America, Europe is Checking You Out!
6 Things We Learned from Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga
Towards the end of the raucous and sublime Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, Will Ferrell’s Icelandic character, Lars Erickssong, calls out from a small stage in his small hometown bar, where he and Rachel McAdams’s Icelandic character, Sigrit Ericksdottir, the other (better) half of fictional musical duo Fire Saga, are playing a gig. He is speaking in between songs to the four American tourists in the room and this is what he says:
Lars: Hey, Americans, are you having a good time in Iceland?
Americans: Yeah!
Lars: Well we hate that you’re here. Yah, so why don’t you go back home, alright? Don’t you have some traffic to sit in with your monster trucks and your chili corn dogs?
Sigrit: Okay, Lars…
Lars: Yah, why, I have some opiates for you, you can take while you over-leverage your credit cards and you buy too many houses. Yes, how does that feel?
Sigrit: Okay, hey, hey!
Lars: No, I’m not done. [Turns back to the Americans.] I hate you! I hate your guts!
The band’s prepubescent drummer, Stephan, offers a rimshot. The Americans keep laughing, but it wasn’t a punchline. (That’s the punchline!) Lars isn’t joking. For a moment, beloved American comedian Will Ferrell isn’t joking.
Other reviewers have called this movie “an over-egged farce [that] whips slapstick and cheese into an authentic souffle of tastelessness,” ”high-concept, low-brow romantic comedy that overstays its welcome,” and “silly.” Of course it is slapstick and silly. It’s a Will Ferrell movie. But the reviews we’ve read are missing some deep and urgent points in silliness’s midst.
This movie uses humor and song to disarm us, especially the Americans in the audience, to show us something marvelous that isn’t ours, but is something we might aspire to, and perhaps to get us to reflect on what we look like to the rest of the world. For us, it works. Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, we see you! There you are! And here we are, delightfully surprised to be learning from you.
Lesson One: Eurovision is much more than a competition
We see you saying Eurovision — the annual contest that started in 1956 — is a party to which America isn’t invited. And oh, what a party it is! You’d never heard of it, America? That’s because you weren’t invited, but just because you’re not there doesn’t mean something isn’t happening. And oh, how happening Eurovision is.
In Will Ferrell’s (along with co-writer Andrew Steele and director David Dobkin) depicting, there are over-the-top costumes by the Academy Award-nominated costume designer Anna Biedrzycka Sheppard: sequin dresses and sparkle bodysuits, satin gowns and tailored lamé, “twenty-first-century Vikings” and Demi Lovato as a ghost on fire.
There is Sigrit’s extra-festive idiosyncrasy of drinking two drinks at once, one in each hand, which in Rachel McAdams’s hands looks more adorable than addicted. There is Matthew Crawley (okay, Dan Stevens) as a super rich Russian playboy (or would-be playboy, see below) and Eurovision contestant with a killer baritone named Alexander Lemtov. It turns out Matthew Crawley was born to wear tailored lamé, if anyone ever doubted.
There is the exact right amount of the adjective “super,” which turns out to sound super cute when spoken with a “European” accent, even one that isn’t particularly accurate. (Do yourself a favor and suspend your disbelief!) There is choreography ranging from the earnestly hip hop Johnny John John to the Cirque-inspired Mita Xenakis. There is, true to Eurovision form, absurdly spectacular staging, which we won’t give away. (Avoid the trailer if you can — it gives away way too much.)
And there is harmony, as when a hundred or so Eurovision contestants from fifty or so countries gather at Lemtov’s castle party, many of them former Eurovision winners in real life, erupt into a mashup of Cher’s “Believe,” Madonna’s “Ray of Light,” ABBA’s “Waterloo,” Celine Dion’s “Ne partez pas sans moi,” and “I Gotta Feeling” by the Black Eyed Peas. It is, as Lemtov promised, a “very crazy sexy time.”
Lesson Two: The perfect movie isn’t the winning movie, but a movie that comes from the heart
We see you, Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, saying that creativity and diversity go together. The fearlessness — better yet, vulnerability required for people to pursue wackadoo dreams against conventional odds and sing their hearts out to the world is the same force that breaks through conventional barriers of racism, homophobia, misogyny, and other fears of others.
Offstage after a wildly homoerotic performance in the finals, Lemtov reverts to the Russian party line, arguing to Sigrit that there are “no gay people in Russia.” Therefore, he reasons, he cannot be gay.
But in his castle in Edinburgh, at his party before the semifinals, there is that mashup, a “songalong” where people of many colors, genders, sizes, ages, and countries come together and hold space for each other to be themselves and express themselves and harmonize together.
