A John Prine Appreciation

0:00This message comes from NPR sponsor, the official Gilded Age podcast from HBO. Unpack each episode of the Gilded Age and hear from the people who bring 19th century New York to life. Watch the official Gilded Age podcast on HBO Max or listen wherever you get podcasts. This is Fresh Air. I'm David Bianculli. You know that old trees just grow stronger and old rivers grow wilder every day.

0:33Old people just grow lonesome waiting for someone to say hello in there.

0:49Singer-songwriter John Prine isn't around to celebrate what would have been his 80th birthday tomorrow. He died six years ago of complications from COVID-19. But it's being celebrated in a big way anyway, by family and friends, in a five-day series of events in and around Chicago that have begun already, held in support of the family's Hello in Their Foundation. Last night, a tribute concert was held, hosted by John C. Reilly, featuring the songs of John Prine as sung by Steve Earle, Margot Price, and others. Documentary showings and other events continue this weekend, and today we'll add our own voice to the mix by honoring John Prine's music and legacy on today's Fresh Air.

1:35John Prine was born in 1946 in Maywood, Illinois. After a stint in the Army in West Germany, he settled in the Chicago suburbs in the late 1960s, attending folk music classes while working as a mailman. He wrote his first songs while delivering the mail, and eventually appeared at an open mic night at the Fifth Peg, a local folk club, to sing some of them. That led to more performances and a summertime weekend gig. At one of those shows, an audience member who caught his act was a local film critic who had gotten his reviewing job at the Chicago Sun-Times a few years earlier. His name was Roger Ebert, and the story he wrote in 1970, John Prine's first review in print, captured the artist perfectly and helped him draw larger audiences.

2:24Ebert wrote, He appears on stage with such modesty he almost seems to be backing into the spotlight. But Ebert added that Prine's music and lyrics were quite special. Prine's songs are all original and he only sings his own, Ebert said, adding that he's closer to Hank Williams than to Roger Williams, closer to Dylan than to Oakes. Ebert noted Prine's ability in his lyrics to sketch a character in just a few words and singled out with praise some of the very songs that would appear on Prine's first album the next year becoming instant classics. Hello In There, Angel From Montgomery, and Sam Stone, the story of a Korean War veteran who returns home with a purple heart, shrapnel in his knee, and a morphine addiction.

3:12There's a hole in Daddy's arm where all the money goes. Jesus Christ died for nothing, I suppose. Little pictures have big ears Don't stop to count the years Sweet songs never last too long Broken radios

3:44Roger Ebert wasn't the only one to note the exceptional talents of John Prine. Fellow singers and songwriters paid particular attention. Chris Christofferson, after seeing one performance, championed Prine and helped him get his recording contract. Johnny Cash praised him early and often, as did Bob Dylan. And a year after John Prine's first album was released, Bette Midler took one of the songs on it and showcased it on her own breakout first album, The Divine Miss M. The song she championed was an ode to old people, one of the songs Ebert had loved so much. Hello in there. So if you're walking down the street sometimes And you should spot some hollow ancient eyes Don't you pass them by and stare As if you didn't care Say hello in there Hello

5:01After that exposure, John Prine attained even more notice and performed and recorded music the rest of his life. Eighteen studio albums in all, five live albums, and countless concert appearances, where fellow musicians continued to seek him out and perform alongside him. Performers such as Bonnie Raitt, who once joined Prine on stage to turn his solo recording, Angel from Montgomery, into a very memorable duet. Make me an angel that flies from Montgomery Make me a poster of an old rodeo Just give me one thing that I can hold on to To believe in this living is just a hard way to go Over the years, John Prine clearly lost the onstage shyness Roger Ebert had witnessed in the 23-year-old neophyte performer.

6:07By the time he was introducing such comic compositions as The Other Side of Town in his concerts, his setup was as funny and as self-assured as the song itself. This is a song about a man who's developed a special ability over a number of years.

6:29He's able to travel in his mind, particularly when his wife just goes on just a little bit too long about something that he hasn't done.

6:45I read about this guy.

