“Fjord forces the audience to take the side of a family whose values it might not agree with, and question its own ideas of freedom and tolerance”

“Children always come first”

There is an incongruence between progressiveness and freedom of expression. This may seem like a paradox at first, but Fjord, Romanian helmer Cristian Mungiu’s first foray outside of his native country and tongue, shows that in the name of progressive ideals those who profess inclusiveness have no qualms in shutting out people with more conservative ideas, particularly those born from religious beliefs. Detached and dry, as always, Mungiu’s film is one whose ideas are more interesting than its execution. Based on a true story that happened about a decade ago in Norway, Fjord forces the audience to take the side of a family whose values it might not agree with, and question its own ideas of freedom and tolerance.

When Mihai Gheorghiu (Sebastian Stan) and his wife Lisbet (Renate Reinsve) relocate from Romania and settle with their five children in a small community in one of Norway’s many idyllic fjords, everything seems to fall nicely into place. Mihai, an immigrant and aeronautical engineer, is perhaps overqualified for his new job as software engineer, but he isn’t one to grumble. Lisbet, a Norwegian citizen, starts work as a nurse in palliative care. The community is welcoming, and their two oldest, the teens Elia (Vanessa Ceban) and Emmanuel (Jonathan Ciprian Breazu), become fast friends with the neighbors’ daughter Noora (Henrikke Lund-Olsen). One day, during gym class, a teacher notices bruising in Elia’s neck. Child abuse is taken very serious in Norway, so the school contacts Child Services, who take all five children away from the Gheorghius while the parents are under investigation. Suddenly the family’s deeply religious way of life and their traditional values come into question. Sure, he sometimes slaps his children on the butt when they need to be corrected, Mihai concedes, but does that really constitute abuse? Frustration with the Norwegian legal system leads him to contact Romanian conservative activist groups, who cause a ruckus outside the civil trial and ignite a diplomatic nightmare for the Norwegians.

This civil trial, which takes up most of the final hour of Fjord, shows that the case against the Gheorghius becomes more about the family’s traditional religious values being incompatible with Norwegian society, and less about whether the parents truly abused their children. Elia’s bruises could have easily been caused by rough play between the siblings, even the witnesses for the accusing party agree, and Mihai’s ways of correcting his children lay bare the problems that arise when the state meddles too much with the ways parents raise their children. Throughout the ordeal, Child Services follows procedure to the letter without an ounce of pragmatism or compassion, and the adage of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ is abandoned in the name of child protection. Increasingly the lawyer for Child Services tries to call the family’s Christian values into question, values that are not congruent with most of Norwegian society. That poses a thorny question though: are the Gheorghius not free to practice their beliefs and raise their children according to them? Are they not allowed to teach their children traditional ideas of what a family is, something that clashes when one of the younger children condemns a 7-year old classmate to hell when said child declares that she’s a lesbian. Instead of making this a teaching moment for both children, the incident becomes ammunition against the Gheorghius.

This tension between freedom of expression and speech on the one hand, and the progressive values of Norwegian society on the other is the core subject of Fjord, and its most interesting aspect. By making Mihai and Lisbet the focal point, Mungiu pushes the viewer into supporting them, especially because at their core they are shown as good people who love their children; the kids being taken away feels like injustice, and the representatives of Child Services as particularly cold. Any parent can imagine the pain Lisbet and Mihai go through. But their values might rub many viewers the wrong way, which is an uncomfortableness in the audience Mungiu aims for.

Unfortunately the director feels the need to adorn the dry legal case with a string of plot strands that add little value to the proceedings and only lead to runtime bloat. The tight bond between Elia and the rebellious Noora shows that there is perhaps hope for future generations if everybody would just be a bit more tolerant and lenient with each others’ beliefs, but in the end it amounts to little more than two BFFs being separated, with all the teenage drama that comes with it. Lisbet’s bond with Noora’s ailing grandfather is meant to underline her good-hearted nature, but since that is already established in the core dramatic narrative it feels superfluous. What doesn’t help is that while Stan, with an impressive balding head, and Reinsve gives strong performances, the child actors are wooden, something that becomes glaring by giving them more runtime than is needed. Mungiu’s direction is precise where his writing is not, and in the court room drama of the final hour the tug of war between Mihai and the lawyer on the opposite side is tense because of the director’s mise-en-scène. We’ll forgive him the overt symbolism of an avalanche coming for the small village near the end of the film, or the unnecessary moments of magical realism where characters can suddenly walk on water (“You have to believe in it,” says Elia, charged with verbalizing the themes of the film). Yet what lingers most are Fjord‘s ideas and the questions it faces the audience with. Uncomfortable questions, because they challenge the belief in our own tolerance and in the infallibility of our institutions, but necessary if we truly want an inclusive world.