Netflix vs. Norway: A Deserved Slander? - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Netflix vs. Norway: A Deserved Slander?
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I don’t have kids, but for several years I’ve belonged to a Facebook group for people who absolutely despise Norwegian Child Welfare Services, known in Norway as Barnevernet. Many if not most of the group’s members are parents whose children have been taken away from them for reasons they consider unjust and who want to share their stories and ask one another for advice. Some of the anecdotes I’ve read are harrowing. Of course, one only hears the parents’ side, but one encounters the same kinds of details over and over again. Not infrequently, moreover, there are reports in the newspapers about children in Barnevernet’s custody being neglected, mistreated, ending up on drugs, and worse. 

I can certainly testify that at least a few parents I’ve known in Norway fear child protective officials in a way that no American I know does. Once I asked a friend who was heading downtown if she could pick up a bottle of wine for me at the Vinmonopol (wine monopoly), but she explained apologetically that she simply couldn’t risk it: she had her two small children with her, and what if somebody from Barnevernet saw her taking them into the Vinmonopol? Reasonably or not, she was terrified that she might lose custody. 

So I was curious about the new Netflix movie Mrs. Chatterjee vs. Norway, about Debika (Rani Mukerji), a Hindu immigrant from Kolkata, who lives with her husband, Anirudh (Anirban Bhattacharya), in Stavanger, Norway, and whose two small children, Suchi and Shubh, are suddenly removed from their home by Barnevernet, which in this film is rechristened Velfred. The story is loosely based on an actual case that made headlines in both Norway and India in 2011, but that I never heard of until now, having been away from Norway for much of that year. 

A quick Internet search has now led me to a contemporaneous story about the case in Stavanger Aftenblad.  The mother’s real name was Sagarika Chakraborty; her husband was a geophysicist working at a multinational oil company; their son was three years old, their daughter five months old. The seizure of the children, according to Stavanger Aftenblad, had been reported on the front page of the Times of India and officially protested by the Indian embassy, but Norwegian authorities refused to give up the children. The couple’s lawyer accused Barnevernet of having shown “a total lack of judgment” by “arrogantly” rejecting a series of reasonable solutions he’d proposed.

And the movie? In its opening moments, we see Debika playing host in her pleasant home to two professionally dressed Norwegian women, Sia (Kärt Tammjärv) and Matilda (Britta Sol), who watch her like a hawk, keep exchanging meaningful looks with each other, and take voluminous notes. We learn that they’ve “been visiting for four months now” and will deliver their “final review” tomorrow. Tomorrow comes, and so do the women — who proceed to kidnap the kids. 

Debika is hysterical; Anirudh plays it calm. When they’re given a chance to speak to the authorities, they’re told that they’re unfit to care for their children, who have been made wards of the state. A messy legal process ensues: they’re assigned a court-appointed lawyer, regain custody, see it rescinded almost immediately, get a new lawyer. Along the way we see aspects of both Debika and Anirudh that might suggest that they aren’t the very best of parents: she can get overemotional, and he’s capable of smacking her when she does. 

In a series of conference-room and courtroom scenes, Debika and Anirudh are told what Norway considers wrong about their parenting. She hand-feeds her children and cries in front of them. Anirudh doesn’t help with housework. Norway, we gather, doesn’t appreciate “cultural diversity.” One official pleads with the Chatterjees “to be more integrated with the Norwegian system vis-à-vis their children’s upbringing.” In one scene, Debika surreptitiously gains access to the “emergency home” where her kids are being held and, while scouring the place for them (unsuccessfully), stumbles upon a room full of state-abducted children — which opens her eyes to just how widespread this chilling phenomenon is.  