6:50You might think I'm here when you put me down But actually I'm on the other side of town My body's in this room with you just catching hell But my soul is drinking beer down the road to spell You may think I'm listening to your grocery list But I'm leaning on a jukebox And I'm about halfway there John Prine released his final studio album, The Tree of Forgiveness, in 2018 after surviving a bout with cancer. He won four Grammy Awards over his five-decade career. In 2020, the Grammys honored him with its Lifetime Achievement Award. John Prine died that year after contracting COVID-19. But in his final album, he offered some last words on the subject in a typically sly song called When I Get to Heaven.

8:05When I get to heaven, I'm going to shake God's hand. Thanking for more blessings than one man can stand Then I'm gonna get a guitar And start a rock and roll band Check into a swell hotel Ain't that afterlife grand? And then I'm gonna get a cocktail Vodka and ginger ale Yeah, I'm gonna smoke a cigarette that's nine miles long I'm gonna kiss that pretty girl On the tilt of the world Cause this old man is going to town Terry Gross spoke to John Prine in 2018 just after the release of that final album. After a quick break, we'll hear excerpts from that interview. This is Fresh Air. Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

9:00This message comes from Google Workspace with Gemini. Ever notice how every new AI tool asks you to explain your business to it all over again? Google Workspace with Gemini skips that. You get Google's AI built right into the premium versions of Gmail, Google Docs, Sheets, and more. No new tools, no extra logins, just one subscription that gives you personalized AI right inside your actual workflow. Try Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle slash workspace with Gemini. This message comes from Capella University. You know that feeling when there's a spark building inside you that you were meant for more?

9:38That's your own drive pushing you towards what's next. Capella University gets that. With their FlexPath learning format, you can set the pace and earn your degree without putting life on pause. You've built experience and know what you're capable of. Now, this is your time to turn that momentum into more. The only real question is, what can't you do? Learn more at capella.edu. This message comes from BetterHelp. Your brain has limited storage, so why is it still holding on to that embarrassing moment from years ago? BetterHelp is an online therapy platform that gives you space to talk about what's taking up too much of yours.

10:19BetterHelp is now in-network with more than 125 health plans, with many co-pays as low as$15 for eligible members. And if you don't have eligible insurance, you can still get 20 % off your first month. Visit BetterHelp.com slash NPR. Cost and coverage may vary. Discount cannot be combined with insurance. This is Fresh Air. Today we're celebrating John Prine. The late singer, songwriter, and guitarist would have turned 80 this weekend. He died of complications from COVID-19 in 2020. Terry interviewed Prine in 2018 after he recorded his final album, The Tree of Forgiveness. They started with the song Summer's End, co-written by Pat McLaughlin.

11:04Brandi Carlile sings backup vocals.

11:19Summer's ends around the bend, just flyin' The swimmin' suits are on the line, just dryin' I'll meet you there for our conversation I hope I didn't ruin your whole vacation Well, you never know how far from home you're feeling Until you've watched the shadows cross the ceiling Well, I don't know, but I can see it snowing In your car, the windows are wide open Just come on home, come on home No, you don't have to be alone Just come on home

12:39There are intense, big hearts and minds That's John Prine from his new album, The Tree of Forgiveness. John Prine, welcome to Fresh Air. It is a pleasure to have you here. Is there a story behind that song? Well, the big story behind that particular song, Summer's End, first of all, it's my favorite track from The Tree of Forgiveness. You know, it just came out so pretty. A good buddy of mine, Pat McLaughlin, and I wrote that song. And we've been writing together. We've been friends longer than this, but we've been writing together since my Missing Years record in 91. and we're, it's just uncanny the way we write together.

13:22I mean, we can finish each other's sentences, you know. I'll just throw an image at him and he comes back with one and we don't really decide what the subject is that we're writing about. We just kind of go with whatever sounds good and feels good to both of us. And the fact that that song ended, like that's how we approached it and it ended up as pretty as it did and his Lonesome and many other things was a surprise to me because we were literally going, it was like ping pong. We were going back and forth with each line in the song. What about the melody? The melody is just another simple, downright, patented melody.

14:04I mean, all I'm trying to do is play a freight train, I think. In Elizabeth Cotton's song? I just pick up the, yeah, that's how I learned to finger pick, was I learned how to finger pick playing, trying to pick like Elizabeth Cotton and Mississippi John Hurt. So much so that I used to put myself, when I was 14 years old, I'd sit in the closet in the dark in case I ever went blind to see if I could play. Wow, that's pretty strange. Yeah, you're telling me. So can you do it? I mean, do you ever have to look down at your fingers when you're playing? I can't. My belly's too big. Ha. I can't see my hands.

