Husavik

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga is pretty much your basic modern comedy. A mixture of pratfalls, embracement, and silliness. Netflix has a reputation of letting its creators have a lot of freedom, and Fire Saga demonstrates that abundantly. At two hours and eight minutes it is bloated. And there are plenty of improv moments, side plots, and throw away jokes that could have been cut to make this a better, more entertaining movie.

And there is a good movie hiding in here. Not that I would really recommend it to just anyone. It is too crass as is for most people like me. But, then you get to the last twenty minutes…

The story in a nutshell is as follows: Lars and Sigrit have dreamed their whole lives of entering the Eurovision Song Contest. Lars wants to win to prove that he is worthy of his father’s respect and love. Sigrit just wants to win so that they can finally be together. In the finale of the movie, they perform a song that Sigrit has been composing that communicates her longing—not for victory and fame and success, but merely to create a home where she has always lived. In their little community of Husavik.

This is a longing I can understand. I have always had this romantic idea that it would have been nice to live in the same small town my whole life, fall in love with a girl I had known since childhood, and live out my days in a single community. Of course, it is not something I would ever really want. More of a “grass is greener” idea. But I think it expresses a true longing. C.S. Lewis spoke of a “sehnsucht” for the far away, beautiful place he had never been. To me this is just the other side of the same coin. The sehnsucht of belonging.

I find this idea in other stories and art. It is the real attraction to stories like Anne of Green Gables. It is the bittersweet nostalgia for home in “Faith My Eyes.”

But it is communicated in a perfect ballad composition, and the best part of “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga.”