Fjord plays a dangerous game of false equivalence

How do you fully unpack a film like Fjord? Romanian director Cristian Mungiu’s film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes earlier this year. It’s a complex moral drama about white conservative migrants from Romania who arrive in a remote village in Norway and find themselves embroiled in a court case after being accused of abusing their children. It’s a film that withholds rather than divulges: we never see the cause of the bruise that raises the alarm. It’s a slippery undertaking that tries to navigate the issue without taking a side. However engrossing this might be on a narrative level, it also plays a dangerous game of false equivalence. Can we really compare progressivism run amok with fascism?

For better and for worse, Mungiu doesn’t fully commit to an answer. The movie does not ask us to back the Gheorghiu family uncritically, despite (mostly) taking their point of view. While loving and well-intentioned, their traditional values emerge as close-minded and, even without corporeal violence, borderline abusive.