets. Oh, I see the occasional comment on social media, and I’ve encountered a few passionate and withering denunciations of “Fjord.” But where are the defenders, as well as the fireworks of disagreement?
I think the lack of debate goes back to an experience I had at Cannes that I found at once unsettling and revealing. “Fjord” was quite the conversation piece there — and it won the Palme d’Or, which is one reason it was instantly spoken of as an Oscar contender, not just for best international feature but, potentially, for best picture. I expected “Fjord” to set the media ablaze when it opened. But my experience of how people reacted to it in Cannes is that almost everyone seemed to resist saying out loud what the movie is actually about.
In “Fjord,” Mungiu tells the story of a family — Mihai Gheorghiu (Sebastian Stan), who’s Romanian; his wife, Lisbet (Renate Reinsve), who’s Norwegian; and their five children — who have moved from Bucharest to the picturesque Norwegian coastal village that Lisbet is from. The place feels like a tranquil utopia, and for a short while their lives are good. But then, at school, a phys-ed teacher notices that Elia (Vanessa Ceban), the family’s teenage daughter, has a bruise on the back of her shoulder. It’s clear that she has suffered some kind of injury. The question is raised: Was it the result of violence from one of her parents?
The movie doesn’t suggest that it was; the Gheorghius are portrayed as loving and, in their somber evangelical Christian way, rather gentle people. But when the children are questioned, they own up to the fact that their parents have, on occasion, hit them (in the form of a light smack on the butt). Mihai admits to the police that he’s done this, and also that he has, on occasion, slapped their hands (in a way that’s meant to safeguard them — as in, keep your hand away from the stove). The case becomes an investigation into possible child abuse, and in keeping with the ways of the Norwegian system, the children are immediately taken away and placed in foster care. For how long? An indefinite period. The Gheorghius, it would seem, have done nothing more than, on occasion, lightly smack their children on the rear (something I, as a parent, wouldn’t dream of doing — though it’s not like one or two parents in the Western world haven’t done it). But as they head into a court proceeding, the system looks all but designed to find them guilty. In essence, they face the prospect of having their children taken away, and even the threat of imprisonment, because of a spanking.
At Cannes, I must have had 50 conversations about “Fjord,” and with two exceptions every single person I talked to had the same interpretation of the movie: that it presented “both sides” of the situation, and that it did not take sides. I heard this over and over again. Yet I couldn’t quite believe it. Simply put, that interpretation does not square with the movie I saw. The other thing that was hard to miss in Cannes is that a great many people didn’t care much for “Fjord.” In the two weeks since the movie has opened, however, I’ve spoken to many viewers who have found it powerful. Yet the wrenching drama I experienced onscreen has, for the most part, not been reflected in the critical dialogue about it. Here are a few thoughts on the film, and on the incredibly telling reaction to it.
Why do so many insist that “Fjord” doesn’t choose sides? There are no saints in “Fjord,” and the situation it depicts is not without its ambiguities. The Gheorghius are a family of parochial Christians who oversee their children with a sternly tender and rather old-school command, not allowing them to use tech devices to connect to the outside world. When Elia forms a close bond with her renegade neighbor and classmate, Moora (Henrikke Lund-Olsen), her father glowers in silent disapproval of what may be a romantic attraction; the film looks askance at his homophobic conservatism. As “Fjord” goes on, the film suggests that the hermetic nature of how this family is raising its kids is destined to create problems down the line. In that sense, it’s critical of the family. But it’s not as if any of these sins “balance out” the drastic actions of the Norwegian government. To put it in melodramatic terms, the film has a clearly delineated villain.
That villain is the nanny-state. “Fjord” wears the meditative cloak of an art film, but at heart it’s a political docudrama in the classic tradition of the New Hollywood. The movie is based on an actual case in Norway that it sticks fairly close to, with elements of other European cases mixed in. It’s a film like “Norma Rae” or “Z” or “Erin Brockovich,” in which the protagonists are up against an oppressive system — but in almost every instance of this kind of movie, going back 55 years, the system in question is a right-wing government or a corporate behemoth in league with right-wing power. In “Fjord,” the force that threatens the Gheorghiu family is Norway’s progressive bureaucracy — the Child Services agency, which is so programmed to err on the side of safety that it errs, in this case, on the side of grave inhumanity.
No one watches a muckraking liberal political drama thinking that it gives equal weight to both sides. Well, “Fjord” doesn’t either. But it’s hard to escape the feeling that the reason so many people have rationalized away the film’s moral outlook as a case of both-sides-ism is that they don’t want to acknowledge that a movie that comes from inside the progressive art-film universe — Cristian Mingiu considers himself a liberal — could be critical of the progressive consciousness.
“Fjord” has been called “a MAGA movie.” Is it? It is not in any way, shape or form. I revere “Fjord” and have no truck with MAGA. At the same time, I’m a staunch progressive who cherishes this movie precisely because I think it’s essential that those of us who carry a progressive sense of justice need to be able to look at our own side and see where it goes astray. “Fjord” is overtly critical of a certain progressive mind-set, one that it sees as rigid and blinkered and even authoritarian. The teachers and school officials who first call the Gheorghius on the carpet, and the Child Services officials who swoop in to investigate and prosecute them, have an infuriatingly smug and blasé manner. They’re talking about taking people’s children away, and they sound like they’re discussing tax law. They know that they have the weight of the system behind then, but what they also have is the weight of an ideology, one that has taken the unassailable issue of children’s well-being and placed it on a pedestal of absolutism.
The movie is about something bigger than “the system in Norway.” Just as “Norma Rae” was about something bigger than the exploitation of cotton-mill workers in North Carolina, “Fjord,” while it’s set with pinpoint precision in a particular time and place, uses the specificity of that setting to make a statement about a more widespread ideological belief system. And that state of mind is: The Child Services officials believe they have the right to take the Georghius’ children away. Legally (in Norway), they do, but what that reflects is a belief in a state authority that is all-powerful — an ironic position coming from those who’ve pledged to protect the powerless from the powerful.
“Fjord” is an outcry against anti-Christian prejudice. But if that’s the only message you take from it… The movie sets up a spiritual battle between the New Europe progressives and the Old Europe Christians. The Norwegian officials are so suspect of the Georghius’ evangelical roots and practices that their attitude is portrayed — quite rightly — as bigotry. “Am I on trial for my beliefs?” asks Mihai from the witness stand. To a certain degree, he is. But only to a degree. More to the point: If that’s the only message you take away from “Fjord” — that the last thing a government that thinks of itself as enlightened should be doing is clamping down on a family of traditional Christians for their beliefs — then you’ve missed the forest for the trees. For that’s a theme you could get from almost any liberal message movie: Don’t be prejudiced. But that’s not the ultimate message of “Fjord.” The ultimate message of “Fjord” is: Beware a system so convinced of its own virtue that it’s willing to destroy what it’s pretending to save.