Her legal options running out — and her kids on the verge of being put up for permanent adoption — Debika turns to a friend, Nandidi (Charu Shankar), who introduces her to Rabia (Roopangi Vanvari), a woman in hijab who was a lawyer in her home country but now runs a small shop in Stavanger. Rabia’s son, too, was nabbed by Velfred, which, she and Nandini explain, is “a very dangerous agency” which runs “a business under the pretext of fostering kids.” You see, after “lur[ing] in immigrants from poor countries with its money,” Norway “take[s] their children away” and finds them homes with prosperous foster families.  It’s “organized crime,” in short, and “everyone is involved: judges, teachers, foster families, and especially the lawyers. The more children they put into the foster system, the more money they make.” 

Good heavens, what evil! But what to do? Tracking her children down to a foster home, Debika escapes with them and transports them by train over the Swedish border. But she’s stopped at passport control — a plot hole, given that there is no passport control between Norway and Sweden — and is sent back home after her third or fourth on-screen explosion of hysteria. In yet another courtroom scene, her lawyer calls as a witness a young Norwegian psychologist who was fired by Velfred because she was appalled by the injustice of the Chatterjee case, and who requires a translator because she doesn’t speak English. Another plot hole: no Norwegian psychologist would ever need an English translator. (The film gets many other details wrong – for example, a Norwegian woman is shown wearing a wedding ring on her left hand instead of her right, which is the universal practice in Norway.)

Despite the psychologist’s testimony, the court once again rules against Debika. Several more twists and turns ensue, which take her back to India — where, not to give away any more spoilers, she discovers herself to have been the victim of a shocking betrayal and goes through yet another courtroom scene, where (after three years of unsuccessful struggle) she finally meets a lawyer and judge who seem as if they may actually be righteous souls.   

Directed by Ashima Chibber, who wrote the script with Rahul Handa and Sameer Satija, Mrs. Chatterjee vs. Norway is in Bengali, Hindi, English, and Norwegian. If the Norwegian doesn’t sound quite right, it’s because all the characters playing Norwegians are really Estonian (except for one who’s both Finnish and Danish). And if some of the settings don’t look Norwegian, it’s because the movie was filmed in Estonia. The movie is handsomely shot, but the directing is sluggish; at 144 minutes, it should have been at least half an hour shorter. 

As for the writing and acting, this is a Bollywood production, so the characters are one-dimensional and every emotion oversold; there are long, unnecessary flashbacks whose only purpose is to show that the Chatterjees are a happy family, and the narrative stops dead several times for montages featuring songs whose sappy lyrics (in Bengali) underscore points that have already been more than sufficiently made. Mukerji is a Bollywood star, but her acting here is hammy and superficial; by contrast, the women who play Norwegian civil servants are all terrifically realistic, bringing to their roles just the right touch of terrifyingly frosty, bureaucratic soullessness. 

Mrs. Chatterjee vs. Norway has a great premise for a thriller: a corrupt nation lures in desperate immigrants by dangling before them hopes of wealth, only to turn a profit by stealing their children and placing them with well-off Norwegians. But is it true? Of course not. In a title card containing the most detailed disclaimer I’ve ever seen in a movie, the filmmakers admit as much: “The film does not claim to be an authentic or accurate representation or depiction of the events, or the opinion of the makers of the film or persons associated with the film on such events.… The film does not intend to defame, denigrate, disparage or hurt the sentiments of any person, religious group, community, institution, nationality, profession or any class of person(s), gender, caste or religion in any manner.”

Nor am I defending Barnevernet when I say that the idea that the Norwegian government dislikes “cultural diversity” is just plain hilarious. Norway’s elites adore “cultural diversity.” They live by it. It’s their life blood. They praise Muslims just for existing. Hindus like the Chatterjees are a bit further down the pecking order, but they, too, are constantly being celebrated for their wonderful exoticism, with politicians and journalists routinely thanking their “new compatriots” for enriching Norway with their glorious cultural practices (including, apparently, forcd marriage, which, we learn late in Mrs. Chatterjee vs. Norway, was how Debika and Anirudh hooked up). In return for all this love, Ashima Chibber has chosen to make the Kingdom of Norway the target of an appalling slander. Good. Maybe it’ll help the Norwegian establishment to wise up.

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