14:46Good thing I practiced in the dark. You've been through a lot in the past few years. You've had neck cancer and lung cancer. Can we talk about how you were able to get back into shape to be able to perform and tour? I mean, the neck surgery severed nerves in your tongue. It damaged salivary glands. Did you have to learn to sing or speak again? I had to do some. They gave me a speech therapist. That was part of the therapy when I was just getting over the initial surgery, the neck surgery. That was a pretty big surgery. It was my first really big surgery, and it was a big one. And I didn't realize I had any slur in my speech whatsoever, but it killed some of the nerves in your tongue.

15:35and it kind of made you have, I guess they would call it like lazy, where your tongue would just go to one side naturally and you'd slur some of your words. So I did some speech therapy, but I told them, when I was going in for that surgery, I had talked to the surgeon and the radiologist and they had to do a lot of radiation on my throat right across my vocal cords. And the radiologist was explaining to me, he was going to make a shield for my vocal cords. And I said, have you ever heard me sing? I said, if you leave me with something, if I can make a noise, I said, I'll come out with a voice on the other end, you know.

16:22And the surgeon told me my golf swing would improve after surgery. And I said, I hate golf. So at least they left me with a voice to sing. I think it improved my voice, if anything. I always had a hard time listening to my singing before my surgery. So you got a new voice, and you feel different about it? Yeah, it dropped down lower, and it feels friendlier to me, so I can actually sit in the studio and listen to my singing play back before I run the other way. That's really surprising, I think. Do you feel like your voice sounds more lived in than it did before? I've heard singers complain that they've been through so much, and you don't hear it in their voice.

17:02You know, that they feel you don't hear it, that their voice doesn't sound as troubled as they feel or as worn as they feel or as experienced as they feel. Well, with me, my early recordings, I had a difficult time listening back to them because I was so nervous. I was kind of thrown into, I didn't expect to do this for 11, being a recording artist. I was just playing music for the fun of it and writing songs. That was kind of my escape. you know, from the humdrum of the world. And everything happened so fast for me that I became a recording artist before I knew it. And I just, when I would listen to my old records, I'd just hear this young, extremely nervous fella that made me want to run out of the room, you know, rather than listen to what he had to say.

17:55So, you know, in addition to the neck surgery that you had for cancer, a few years later you had lung cancer, and you had an operation on one of your lungs. So what was it like to learn how to be able to get enough breath to support your singing? Well, luckily I had a friend who was a trainer. I mean, he individually trained people for either weight loss and stuff like that. We were friends. We just liked to get together and be asked. And when I told him I had to get the surgery, he volunteered to come to our house and help me get back in shape to get on the road. He had me running up and down our staircase three times.

18:43Then he'd put a guitar around my neck, and I'd sing three songs without taking a breath. And this was all after losing half a lung. And I didn't know I could train like that. My wife didn't either, because I hadn't previously put that much into training before. I like that because it's tailored to who you are and what you do as opposed to giving you just the standard exercises. Exactly. I'm no good with that. If somebody tells me to work or exercise, I go the other way. I'll come up with an excuse. So one more thing about the surgeries. I know you knew Roger Ebert, and he gave a boost to your career really early on before anybody knew you.

19:28He gave you a great review when you were just performing in Chicago before you'd recorded. And I don't know if you remain close, but he had cancer and he had jaw surgery that basically left him unable to speak. I was wondering if you communicated with him at all about your surgery. I think he would have still been alive.

19:55Well, after Roger initially got sick, I had played a show, and him and his wife came to it. And this was after my surgery. It was when I was out touring Behind the Missing Years. And we got to talk a little bit, but obviously it was a social situation. It was more like we looked at each other like we were members of the club, both having been through our surgeries him even more so he was really at the particular time that he wrote a review on me I was a mailman still and I was just singing this one night a week in the Chicago Club The Fifth Peg on West Armitage and Roger had walked out on a movie that he was supposed to review for the next day This was a Thursday night, and Friday was the big day for the entertainment section in Chicago sometimes.

20:57And Roger's reviews, he always got his own page, the back page of the entertainment section. And instead of reviewing the movie, he said he walked into this pub to get a beer because the popcorn was too salty in the movie theater. and somebody told him to go in the back room and listen to this kid. I was the kid. And he wrote a full page on singing Mailman Delivers the Message. I think it was the headline. That's great. And I never had an empty seat after that. And I was still, like I said, I was still making my living as a mailman. And I was singing after that three nights a week and two shows a night and there was a line outside.

