For an outsider, contemporary Christian evangelism can often seem like a car show or sports event. Places of worship have become arena-sized venues, with services featuring live bands, light shows, and sermons design to lift the spirit (and open your wallet). The idea has been to take Jesus out of the fussy, dusty wooden pews and stained glass of your grandma’s church into something far more inviting and modern. However, despite all the bells and whistles, faith is still the main currency (outside of actual dollars and cents). Congregants are expected to live a life worthy of Christ, and for a young person who has been taught that happiness and struggle in life are dealt at Jesus’ whim, it can be hard to accept. This is the world that Mirjam (Josefine Frida Pettersen) struggles within “Disco,” an uneven peek into the outer reaches of Christian belief and the fraying psyche of one young woman.
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On the surface, Mirjam has it all. She’s a world champion dancer with a closet full of trophies to prove it. She’s being groomed to be a youth leader at the church where her step-father Per (Nicolai Cleve Broch) plays an essential role in recruiting young members to the flock. The church looks more like a boutique hotel, all glass and rustic wood, with a very chic coffee bar located inside. And when it’s time for worship, everyone gathers for an experience that’s more Broadway show than a sermon.
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However, the devil lies in the details. Mirjam shows tendencies towards anorexia as she fights to maintain her perch in the dance world. The marriage between Per and her mother Vanja (Kjærsti Odden Skjeldal) is coming apart, partly due to a threat from her violent ex—who also may have abused Mirjam—that forces them to live in hiding. However, Vanja may have traded in one form of abuse for another. Per, the kind of Christian who is hip enough to own Leonard Cohen’s Songs Of Love And Hate on vinyl, places exacting religious and familial demands on Vanja and Mirjam. They are only to watch fulfilling Christian programming, support him at all times, and not humiliate his esteem by pointing any failures in his role as the head of the household. Per is not above warning Vanja that any whiff of a divorce and he’ll keep custody of her youngest daughter; no matter how much Mirjam turns up the headphones in her bed at night to block out the fighting, she knows the life around her is crumbling. If Mirjam believes in anything, it’s dance, achieving a level where she now represents her country on the world stage. However, after she falls at a dance competition she’s expected to win, the cumulative pressures force Mirjam to explore if her lack of faith was the cause of this failure and if she needs to find a stronger strain of Christianity to put her back in Jesus’ good graces.
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The second feature from writer/director Jorunn Myklebust Syversen doesn’t make it a secret that the filmmaker doesn’t put much stock in religious belief. One person Mirjam briefly turns to for answers is her Uncle Kent (Terje Syversen) who is, much to Per’s chagrin, a highly successful and wealthy tele-evangelist. From there, Mirjam explores the rigors of a more conservative strain of Christianity, and a third-act retreat with that congregation to an island eventually devolves into activities that wouldn’t be out of place in Ari Aster’s “Midsommar.” Through it all, Syversen is more than happy to point out the hypocrisy and ignorance of religious instances. The problem is that it’s an easy target. Though blessed with a strong lead performance by Pettersen, “Disco” is quick to knock the empty spectacle that undoubtedly accounts for significant portions of contemporary Christianity without entertaining the notion that, for some, faith does hold real value in their lives. It’s not particularly challenging to make a punching bag out of any organized religion, but it takes a far more clever piece of filmmaking to acknowledge its shortcomings and benefits while still maintaining a critical tone. Unfortunately, “Disco” isn’t that picture.
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“Do you believe in God?” a therapist asks Mirjam. “I have to,” she responds. Where do you turn to when the only place you believe you can to turn to is God? It’s a question “Disco” asks, and that Mirjam desperately needs to be answered, but loses itself on the way to responding. Syversen is so busy with the spectacle of putting Christianity upon the cross; she doesn’t realize the scripture of her screenplay might be lacking. [C-]
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