Un bonheur fragile - Une famille se réinvente

Watched this at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.

A very interesting and emotional documentary about a Norwegian family living in the wilderness with great emotional interviews and conversations with the main participants and a sweet and tender observation of a family dealing with grief, wilderness life, and growth in the societal world. Filmmaker Silje Evensmo Jacobsen does a really good job on documenting the journey of the family as Jacobsen's direction and approach to the subject matter felt sweet and tender to observe.

I genuinely felt emotional and connection to the family. I can't imagine how tough it is to leave a home behind due to a tragedy. Each of the children were really sweet and adorable to observe and I genuinely felt bad for the whole family. The movie also has some gorgeous looking camerawork and it also does so how beautiful Norway really is.

Despite some of the pacing could be improved, I found myself enjoying and connecting this documentary a lot. It's like Captain Fantastic but more impactful. One of my favorite documentaries from the festival.

The main character doesn't have or watch television, but does not mind a film crew to live-record him and his family for the whole world to view. In the movie, he spends most of the time glumly looking at his beautiful family. In fact, everyone in the film is impossibly good-looking. I kept on asking myself, "Why am I watching these people's pointless life when there is nothing in them that I can identify with." Trying to live off the land is easy when you are white and living in one of the richest yet sparsely populated countries in the world. Trying doing the same in Mumbai or Mexico City or Johannesburg. Uff, what a supreme waste of time watching this poor remake of Captain Fantastic. Neither captain, nor fantastic.

I loved this film, it made me immediately immerse in it as a whole experience, because of the unusual form of documentary it is (partly self-biographical and biographical). The freedom from dogmatic styles of documentary is in it self a reflection of the free personalities in this story.

The main character (narrator) has undoubtedly a lot of artistic sense and integrity, so forceful, that it was possible for the instructor to extrapolate the wholeness and the details of this film from the source that was already there.

The norwegian and the british mutual underplayed sense of humor goes beautifully and convincingly well together in this existential questioning of life choices and values.

It is a true art the way this film is able to be light and dark, life-affirming and sad, humble and humbling, personal and yet so universal. It is a fantastic portrait of childhood and the human personal growth that keeps unfolding, how we learn and how we belong to something. My absolute biggest recommendations.