By Jason Osiason
Fjord has the setup of a movie that should ruin your week. Sebastian Stan’s Mihai Gheorghiu is a Romanian father who has just buried his parents, a devout man who runs the house like a congregation and would tell you that’s love. Renate Reinsve’s Lisbet talks him into moving back to her Norwegian village, so they pack up five kids, including a newborn, and go. Their teenage daughter turns up at school with bruises. A teacher reports it, and within a week all five children have been taken away. The officials are polite throughout. I found their concern more frightening than an argument would have been.
I wanted this to mess with my head. Mungiu has a way of letting me get comfortable with an opinion before giving me a reason to regret it. Here, I could see how carefully he was managing what we knew, but I wasn’t feeling much of the uncertainty myself. I kept waiting for something to complicate my response to these people.
The problem is how differently the film treats the family and the state. We see Mihai’s rules, the prayers, the way his children answer him. There’s plenty to worry about in that house. But the film keeps those concerns in reserve while making the officials look foolish in ways we’re allowed to enjoy immediately. They’re a little too eager, a little too certain they understand this family. I laughed at them, then started wondering why Mungiu was making that so easy. What happened to the girl remains unresolved, but the people investigating it are already being discredited. Somewhere in the second hour, I realized I was rooting against the state without having had to reckon seriously with the alternative. I don’t think the film is as evenhanded as it intends to be.
Stan is wonderfully transformative. I was especially taken with his patience, the way Mihai can sit through an exchange because he seems certain the other person will eventually understand that he’s right. His conviction is convincing enough to make you uncomfortable, particularly around the children. Stan doesn’t ask us to admire him, and I appreciated that. The performance gives Mihai more difficulty than the film’s argument sometimes allows.
Reinsve is solid, although Lisa Carlehed gives the performance I kept thinking about afterward. As the neighbor’s wife and lawyer who takes their case, she seems capable of questioning her position without immediately needing to replace it with another certainty. I wanted more of that. Her involvement made the case interesting to me again, because I could believe she was still working out what she thought. The rest of the film often felt as though it had already decided and was being coy about telling us.
The ending made that frustration worse. I won’t spoil it, but after two and a half hours of withholding an answer, the film becomes surprisingly willing to settle things. I didn’t necessarily disagree with where it landed. I had trouble accepting how neatly it got there after asking us to spend so long with everything unresolved. There’s a great subject here, and Stan gives it a performance worth arguing about. With Mungiu directing these actors, I expected to leave carrying an uncomfortable question around for days. I just wanted it to hurt more. [C+]
