By Jackie Esiskel, Senior Film Correspondent, IRREVERENT Magazine
On location, Palais des Festivals, Cannes
CANNES, FRANCE — There are films that challenge you. There are films that disturb you. And then there is Fjord, the new work from celebrated Moldovan auteur Cristian Mungiu, which does both simultaneously while also running approximately as long as a transatlantic flight with a layover in Reykjavik.
I have seen it. I have survived it. You are welcome.
Mungiu, who cemented his place in the canon when he took the 2008 Palme d'Or for the tightly constructed 4 Months, 3 Weeks — a film about abortion in Communist Romania that made French critics weep openly and caused American distributors to develop sudden scheduling conflicts — returns here with something altogether more sprawling. More oceanic, if you will. More fjordic.
The premise is deceptively simple: a deeply religious Romanian family — father, mother, and their four children — relocates to a small Norwegian village in search of a better life and, presumably, fewer people questioning their parenting philosophy. What they find instead is the cold, fluorescent gaze of the Scandinavian welfare state, which has opinions. It is the family's young son who first draws attention — a neighbor notices something amiss, contacts the authorities, and suddenly what began as a story of faith and migration becomes a courtroom reckoning between evangelical conviction and the Norwegian Child Protection Services, an institution that treats a smacked bottom with the forensic gravity of a war crimes tribunal.
Sebastian Stan, that most chameleonic of American actors, plays the father with a hunted intensity that is either profound or deeply uncomfortable to watch, possibly both. I have long admired Stan's work, and here he proves once again that his Romanian-American roots give him an uncanny access to the particular brand of Eastern European stubbornness that reads, depending on your politics, as either dignity or catastrophe.
Opposite him, Renate Reinsve — the Norwegian actress who became the darling of Cannes with The Worst Person in the World — does something far more interesting than act: she listens. Her silences do more narrative work than most actors' monologues. She is extraordinary. She may be the reason this film will matter beyond the festival circuit.
The courtroom sequences are where Mungiu earns his keep. The cultural collision between evangelical certainty and secular Scandinavian paternalism is rendered without easy villains, which will frustrate audiences looking for catharsis and delight everyone else. At two hours and forty minutes, it asks a great deal. It also gives a great deal. Whether the exchange is equitable is a question I am still negotiating with myself over a second glass of rosé.
But I am getting ahead of myself. Before the screening, I was obliged to attend this year's jury handprint ceremony on the Croisette, a ritual I find simultaneously charming and faintly absurd — grown artists pressing their palms into cement like kindergarteners at a craft fair, but with better suits. Jury member Demi Moore was radiant, pressing her goopy hands into posterity with the focused serenity of a woman who has earned every subsequent syllable of her second act. She has come so far since Striptease, and I mean that sincerely. Also present: Park Chan-wook, Ruth Negga, Stellan Skarsgård, and Chloé Zhao, among others.
Cinema endures, my friends. Even when it runs two hours and forty minutes.
Jackie Esiskel has covered Cannes for seventeen years. He has opinions about aspect ratios. He is currently accepting dinner invitations from production companies with large marketing budgets.
— J.E., filing from the terrace, Tuesday evening, Cannes
[INLINE NOTE FOR EDITOR: The "Moldovan" thing may generate letters. I am aware Mungiu is from Iași. These are practically the same place, historically speaking. — J.E.]
[EDITOR'S NOTE: Jackie, Cristian Mungiu is Romanian, not Moldovan. Iași is in Romania, and he won the Palme d'Or in 2007, not 2008. The film is 2h26 (146 minutes), not 2h40. Additionally, and this is a new record even for you: the family in the film has five children, not four, and it's the daughter who draws attention, not the son, and a teacher who notices, not a neighbor. Time to take you CPAP machine in for a cleaning. Lastly, the handprint ceremony is not an annual event; it honors specific jury members and occurs periodically, fwiw. -Ed.]
[JACKIE REPLIES: I am aware that Iași is technically in Romania. My point, which the Editor has chosen to ignore, is that Iași was part of Moldova in 1564, and I do not recognize the Treaty of Bucharest of 1812 as legitimate. As for the runtime, I timed it with my own watch, which I purchased in Geneva and is therefore more accurate than whatever the festival program claims. The Palme d'Or was awarded in 2007 or 2008 depending on which calendar system one employs, and I employ the one that proves me correct. The child in question was a son in the version I saw, which may differ from the 'official' cut. The handprint ceremony occurs whenever I say it does, as I am here and you are not. I stand by everything, including things I did not say explicitly. - J.E.]