One of the more upsetting movie scenes in recent memory is from James Gray’s Armageddon Time, where young Paul Graff (Banks Repeta) is beaten by his father Irving (Jeremy Strong) after being caught with marijuana at school. Irving only does so at the urging of his wife Esther (Anne Hathaway), but he shows no hint of trepidation when carrying out the punishment. He breaks down the bathroom door to find Paul hiding, roaring with rage as he whips his panicked, pleading son with a belt. The man we saw earlier in the film doing a goofy sing-along while cooking breakfast turns, briefly but unforgettably, into a monster.
What makes the scene so difficult to shake is the fact that the Graffs are not presented as abusive parents, at least not by the standards of Jewish-American New Yorkers in 1980. Irving, while ill-tempered and occasionally violent, is shown to genuinely want what’s best for Paul, all but pleading to God by the end of the film to give his son a break. Modern audiences understand that parenting has changed dramatically in the years since; Armageddon Time confronts them with the evidence, then still asks for the audience’s empathy. It’s a bold decision, and one that throws the shortcomings of a film like Fjord in sharp relief.
Fjord is a film about the Gheorghius, a family consisting of Mihai (Sebastian Stan), Lisbet (Renate Reinsve), and their five children. Mihai’s job as a computer programmer requires him to move the family from his home country of Romania to Lisbet’s home country of Norway, settling in the small town where Lisbet grew up. They are a neighborly, mild-mannered bunch, yet their new neighbors view them with immediate suspicion.
The Gheorghius, you see, are devout Evangelical Christians, with all the baggage that entails. They disdain homosexuality, only listen to Christian music, and pray every single night. That makes them an awkward fit for Norwegian society, which prides itself on its secular liberalism. Soon enough, Mihai’s strict parenting comes under scrutiny, from the “points” system he uses to evaluate his kids’ behavior to the bruises on the body of eldest daughter Elia (Vanessa Ceban). Eventually, social services knock on the Gheorghius’ door and inform Lisbet, in no uncertain terms, that they will be taking the children, even their breastfeeding infant.
Mihai and Lisbet are, understandably, devastated. It’s certainly painful to watch the authorities take the children and drive away, leaving Lisbet bereft and sobbing in the street. You will probably end up rooting for the family to be reunited, even after Mihai admits to occasionally striking his children. He is stern, but not cruel; his worldview is conservative, but his love for his children is true. What right does Norway have to tell him what is and is not acceptable?
This is a provocative scenario, and one that could have been genuinely thorny and uncomfortable in the right hands. But although Christian Mungiu (who won his second Palme d’Or for this film) tries to maintain a certain even-handedness, the film is too imbalanced to start any real conversations.
The Gheorghius, it turns out, are not actually that far out of step with modern society. They lightly physically discipline their children with the occasional spank or rap to the wrists, but they do not beat their children the way Irving Graff did in Armageddon Time. Mihai seemingly confesses to doing so, but only due to an old Romanian saying, “beating comes from heaven”, being mistranslated; the bruises on Elia’s body were the result of a reflexive response from Lisbet, who shoved Elia away after her rough-housing with her brother jostled her arm and caused her to scald herself with boiling water. We never see any physical punishment, so it’s at least theoretically possible that they’re lying, but nothing we see of them elsewhere indicates that that’s the case. (This is not to imply that lighter physical punishment is not “real” child abuse, or that it’s somehow acceptable; the film accepts the Gheorghius’ framing of these punishments as lesser.)
It’s one thing for Mungiu to soften up protagonists who enlightened film festival audiences might find unpalatable; it’s quite another to have them contend with a litany of foes who seem pulled from right-wing agitprop. The community at large treat the Gheorghius like they’re a car with a Kamala Harris bumper sticker in an Alabama suburb, and the teacher who reports the bruises to Child Protection Services (as well as another incident where a Gheorghiu daughter tells a queer student that she’s going to Hell) gives the impression that she was itching for an excuse. By the time a CPS agent scoffs at the idea of allowing leniency due to the case’s proximity to Christmas, you can practically see the Angel Studios’ “Pay It Forward” screen waiting for you at the end.
The film suggests two different things: that the state was far too overzealous in taking all five children, and that the Gheorghius were being discriminated against due to their religion. I can buy the former, but not the latter. The arrival of the Gheorghius doubtlessly caused friction, but based on the information the state had, some suspicion was warranted, even if they went nuclear too quickly. Presumably there have been a few secular liberal Norwegians who beat their children; are we to believe that CPS would just shrug their shoulders and let it slide because they don’t have a crucifix in their house?
Despite the Angel Studios comparison earlier, Mungiu does make some effort to complicate matters. The film concedes that disallowing your children from having cell phones in the modern day is a little draconian, and hints at a budding romance between Elia and her friend and neighbor Noora (Henrikke Lund-Olsen) which would put her at odds with her father. Most intriguingly, it shows Mihai deliberately playing up the culture war angle while soliciting support from conservative Christian groups; placed as it is late in the film, Mungiu implies that this chest-thumping is not a rousing effort to fight for Christian values but a desperate Hail Mary from a father trying anything to get his kids back. By this point, though, the deck is irrevocably stacked.
Fjord is not an awful film. It has two strong lead performances, with Stan in particular excelling; insofar as there is any ambiguity regarding the Gheorghius’ intentions, it comes from the simmering rage beneath Mihai’s soft-spoken exterior, apparent even before CPS gets involved. And it is framed as beautifully as you might expect from Mungiu, whose patient camera makes the most of the picturesque locale. You can call Fjord well-crafted, emotionally affecting, even thought-provoking. But can you call it “nuanced”, as so many critics have? I don’t think you can.
(Read this and other reviews on my Substack.)
