The fourth wall is broken in the first moments of filming, and the opening scene sets up the dynamic between the filmmaker and the filmed. From there on out, Fredriksson lets the tale tell itself. Occasionally an interviewer’s voice is heard, moving things along, answering a question, and once, to express a justifiable WTF moment. These points in time where we realize the filmmaker is toiling at her craft serve as an artful glimpse, reminding the audience of the constraints and trusts involved in telling an intimate family saga. It’s basic physics: if you’re in the room, you’re part of the experiment.
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If filmmaker Maria Fredriksson could have seen where this story was going, she might have discarded the idea of a feature-length documentary in favor of a highly marketable reality TV show. Considering the taffy-pulling pace of many TV docuseries, The Gullspang Miracle could have easily been converted to five or six episodes, perhaps entitled The Gullspang Chronicles, Season One.
Maria Fredriksson. Photo credit: Daniel Milton
This documentary, produced by a consortium that includes Ballad Film, SVT Film, i Vast, Film Stockholm, Mer Film, and Good Company Pictures, drips with revelations, plot twists, suspicion, and Nordic fundamentalism. Fredriksson, co-founder of Ballad Film, wrote and directed The Gullspang Miracle. Though she’s made documentary shorts and experimented with other formats, this is her first feature-length doc. At its world premiere at the 2023 Tribeca Festival, this debut effort was nominated for Best Feature Documentary. Though The Gullspang Miracle did not win that award, Mark Bukdahl and Orvar Anklew took home the Tribeca prize for best documentary editing.
Two of the story’s main characters, Kari and May, are real-life sisters who were born about 70 years ago in northern Norway. May lives a thousand miles south of their birthplace, in southern Sweden. While visiting her sister, Kari fractured her tailbone on a roller-coaster ride. Kari’s injury gives her seven weeks to knit sweaters, forget her husband (who’s only briefly mentioned), and help her sister search for a divine sign.
That divine sign appears on the kitchen wall of a real estate listing in the nearby Swedish village of Gullspang. Filled with excited reverence, May calls her sister into a plain-looking kitchen, where a dark needlepoint still-life hangs on a white wall, flanked by two smaller prints. The women call it a “painting,” but perhaps that’s a serviceable English translation for “paint by the numbers needlepoint kit.”
To Kari, the three works of art symbolize the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. She tells her sister, “This apartment will be mine.”
When the women go to the real estate office to close the deal, the seller, a woman named Ouleg, bears a jarring resemblance to Kari and May’s long-dead sister. A few questions reveal that Ouleg is from a village on the other side of the same mountain where the sisters grew up. Ouleg was born on the same day, February 9, 1941, as poor deceased Astrid. Astrid and Ouleg even share the same nickname, “Lita.”
It’s unclear why, at that point, two plainspoken devout sisters contacted a fledgling feminist documentary filmmaker. Kari and May don’t seem like attention-seekers, but they leave a message on Fredriksson’s voicemail. Perhaps they felt, as witnesses to a miracle, their story should be shared.
Ouleg, it appears, had nothing to do with the inception of the documentary project, but she’s pivotal to what happens next.
As The Gullspang Miracle morphs into a mystery, the twists and turns explore our human need for connection and closure. What motivates us to dig deeper into our family histories? What uncertainties can we live with? What unpleasant discoveries about ourselves and our families might we find along the way? What biases do we carry that might make us root for one outcome or another?
It’s clear from the outset that a mystical fundamentalism permeates Kari and May’s lives, and that Ouleg sees her upbringing and intellectualism as advantages that Kari and May were denied. Ouleg reclines alone on a brocade sofa, listening to classical music, while Kari and May find strength in each other, their family, and their faith. Ouleg trudges up a rutted path in the company of her thoughts, to a tiny, tidy guest trailer while Kari and May reminisce with their brother’s many children in the family farmhouse.
The intimacy of aging faces is offset with stunning overcast vistas of the Norse countryside, and interiors that manage to be fussy and uninviting at the same time.
Snippets of old family movies are a bit repetitive, but they effectively communicate an emotional distance between the lost sister Astrid and her family. Director of photography Pia Lehto keeps coming back to an old faded photo of Astrid, displayed on a spindle-turned shelf. Astrid’s eyes are distant. That’s not a smile.
If Fredriksson had succumbed to the temptation to cash in on a miniseries, the pacing would surely have suffered — though I’m betting this Swedish-Norwegian-Danish co-production would have topped the ratings on long Nordic nights. Instead, the disciplined writer/director opted for an award-winning edit and a 1-hour, 49-minute runtime.
There were moments in the soundtrack, especially in the beginning, where it felt as though a keyboard player, soloist, or string quartet had intruded on the scene, with strict orders to add gravitas. Background music in documentary films is dicey: sometimes it’s best when it’s registered emotionally, without overt awareness. The music in The Gullspang Miracle felt a bit imposed. There are moments when it works, though: an organic prayerful hymn, sung by the family around a kitchen table, was spot on.
Olaug Bakkevold Østby. Courtesy of Ballad Film.
Fredriksson shows cinematic discipline in the treatment of her subjects: even whispers and digs are filmed with a sensitive eye. Every participant in this film was treated with respect, even when the things they were saying and doing might not have been respectful. There are no “suspicious angle” or “fake reaction” shots.
The fourth wall is broken in the first moments of filming, and the opening scene sets up the dynamic between the filmmaker and the filmed. From there on out, Fredriksson lets the tale tell itself. Occasionally an interviewer’s voice is heard, moving things along, answering a question, and once, to express a justifiable WTF moment. These points in time where we realize the filmmaker is toiling at her craft serve as an artful glimpse, reminding the audience of the constraints and trusts involved in telling an intimate family saga. It’s basic physics: if you’re in the room, you’re part of the experiment.
The Gullspang Miracle is a great story, but the premise is becoming increasingly commonplace. A few years ago, my mother, in her early nineties, picked up the phone to a sweet voice. “Are you Gary’s sister?” The caller, from Utah, knew details of my uncle’s life, including a girlfriend my mother remembered fondly. The caller had taken a DNA test: she is my uncle’s daughter. I had a new cousin, and the faith she practices meant that my new relative had a large family, including a son who bears an uncanny resemblance to my dead uncle. I wondered at first if my new cousin would try to convert our nominally Jewish clan. Nope. Her family has been a joyful, helpful addition to our family. No judgment. No kvetching.
Before you open that DNA kit you got from a well-meaning relative, be aware that it may be a genetic time bomb, waiting to explode into a full-blown family soap opera. The Gullspang Miracle gives viewers a chance to think about how we might react if our heritage is questioned, and how we might accept others who may (or may not) share the same DNA. The documentary gives us an insight into what happens when flawed, fallible people find themselves in tough circumstances that are unlikely to go away, even as the credits roll.
The Gullspang Miracle is entirely in Swedish. I am a lazy American. Subtitles are a speed bump. Buckle in. This one’s worth the ride.
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All images courtesy of Tribeca Film Festival and the film’s production companies.
