A Critic Says ‘Fjord’ Has a Nanny-State Villain. At Cannes, Almost Everyone Seemed to Resist Saying What It Was About.
Cristian Mungiu’s ‘Fjord’ has been open for two weeks, and the critic’s question is blunt: where is the debate? The critic calls the film a political docudrama in the classic New Hollywood tradition, despite its meditative art-film cloak.
The critic’s reading has a clear villain: the nanny-state. Yet the critic says that at Cannes, almost everyone seemed to resist saying out loud what the movie is actually about.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
Take
The genre mismatch does a lot of work: an art-film cloak invites ambiguity-hunting, while a political docudrama has an argument to make.
Pushback
But the family is portrayed as loving and gentle, and the children describe occasional light smacks. A viewer can see ambiguity without concluding the film is neutral.