Liberalism’s war on religious families

Fjord — the inspired-by-real-events drama that wowed last month’s Cannes Film Festival, earning the Palm d ‘ Or — explores the limits and paradoxes of liberalism. Does liberalism require tolerance for religious conservatives and others who don’t share its basic assumptions? Do progressives “other” some minorities (even as they embrace and celebrate others)? Are there substantive moral commitments behind liberalism’s supposedly neutral procedures?

The genius of the film, by the celebrated Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, is that it poses these questions without ever forcing simple, didactic answers.

Early on in the story, we know evangelical Christianity is going to be a theme. We hear a Norwegian rendition of “Amazing Grace” sung at a church gathering, and we learn the origin story of the film’s lead couple: the Norwegian Lisbet (Renate Reinsve) was on a humanitarian Christian mission in Romania when she met Mihai Gheorghiu (Sebastian Stan). They now have five kids together and, after years of living in Bucharest, have moved to Lisbet’s picturesque hometown in western Norway, where Mihai takes a job as a technician at the local school.

The couple’s Christian mores soon draw censure from many in the local community. The kids go to church every Sunday and study the Bible every day using a points-based system (you lose points if you misbehave or forget your daily portions). Unlike their peers, the Gheorghiu children aren’t allowed to use YouTube, dance, or own smartphones. Clashes erupt, both at the school and between Gheorghius and their next-door neighbors, the Halsbergs, with whom they have a complex relationship.

Mats Halsberg (Markus Tønseth), who had initially made a point of warmly welcoming the family, is discomfited by their Christianity (he forbids Mihai from playing “Amazing Grace” on the piano at the local school where he works, even without the words). But his Swedish wife, Mia (Lisa Carlehed), whose outsider perspective perhaps renders her more understanding, gets along with Lisbet, who joins her in taking care of Mats’s wheelchair-bound father, Ake. The children get along, too. Elia Gheorghiu (Vanessa Ceban) forms a particularly close relationship with Noora Halsberg (Henrikke Lund-Olsen), a teenage rebel whose wild ways are in sharp contrast to Elia’s obedience to the Almighty and her parents.

We might expect an arthouse European film to indict the conservative Christian family at its center, mocking the members’ backwardness and showing their dark side. Mungiu himself has a venerable history of confronting religious obscurantism. His Palm-winning 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) tackled the draconian anti-abortion laws in Romania. Beyond the Hills (2012) portrayed an Orthodox convent accusing two women in an intimate relationship of being possessed. R.M.N. (2022), too, paints a picture of a local church in Romania as a regressive institution.

But Fjord takes us on a wholly different path. When officials at the school notice bruises on Elia and her brother, they act swiftly and bring in Norway’s famously zealot Child Welfare Services. Within a day, all five children (even a still-nursing infant) are taken away from the family and placed in foster care. The film thus becomes a courtroom drama, as the Gheorghius throw all they have at a chance to get their children back.

Without surrendering to didacticism or painting a heroic picture of the family, the film gently takes the Gheorghius’ side, pointing out the gaping hypocrisies of the supposedly progressive Norwegian host society. The progressive townspeople, the film suggests, are animated by prejudice: against religious devotion, against the traditional mores of Romanian society.

We live in the age of self-righteous ideological siloes, in which partisans of one side don’t bother to learn much about those of the other, often making do with cartoonish views of them. Social progressives and Leftists must be familiar with this phenomenon, having long critiqued the act of “othering” minorities. But liberals and Leftists can be equally prone to “othering” minorities they don’t approve of, as Fjord shows.

“The couple’s Christian mores soon draw censure from many in the local community.”

The film doesn’t sugarcoat the Gheorghius. Portrayed stoically and firmly by Stan, Mihai is not a particularly likable character, often appearing as dogmatic and mildly authoritarian. There is also no denying that the Gheorghius use corporal punishment as a routine part of parenthood, although the methods of discipline are never quite revealed. The specifics are lost in translation between three languages — English being the lingua franca between all sides — but it seems to be mild spanking, and certainly nothing harsh enough to leave bruises. Having seen how physical the games Noora plays with the kids are, we can assume those to be the cause for the bruises. Noora herself tells her parents as much.

With Mungiu’s typically masterful storytelling, the f…