In 2004, Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 went to the Cannes Film Festival and won the Palme d’Or. Awarded by a jury headed by Quentin Tarantino (who told Moore that the win “wasn’t about politics”), Fahrenheit 9/11 went on to gross hundreds of millions of dollars, breaking all kinds of records and elevating Moore to the priestly position he occupies to this day—but it didn’t stop George W. Bush from winning a second term. Years later, in an offhand comment, Tarantino said that Fahrenheit 9/11 “was a movie of the moment,” and that Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy deserved the Palme. “Be careful,” jury member Tilda Swinton told Park, “if Tarantino sees your movie, he’s going to steal something from it!” I wonder when she’s going to get the Paul Dano treatment.
Unlike the Oscars, Cannes enlists a new jury and jury president for every festival: just under a dozen fellow writers, directors, cinematographers, actors, people from every area of filmmaking. There’s no six-month campaign, no precursor awards, no screeners—the jury sees the films in competition about the same time as everyone else at the festival, whether it’s the press, the filmmakers, or festival goers (contrary to popular assumption, you can go to Cannes as “a civilian,” but good luck figuring it out on the cheap). Meetings are held and decisions are made over 10 days or so, with people coming and going for sales, sidebars, and special screenings held out of competition. By the time the Palme is awarded, many of the nominees have already left, clued in that they’re going to get shut out. But it’s all up and over so fast, so quickly, so efficiently, every May you wish the Academy would follow Cannes’ lead. Oscar nominees should be announced in the first week of January, and the awards should be held no later than the end of February. Turn that January/February “dumping ground” into an awards showcase and put all the art movies, flops, and foreign language films fill the multiplexes they never graced in the first place.
Christian Mungiu’s Fjord, this year’s Palme d’Or winner, opened in Baltimore last week and already looks like it’s on its last legs, removed from the Rotunda’s Warehouse Cinemas and down to one showing a day at the Charles. Mungiu isn’t getting any special treatment as a rare double Palme winner—how many people remember 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days? Certainly a catchy title. I remember when that movie won the Palme d’Or in 2007 and played at the Charles for a month, maybe six weeks. But that was years before the pandemic, long before the Charles would be forced to show Dune, Spider-Man, The Batman, K-Pop Demon Hunters, and countless other megahits that, say what you will, keep the lights on at thousands of American theaters.
Fjord isn’t as kinetic or despairing as the abortion drama 4 Months, but it’s more infuriating; I’m not surprised that it won the Palme, especially since every winner this decade has been something of a “movie of the moment”: Titane, Triangle of Sadness, Anatomy of a Fall, Anora, It Was Just an Accident. Just as the West swings between liberals and conservatives in power, the Palme bends with the wind; Anatomy of a Fall was a slightly more sophisticated version of that year’s Barbie, whereas Fjord challenges the “globalist” (all of a sudden, major newspapers feel comfortable using the word pejoratively) state of affairs in Europe. This wouldn’t be a “movie of the moment” without a second non-consecutive Trump term, or the migrant emergency across Europe. As relatively restrained and polite as it is, everything discussed in Fjord would’ve been verboten just a couple of years ago.
Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve play parents of five; Stan is Romanian (like Mungiu), Reinsve is Norwegian. They move from Romania to Reinsve’s hometown in Norway, and very quickly the Great Satan of European Bureaucracy goes after them. The Norwegians can’t stand this family, whose devout Christian faith irritates them to no end. Looking for a pretext to separate the children from their parents, a busybody bus driver conveniently overhears “something about the mother” when one of the kids shows up to school with a small bruise on her face. Before this happens, Mungiu makes it abundantly clear that this is a normal, loving family without any real tension or violence in the home. But still, the bruise. The children are questioned, asked if their parents have ever “slapped” them, and intimidated into giving affirmative answers to misleading questions. The children are taken into state custody before the end of the school day, and Reinsve is told she’s guilty until found innocent—her husband’s already in jail.
What follows is a very didactic, very on-the-nose, and nonetheless compelling legal drama about the fate of these kids and this family. The Norwegians are comically out of touch and made to say ridiculous things to further the film’s point: one foster parent mentions derisively that “the children weren’t allowed to watch YouTube or listen to modern music;” another heated dinner table conversation between a Norwegian husband and wife includes lines like “All those kids have are The Bible! How do you expect anyone to grow up properly like that?” The same guy rejects his wife’s assessment of rational atheism as “just another opinion;” and as far as toxic households go, this guy ends an argument with his daughter about the case by slamming his fist into the dinner table. It’s a far more violent gesture than anything Stan or Reinsve do, but Mungiu is hellbent on making sure the audience gets his point.
Almost all of the Norwegian bureaucrat villains are childless spinsters and lesbians, unwilling or unable to see themselves as the real abusers here. One of them cuts off Stan because she “can’t tolerate [his] tone”—and she’s their lawyer! A government staffed by Nurse Ratcheds… Fjord is far scarier than Palme winner Titane, or any of the hugely successful horror movies of the past few years. Because it’s so compelling, you don’t mind the speechifying—especially since this is based on a real case. Mungiu may lay it on thick, but unfortunately Fjord isn’t nearly as exaggerated as it may seem. It may be a “movie of the moment,” but one that won’t wither in weeks.
—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter: @NARCFILM