In this mashed-up fantasy, Alexander Lemtov is free to be gay and Sigrit Ericksdottir finds her voice from deep within. This is the world we want to live in. The castle, costumes, and production values may be fantastic (we love to dress up and sing, too, but our parties wouldn’t look or sound quite as fabulous to outsiders), but the song crescendoes to our realization that what’s happening here is more real than any intolerant regime or individual can deny.
This is the boisterous truth of humanity, and it is bursting at the seams.
Lesson Three: It will never be enough
We see you, you tender, ridiculous, hilarious, serious, beautiful, if slightly-too-long, movie. During these times of anguish and uncertainty, we cling to messages of hope and love. Sure the movie is long, but we could — and do — watch it over and over again. Pro tip: watch it more than once, as we already had within twenty-four hours of seeing it for the first time, and you’ll know which bits to fast forward.
Olaf, the grumpy pub patron says it best: “IT WILL NEVER BE ENOUGH!” Sigrid understands, “This is the only thing that makes him happy.” We see you, Olaf, and we don’t fault you for holding fast to the thing that makes you happy. But, you don’t have to shout. Remember, “anger cannot churn the butter.”
Lesson Four: Other people can unlock something inside of us, if we let them
We see you, when you show us what it looks like to care more about doing the best we can and lifting each other up than about winning. This is a movie about a competition and yet in the entire two hours and three minutes, none of the performers say a mean thing about their artistic rivals. While the governing boards and commentators have plenty of barbs for Fire Saga, among the artists love, appreciation, and encouragement flow like the champagne in Sigrit’s “tall glasses.”
Mita Xenakis (Melissanthi Mahut), the Greek goddess, expresses genuine admiration and delight for Sigrit when she finds her voice. Sigrit hears but a few bars of Lemtov’s song and, upon learning he’s one of the favorites to win, says, without a hint of snark or jealousy, “I can see why.”
The one potentially negative comment anyone makes is delivered by Lemtov to Sigrit. In an effort to calm Sigrit’s nerves, he asks her why she should be nervous: “You don’t have even single chance of making it. Oddsmakers say you won’t get single vote. You will be great!” It’s an act of love, not cruelty, meant to take the pressure off and encourage Sigrit to enjoy herself. Even a deceased contestant troubles herself to come back from the great beyond and warn Lars of impending danger. Eurovision may be a competition, but these contestants know they are all in it together.
Lesson Five: Kindness — not cruelty — is the point
We see you, Eurovision Song Contest The Story of Fire Saga in — spoiler! — Sigrit’s soaring performance in the final round, literally singing the praises of “gentle people.” We hear you telling us to “be cool,” by which you seem to mean kind, as when Sigrit asks a police officer to be cool and unhandcuff Lars, who was arrested for getting too excited about getting into Eurovision and ringing the church bell; or when a Eurovision competitor lowers his phone and forgoes tabloid-worthy video of Sigrit in a moment of humiliation.
Wait, kind and gentle are cool? Sure, the main characters of Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga are only human. They get jealous and lose their tempers sometimes, knock over garbage cans, and say and do hurtful things. One of them says “I hate you” to the Americans in the room — though by that point in the movie, its higher purpose is clear: to celebrate people living peacefully in a global community committed to not only respecting but also learning from each other’s best dreams.
The movie itself is kind. Critics who mistook this love letter for a satire missed the point. Those who gleefully tore into it (again, Anthony Lane?), might reflect on what they have in common with the one asshole in the audience who cackles at — spoiler again — Fire Saga’s stumble in the semifinal round, that is, before everyone else starts cheering and clapping in shared humanity and genuine appreciation for what had gone right. The point is not only that kindness is good, but that kindness can be smart and funny, too. We don’t have to choose between being sappy chumps or clever jerks. There is another way, the Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga way.
Lesson Six: America is small, so small
As joyful as this movie is to see and songalong to, it is painful for most Americans to see themselves right now. While America hasn’t in sixty-four years been invited to Eurovision, just this month we made a new, sad list of countries not invited to Europe at all for the foreseeable future, as long as Covid-19 remains out of control in the United States. At the same time, four years of ignorant, incompetent, and malevolent national leadership in this country has drained our reserves of international prestige and moral authority to practically empty. The world is, as Sigrit and Lars’s best-friend banter goes, “checking us out.” It sees America, even if we don’t see ourselves, and based on what it sees these days, it pities us when it doesn’t outright hate us. Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga shows us Europe as the leader of a huge, in this case musical, effort to unite a fractured world. Forget American exceptionalism. Remember NATO. We should be so lucky as to be asked back to Europe. We should try to be cooler.
