Oh Norway! Your movies are so challenging to understand.
Why not send us a sweet rom/com or a rich documentary? Why another angst-driven drama with themes of guilt and moral conflict? And another thing, why get so creative with your presentations, like breaking into a frenzied song and dance in “Armand,” inhabiting dreams of the dead in “Gavagai,” and a behind-the-scenes reveal in “The Fishing Place”?
In my analysis of this current film produced in Norway, “The Fishing Place,” let me begin by telling you that both my Norwegian father and grandfather, dedicated to honesty, self-sufficiency and hard work, were stream fishers. To leave Seattle early Saturday morning and head to a Cascade stream to trout fish was their Valhalla. It was a sweet surprise if they caught a 7-incher. So, the title of this film suggests to me that the title might be a metaphor for Heaven. Let’s see.
“The Fishing Place” bookends with Anna (multiple award-winning Norwegian Ellen Dorrit Petersen) gazing out at a fjord. Just before we see her, we see a small fishing boat trolling in the cold mists with snowy hilly mountains in the background. From context we guess that Anna is in Nazi custody and sent to this German-occupied location in Norwegian Telemark. In return for her freedom, she has consented to espionage. Useful for her captors, she speaks both Norwegian and German. We surmise she came from wealth, but now is placed as a servant to overhear and observe.
Without researching the film, I think the film investigates the deep guilt Norwegians harbor regarding survival and self-interest during the time they were occupied by the German Reich. In Anna’s case, it is a pacifist priest she is sent to betray. But in this assent to spy in return for her freedom, she compromises her soul.
When we go along with the goals and pretensions of any country’s government, whether that country is occupied, unduly influenced by another country, or is run by self-serving leadership, where and when must we act according to our own conscience, our own moral compass? What are the consequences when we don’t?
Norwegian feature films, including those by Rob Tregenza, a North American (born in Kansas) film-maker who shoots in Norway, are typically tales involving moral quagmires and strangeness. “The Fishing Place” ends with several minutes showing its film sets and movement trolly. As in real life, the cast obeys the director’s orders.
The opulent residence of the film’s aristocracy is just as fake as the ferry boat landing. What is real, what is true, and to what degree we are all marionettes directed by one person or government raises one set of questions. Where free will and moral action are possible raises others.
The plot of “The Fishing Place” is paralleled by the plaintive dissonance of Farecka Tregenza’s (the director’s daughter?) harp and hardanger (I assume) fiddle played by her husband, Jason Moody. The not-quite-happy notes mirror the psychological and political dilemmas of the film set in Telemark then and our world now.
The perfect fishing place for my dad (a WWII vet) and grandpa was away from the city. It was a hidden place upriver that they discovered through hiking in the dense, overgrown foothills of the Cascade Mountains. It was away from society, its contrivances and expectations. It was a place of peace.
That also seems to be the ultimate wish of Anna and the priest. Like other films shot in Norway, your mind has to work for a Tregenza film. That’s what makes it interactive and, in a flash of recognition, meaningful.
Credits
Director: Rob Tregenza
Screenplay: Rob Tregenza
Storv Idea: Rob Tregenza and Kirk Kjeldsen
Executive Producers: Rob Tregenza and Epoché
Producers: Rob Tregenza, Gestell, Tor Arne Ovrebo, and Living Daylights
Co-Producers: Niäl Lambrechts, Truewest, Gisle Tveito, and Storyline
First Assistant Director: Ben Lucas
Second Assistant Director: Petter Alnes-Bonesmo
Production Manager: Nial Lambrechts
Casting: Ellen Michelsen
Production Design: Geir Andersen
Art Director: Johannes Vang
Location Manager: Ingebjorg Torgersen
Extras Casting: Ionas Grimeland
Coordinator: Tonje Berg Pettersen
Director of Photography: Rob Tregenza
Editor: Elise Olavsen
Post Production Producer: Birgit Tregenza
Music: Farecka Tregenza and Jason Moodv. Harp and violin
Country: Norway
Release: March 7, 2025
Official Website: https://gavagaifilm.com/the-fishing-place-coming-soon/
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