CULTURE WAR COMING

The Truth Behind Oscar Season’s ‘MAGA Movie’

An unrecognizable Marvel star leads what will surely become one of the year’s most divisive films.

Weeks before the release of the Palme d’Or-winning Fjord (in select theaters on Friday, Oct. 9), the movie’s lead actor, Sebastian Stan, was already on defense about the film’s supposedly right-leaning politics. In response to chatter out of this year’s Cannes Film Festival that Fjord was essentially a “MAGA movie,” Stan said critics were prejudging the film based on its premise.

“A lot of those reactions come from people who haven’t seen the movie,” Stan told Variety in September. “It highlights why we need more films like this—to remind us there was a time when people could meet, disagree, and at least hear each other out.”

It’s true that Fjord, from Romanian New Wave filmmaker Cristian Mungiu, sounds more like an Angel Studios drama than a potential Oscars frontrunner, alongside a gay war epic and a comedy about swinging.

[WARNING: Spoilers ahead]

Inspired by the story of Ruth and Marius Bodnariu, Fjord follows evangelical couple Mihai (Stan) and Lisbet Gheorghiu (Renate Reinsve), who are suspected of child abuse upon moving to a small town in Lisbet’s native Norway. The country’s Child Protective Services seize all five of the Gheorghius’ children, including their infant who still needs breast milk. The film follows the blistering legal battle that crosses the line between child protection and religious persecution.

While labeling Fjord a “MAGA movie” is a bit of a lazy generalization—after all, it does take place in Norway—it’s easy to see how the film could excite conservative pundits like Ben Shapiro and Megyn Kelly, while getting under the skin of some liberals. For most moviegoers, though, Mungiu’s thinkpiece will likely have a less rousing effect than intended.

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The truth about Fjord is this: It’s so rudimentary and, at times, silly that it was hard to muster any real outrage. The film is essentially two-plus hours of Mungiu asking the viewer, “What if discrimination happened to conservatives?” and insisting that all religions matter.

The family at the center of the film makes for an odd bunch in Norway’s largely irreligious society. The children don’t have cellphones and do nightly Bible study. They recite scriptures while doing chores and speak casually about the consequences of sinning. Their lifestyle is sharply contrasted with that of the school headmaster, Mats (Markus Tønseth), and his rebellious daughter, Noora (Henrikke Lund-Olsen), who takes an immediate interest in the Gheorghius’ eldest daughter, Elia (Vanessa Ceban). Mats, on the other hand, is suspicious of the Gheorghius and evangelicals in general, raising an eyebrow at all their religious customs and anyone playing “Amazing Grace” on a piano.

One day, Elia arrives at school with bruises on the back of her neck after getting in trouble at home. Faculty overhear her brother Emmanuel (Jonathan Ciprian Breazu) discussing the source of her bruises and immediately question the siblings. After both children confess that their parents inflict physical punishments, the police and CPS agents notify Mihai and Lisbet that they are under a criminal probe and take custody of their entire brood in the meantime.

From there, Fjord launches into a sluggish procedural drama that feels over from the moment it begins. Mungiu constructs an inert, straightforward trial, posing questions about what actually happened to Elia—and whether the audience should really give a damn—just to have them promptly answered or previously settled in an earlier scene.

It’s abundantly clear the ways in which the cards are stacked against Mihai and Lisbet, as they endure the dumbest cross-examinations by Christian-hating prosecutors. There’s also the issue of Norway’s Child Protective Services, which is portrayed as a nefarious, shadowy entity run by greedy social workers. Their interactions with the Gheorghiu family are robotic and cold, as if they couldn’t possibly be acting in good faith and actually care about the safety of their kids.

Other oppositional characters are cartoonishly daft, from an out-of-her-wits attorney to the children’s temporary caretaker, who’s appalled by the Gheorghiu household’s banning of YouTube. Meanwhile, Mats is lurking in the background of the Gheorghius’ legal scandal with a permanent scowl.

The viewer anticipates Elia’s much-needed perspective on her parents’ mistreatment throughout the trial, but the film seems more concerned with Mihai and Lisbet’s truth than hers. When we see Elia and Emmanuel during the investigation, they’re oddly unemotional about their sudden rehoming, and they don’t seem interested in helping their parents. (It’s unclear whether their home life is so terrible that they’re unfazed by something so traumatic, particularly in a brand-new country, or whether Mungiu thinks children don’t have the emotional depth or intellect to process such matters.)

The treatment of adolescents in Fjord is especially wanting compared with awards season’s better but less buzzy court drama, Josephine. Beth de Araújo’s fiery feature takes the inner life of its titular minor (Mason Reeves) seriously, as her innocence is violated by her sudden knowledge of rape. Meanwhile, Fjord essentially silences its children regarding their own experiences, granting more authority to the unreliable adults in the room.

Likewise, Mungiu avoids any real exploration of corporal punishment, its psychological effects on children, and the ways it’s often rationalized through religious and cultural norms, like when the film invokes Mihai’s Romanian background. Instead, the film maintains throughout that Mihai only “slapped” his children “on the butt.” If you think he deserves a prison sentence for that, which is the only route of justice presented to the viewer, you’re just as bad as the insincere progressives destroying families in Norway.

It’s not a defect of a film to see its cogs working, but only when they produce something that’s actually worthwhile. Aside from stunning vistas and solid yet oddly subdued performances from Stan and Reinsve (these characters are shockingly chill about their children being passed off to strangers), the film has little to offer between all the gesturing and signposting it does to get the audience on the side of its unlikely martyrs—least of all showing any interest in the psychology of its characters.

Mungiu might think his call for neutrality comes across as urgent or that the centering of white Christians in a family-separation story is subversive. But for those who’ve been experiencing the effects of Trump’s regime for a decade now, the director’s reverse-discrimination exercise falls flat.

What could’ve been a rich exploration of family, religion, and assimilation is unfortunately a snoozy lecture that much of its audience doesn’t need to hear. Whether the MAGA faithful end up making the movie their Oscar-season crusade is still an open question.

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Kyndall Cunningham

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