“You need to learn to admit when you’re wrong.”
This is one of the first things that Mihai Gheorghiu (Sebastian Stan) says to his daughter in the opening moments of “Fjord.” It also concludes one of the more harrowing scenes in the film. Mihai’s wife, Lisbet (Renate Reinsve), hugs their eldest daughter Elia (Vanessa Ceban) tenderly before telling her to go hug her father.
But Elia’s hug with her father lacks the gentleness of her hug with her mother. She tentatively wraps her arms around him, an embrace he doesn’t return. Instead, he lets his hands slowly rise as he admonishes her – more like a deity bestowing punishment than a father comforting his child.
Punishment – and who gets to dole it out – is a huge part of “Fjord,” written and directed by Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu. The film is loosely inspired by a real Romanian immigrant family’s experiences with Norwegian Child Welfare Services (I’ll let you Google them and their slew of controversies on your own time). Over the course of the film, we will watch as Elia and her four siblings are taken away from their parents while the state investigates them for child abuse. “Fjord” then transitions from family drama to legal thriller, and Mungiu wants us to question what, exactly, is on trial – child abuse, or cultural differences?
“Fjord” attempts to hold well-meaning liberalism to the fire – if you thought that a parent was harming their child, of course you would say something, and you might not stop to consider your biases before doing so. But while there are complex ideas to explore within “Fjord,” and while it’s certainly purposefully frustrating, the film feels so obvious in its sympathies that it effectively flattens the other side of the aisle into one dimension. And because of that, despite strong performances all around, what the film has to say doesn’t feel all that interesting or nuanced.
We meet Mihai and Lisbet just after they’ve moved from Romania to Norway. Lisbet is from the area and speaks the language. Mihai sort of understands, but doesn’t speak it very well (his and the kids’ grasps on the Norwegian and English languages will become important). The Gheorghius are devoutly religious, far more so than anyone else in the small, progressive enclave they find themselves in. But they are not so religious as to isolate themselves. They ride a line – they allow their older children to hang out with Noora (Henrikke Lund-Olsen), a spirited, if troubled girl who lives down the street, but they prioritize family time. They send their children to the same school as everyone else, but they don’t allow them phones, and they forbid things like modern music.
Noora’s father, Mats (Markus Tønseth) – who is also the school’s headmaster – and her stepmother Mia (Lisa Carlehed) are taken aback by the Gheorghiu family’s strict conventions. But things don’t come to a head until one day a bus driver overhears Elia and her brother arguing about something that made their mother angry, and a teacher notices bruises on Elia’s back. Child protection is immediately notified, and a police officer shows up at Mihai’s workplace to question him. When Mihai admits to “slapping” the children on the butt as a form of punishment, it’s all over. The state takes the children, including a baby still breastfeeding, away from Mihai and Lisbet, placing them in foster homes until they decide whether or not the parents are guilty.
Spanking as a concept is something that, I would venture to guess, American southerners are more intimately familiar with than your average Norwegian – and it might be helpful to know, at least for American audiences, that corporal punishment is illegal in Norway (something the movie doesn’t make quite clear, but that a European viewer might already know). I don’t have children. I would not spank them if I did. And yet, it’s difficult not to look a little sideways at the speed with which the children are taken from their parents due to Mihai’s admission.
But “Fjord” wants you to question whether there is something more at play other than the odd “slap” on the butt. Elia’s bruise is dark and ugly, and the discomfort of the film’s opening moments – the image of Mihai letting his child hug him in apology, but not returning the gesture – looms over the early parts of the film, leaving you wondering what happened before the camera started rolling. We know that the Gheorghius are ultra religious and socially conservative, and there are certainly things about the ways they choose to raise their children that are sure to raise your eyebrows as much as they do the far more liberal Norwegian community around them.
But it soon becomes clear that every ambiguous moment we’ve seen that might push us to believe that the Gheorghiu children are suffering something more than spanking is a red herring. Mungiu is a fan of still, unbroken shots, such as an early one in the Gheorghius’ kitchen where Lisbet flings Elia away from her violently. We can’t see the actual contact happen (it’s blocked by a wall) – we just see Elia stumble into frame from the force of it. The prosecution harps on this moment, but we know that Lisbet, who was cooking and holding a boiling pot at the time, made the outburst in order to avoid spilling scalding water on herself or her baby.
Early on, the movie wants you to question this explanation, but as “Fjord” goes on it becomes patently clear this is the truth of the matter. The film goes so far as to have Noora tell her parents (Mia, a lawyer, has decided to represent the Gheorghius by this point in the film) that she knows how Elia got the bruises, and it has nothing to do with Mihai or Lisbet. This calls to mind a moment earlier in the film – another long, unbroken shot – where Elia jumps out of her window to sneak out and meet Noora. We don’t see Elia land, but the thump at the bottom of her leap sounds a little heavier than it should, and it takes her a minute to appear back in the frame – almost as if she fell.
Noora and Elia’s relationship comprises the most interesting parts of “Fjord.” Noora clearly has a crush. But Elia – kind and interested in Noora’s friendship, but sheltered – doesn’t seem to realize the extent of Noora’s affection. Lisbet and Mihai’s beliefs about gay people are, as you might expect, terrible. But both families wonder privately if the other daughter is having a negative impact on theirs. And in the case of Noora’s parents, the hypocrisy is glaring, their worry for the welfare of the Gheorghiu children obfuscating the welfare of their own. One of the first times we meet Noora, she slashes her wrists open with a knife almost on a whim – a misguided way to look cool in front of her new friends, but also hiding a deeper pain. She is clearly uncomfortable around Mats, her father. In one scene, he enters her bedroom and she immediately pulls up her blanket to cover herself – he strokes her hair lazily and for a discomfiting amount of time before he finally leaves. The comment that Noora makes about the origin of Elia’s bruises is immediately shot down and never brought up again – these people believe children implicitly, unless it’s their own.
While the film doesn’t ask you to agree with the ways in which the Gheorghius raise and discipline their children, it certainly asks you to sympathize with them. And when you watch Lisbet’s trembling profile as two women calmly tell her that her children won’t be coming home from school today, how can you not?
The issue then, is the presentation on the other side of the argument. At one point, a teacher admits that one of the first things that put the Gheorghius on her radar was when one of the younger children made a religious-based homophobic comment at school – clearly parroting something she had heard at home. Instead of talking to the child or her parents, the teacher called child welfare services to report the incident. Later, one of the children’s foster moms testifies in court that she couldn’t believe that these kids weren’t allowed to watch YouTube, painting that idea as a reasonable cause for taking them away from their parents. The movie quickly reveals itself as one not about whether or not abuse has occurred, but about putting this family and their (admittedly poor) beliefs on trial. And it wants you to know that’s wrong, despite how you might feel about their beliefs.
While it makes for an effectively emotional watch, I can’t help but feel that this is such an obvious point, particularly when the prosecuting side in question is so sneering, so one-dimensional – it is difficult to take someone seriously who thinks bad parenting amounts to not allowing your children to listen to secular music or have a phone. I’m willing to admit there might be a cultural block in play here (funny, as that’s kind of what the movie is about). But “Fjord” loses complexity in these moments, becoming frustratingly didactic and inert.
