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. 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.
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. 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).
Extract — continue reading at the source.
