Fjord Review

Fjord will be released in theaters October 9.

How well do you truly know your neighbor? How much do you actually care to?

These are the questions at the heart of Fjord, a fraught drama that becomes about opposing families caught on either side of a “culture war” while seeming to care rather little for the people themselves. Centering on a religious Romanian family who immigrate to a chilly remote village in Norway, where they soon find themselves coming under scrutiny by the more progressive community when suspected of abusing their children, it’s a film that feels designed to challenge the preconceptions of all who see it. But rather than succeed at doing so, it ends up painting with far too broad a brush, capturing plenty of beautiful, haunting landscapes while leaving the actual people populating them at a perpetual distance. Even with Marvel star Sebastian Stan giving one of his best, most understated performances to date alongside the always magnificent Renate Reinsve of The Worst Person in the World, there’s no shaking just how cold and alienating it all becomes the longer that it goes on.

Whether this is the ultimate goal is something worth interrogating, but it’s still a shame to see so much talent squandered on something so surprisingly shallow. Even if the point is to keep us in the dark so that we’re left to reflect on our assumptions about the two perspectives at odds in the film, the results of the film’s choices still mean we’re looking down on the world from a thousand feet up in the sky. If you squint hard, you can see the complexities and contradictions being teased out by the strong cast, though this is still a strangely challenging undertaking in a film ostensibly about how people don’t care to understand each other. The frustration this creates may mirror that of the characters, but it all becomes one-note, leaving us with little to hold onto as it shifts into being a half-hearted legal thriller of sorts, as well as a look at how modern polarization can put a strain on communal living. That the film itself is then lacking in life, often reducing its characters to caricatures, is a contradiction it can’t overcome.This is all despite the best efforts of Stan, who plays the conservative family patriarch, Mihai, and Reinsve, who plays his wife, Lisbet. Reuniting the duo after their spectacular and slept-on recent film, A Different Man, the film is at its best when it just lets them authentically inhabit a scene. From the moment we first get introduced to them via a tense opening that hints at some of the truth, you almost forget that it’s Stan you’re watching. Part of this has to do with his physical appearance: Ever committed as an actor, Stan fully shaved his head. He also carries himself in a more reserved way, though it’s also the even more minute details that make you feel as if you’re just observing an awkward, overbearing father navigating his new home. Similarly, Reinsve is operating on a more reserved though no less mesmerizing wavelength, with even scenes of her just silently working genuinely drawing you in. It’s then unfortunate that, even with all this compelling work, the film increasingly pulls us further and further away from them. For director Mungiu, who has made plenty of intriguing work in the past, such as 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and the recent riveting R.M.N., the more low-key moments are where he’s at his best. That this gives way to a more labored, broadly-sketched series of escalations leaves little in the way of a meaningful impact. Specifically, there is a serious allegation made, and the children of the newcomers are subsequently taken by CPS. We only briefly get to know said children before they are all whisked away, ultimately preventing us from understanding what their thoughts on the situation might be or if there’s something to be gleaned from their perspectives. Instead, Fjord becomes about a banal and uncaring bureaucracy that traps the entire community in a tense standoff while never seeming to care about the richer complexities of the characters navigating it. There are interrogation scenes, courtroom confrontations, and some critical revelations scattered throughout, though they don’t cohere into anything nearly as compelling as the film was when the actors were being given room to inhabit their characters. Indeed, by the time it all draws to a rushed close, so much is left dangling that it almost plays as a bit of a shrug. Compared to the layered nuance and quiet intensity of Mungiu’s previous work, it’s an experience that becomes more of a letdown the more you think about it. You can’t fully dismiss it, as there remains plenty of promise, but you also can’t fully embrace it either. Perhaps the filmmaker himself was searching for some greater clarity in the chaotic culture war narrative he created from real news stories he had read, but neither he nor us end up finding much of it. There is certain to be much discussion around the film, its political perspective, and what it’s trying to say, though it’s hard to feel like it was trying to say much at all. By the time it all draws to a rushed close, so much is left dangling that it almost plays as a bit of a shrug.“Perhaps this is Mungiu trying to take a more impartial, observational perspective that could eventually allow for some deeper ideas and emotions to come pouring out. The trouble then is that there’s genuinely little to actually observe or experience, especially as it expands outward even further from the supposed main characters. What is the truth of what happened? How did all of these people come to this point? Is there anything that could possibly provide greater insight into any of them? The film’s ambivalence toward much of the complexity of this story may be an attempt at being evenhanded, but this is all a masquerade, as the film increasingly sees Mungiu putting his hand not-so-subtly on the scales. In the end, how well do we truly know any of these characters? Even if you genuinely want to, Mungiu — surprisingly — does not.A Different ManAvengers: Infinity WarAvengers: EndgameCaptain America: The First AvengerCaptain America: The Winter SoldierCaptain America: Civil WarCaptain America: Brave New WorldDumb MoneyFreshI, TonyaThe ApprenticeThunderbolts*Other (tell us in the comments)