21:45and things just got better from then on. This would have been about what, 1969? Late 1970. Okay. Early 71 is when I got my record contract. I had a record come out by August of 71. Things happened really fast. John Prine speaking with Terry Gross in 2018. We'll hear more of his interview with Terry after a break. I'm David Bianculli and this is Fresh Air. Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

22:43when you subscribe at prolonlife.com slash NPR. This message comes from LinkedIn ads. Ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first, but didn't live up to the hype? For marketers, that's impressions. When ads don't create revenue, that's a tough conversation with the CFO. Instead, invest in results your CFO will love. LinkedIn ads generates the highest ROAS of all major ad networks. So advertise on LinkedIn. Spend$250 and get a$250 credit. Just go to linkedin.com slash NPR pod. Terms and conditions apply. This message comes from Google Workspace with Gemini. One subscription that does it all.

23:25Personalized AI and premium business versions of Gmail, Google Docs, Drive, and more. Try it free for 14 days at goo.gle slash workspace with Gemini. Today, we're celebrating the life and music of John Prine on the eve of what would have been his 80th birthday. Prine died of complications from COVID-19 in 2020. He was an inspiration to his peers, including Bob Dylan, and to a younger generation of musicians, among them Phoebe Bridgers and Jason Isbell. In 2016, he was honored by the writer's organization Penn for Lyrics of Literary Excellence. Let's get back to Terry's 2018 conversation with John Prine.

24:09He had just released his final album, The Tree of Forgiveness. So let's talk about your background. You grew up in Maywood, Illinois. Was that like a small town outside of Chicago? Yeah, it's an old suburb, you know, almost old as the city itself. It was right next to the suburb of Oak Park where Hemingway is from. And there was a stark difference between Maywood and Oak Park. Maywood was like full of minorities. My mother and father came up from Kentucky and settled in Maywood because it had the American Can Company there. My dad got a job there in the 30s and helped organize the Steelworkers Union.

24:58So was your father from Paradise, West Kentucky?

25:27Many different high schools, too, because his father moved around so much. But when he would get jobs, when my grandfather would get a job and didn't want to help root, my father would end up in Paradise with all of his cousins from the Smith side of the family. My mother was born and raised in Paradise. So you have a pretty famous song called Paradise. Right. That's about Paradise, Kentucky and how beautiful it is and how the main character in your song wants to go back there. But his father tells him that it's basically too late because it's been hauled away by the coal trains. Did you see that happen to Paradise?

26:08I was in the Army and my dad sent me a newspaper clip because he knew how much I liked Paradise. We would go there in my childhood. We would go there as often as we could to see my mother's sisters and my dad's family. And so he sent me this clip and said, that's it. Paradise is gone. They brought up the town, tore the town down and strip mined the whole area. And so I wrote the song probably just after I got out of the Army. I wrote it for my dad. I realized that years later that I just wanted my dad to put him in the song so he would know I was a country songwriter. He was a huge country music fan.

26:58I used to sing Hank Williams Sr. stuff for him and Ernest Tubb and Roy Cuff. I put on a little show for him when I first learned to play guitar. So let's hear Paradise. And this is from your 1971 debut album, John Prine. When I was a child, my family would travel down to western Kentucky where my parents were born. And there's a backwards old town that's often remembered so many times that my memories are worn. And Daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County, down by the Green River where paradise lays? Well, I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in asking Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away

27:54Well, sometimes we'd travel right down the Green River To the abandoned old prison down by Adrie Hill Where the air smelled like snakes, we'd shoot with our pistols But empty pop bottles was all we would kill And Daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County? So that's John Prine's famous song, Paradise, from his 1971 debut album called John Prine. So you grew up with a lot of country music because of your father. It sounds like you turned toward it as opposed to rebelling against it. Oh, yeah. I mean, I grew up with rock and roll, but when I learned how to play the guitar, it was from my oldest brother, Dave.

