FJORD is a stunning piece of provocative film-making from Romanian auteur Cristian Mungiu. It makes for uncomfortable viewing because it forces us to confront our own prejudices and to educate ourselves about our own countries.
The action begins in a remote Norwegian town where a new family is welcomed warmly with woollen mittens and apple cakes. The father is Romanian, the mother is Norwegian, they have five kids including a nursing infant, and they are evangelical Christians. Their differing religious and cultural norms soon bring them up against the profoundly progressive liberal norms of the town.
The teachers call in social services because the daughter has some bruising. Is it from wrestling, or tumbling down the stairs in a fight with her brother? No matter, because pretty soon the father and mother are being accused of child abuse because the father admits to scolding his children with light slaps across the bottom and on their hands. (Something that would be legal in the U.K..) He admits to not realising that this is illegal and frowned upon in Norway. He says he is sorry - he just wants his kids back. We see the civil court case play out, and his case is taken up by Christian right social media.
So many questions arise from this. Why did the lovely progressive liberal teachers not bother investigating the fact that the headmaster's daughter Noora is slitting her wrists but jump into action when the immigrant girl has bruising? Are they angry at the potential child abuse OR because the daughter Elia has the temerity to say that she doesn't agree that kids can be gay. How far does the state have the right to intervene in how parents parent their children? When is a light slap physical abuse? Where is the line? How far is progressive liberal Norway really welcoming of immigrants? Or do they just want people to conform? Does freedom of religion really exist if you have to conform to views on LGBTQ?
I love that this film creates so much discussion and also that the director allows us to answer those questions for ourselves. It's a film that poses a problem of co-living and integration and allows us to try to answer it. But Mungiu does put his hands on the scale in interesting and subtle ways. The Norwegians subtly mispronouncing Elia's name. The police case that is conducted in questionable ways. The prosecuting lawyer resorting to Romanian idiom to make his case. And going the other way, the fact that in the final very moving scene it becomes clear that Noora is gay.
Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve are very strong in the lead roles of the two religious parents. The cast in general is strong, and the cinematography stunning. We get so many still frames and long scenes that when we get deliberate visual action it's all the more powerful. An avalanche comes down the mountain toward the small town. And so over Europe more broadly.
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