28:49Dave was 10 years older than me, and he taught himself how to play fiddle and mandolin and guitar and banjo. And so he came from like an old-timey country music thing. And also he was big into the folk boom of the early 60s. And so when he taught me to play guitar, that's the kind of music I learned to play because that's what he taught me. He gave me a Carter family record, and I learned all those songs. And not too long after that, I started writing when I was 14. and my melodies always came out like old-timey country stuff. And at the same time, I was trying to please my dad. I wanted to sing some of his favorite songs that he listened to the radio on.

29:41And so I learned an entire Hank Williams Sr., an album, a live record with all the stage patter in between. I used to repeat the patter in between the songs. You know, I did everything but skip when the record was skipped. I learned it, you know, verbatim. Your father died when he was 55. He had a massive heart attack on the front porch of your home. How old were you when that happened? I was 24, and my first record was a month away from being released. Oh, so he never heard it? No, I borrowed a tape recorder from another family, and I had a quarter-inch tape, and I took it to the house, and I played that record for them.

30:33And the last song on the record was Paradise. So when that song came on, he got up and walked into the dining room. It was dark in there, and he sat in the dining room while Paradise played. and he came back in the room afterwards, and I asked him how come he left the room when I called it his song, because he knew it was his story. And he said he wanted to pretend it was on the jukebox, but I think he just didn't want to see me see him with tears in his eyes. It wasn't like he was a sick man, like in the hospital or anything. He had a massive heart attack sitting out on the front porch watching the cars go by.

31:18So when you returned from being in the military and serving in West Germany, you moved to Chicago. You moved from a suburb outside of Chicago to Chicago and you became a mailman there. What neighborhoods did you deliver mail to? Oh, no, I became a mailman in the suburbs. Oh, it was in the suburbs. Yeah, I never moved into Chicago. I stayed in the suburbs until I moved to Nashville. Oh, I didn't realize that. I was only like 10 miles directly from the lakefront. That's how close Maywood was to the edge of Chicago. We grew up on Madison Avenue, which is the dividing line between North Chicago and the north side and the south side.

32:01So we grew up going both Cubs and Sox games. So did you still live with your parents when you came back from the military? No, I got married while I was in the service. and I married an Italian-American girl. She was my high school girlfriend and we lived in Melrose Park, the Italian community that bordered Maywood. How long did the marriage last? Oh, that one lasted, yikes. I like the way I say that one lasted. Well, I've been married three times. Right. Yeah, that was 13 years. Mm-hmm. That's pretty long.

32:46Thanks. Congratulations. You've been married to your wife now for over 20 years. Yeah, 23. Yeah, yeah. So was being a mailman a good job for somebody who was writing songs in their spare time? And it was great because there's really not much to do when you're a mailman. I mean, so maybe some mailmen make it into an actual job, but once you're out there on the same streets every day and you recognize the houses, you know you're on the right street, you just go out there and stick the mail in the mailbox. In other words, I used to liken my mail route to a library with no books. it was like my imagination was free to roam the whole time I was on the mail route I wrote a lot of my first record walking on the mail route Was that like maybe a good thing that your body was kind of occupied with walking the mail route but your mind was free to think about lyrics without having to sit in a chair Because your mind didn't want to be thinking about the weather and the dark It's a jungle out there really I was never so happy as the day I left the post office.

34:03The dark. What time were you delivering mail? Dogs. Oh, dogs. Oh, the dogs. Yeah, the ones that bite. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Were you bitten? Yes. Yeah. I got bitten in the best possible place. Uh-oh. And ripped my pants, and I had to go over to ER. That was really embarrassing. and having a mailman outfit on with the ass out of your pants tore out, you know, in a dog bite. You look like a cartoon. Yeah, I think I've seen that cartoon. And there you go. I was the cartoon. So I want to close with another song from your new album. And I can't decide whether to play Boundless Love or I Have Met My Love Today.

34:50Do you want to choose one from those two? Well, yeah, Boundless Love, I got an interesting story about. Tell me. I wrote that with three buddies of mine, David Ferguson, Dan Auerbach from Black Keys, and Pat McLaughlin. I thought I mentioned earlier that we wrote for about 30 years now together. Anyway, the four of us thought it would be a good idea to get together and try and write some songs. I think specifically we were going to write them for Dan Auerbach's solo project. He's got two solo records out now. And we wrote six songs in two days. And I didn't think any of the songs were for me. I thought we were writing them for Dan.

35:36And one of the songs was the song Boundless Love. And Dan didn't record it when he went in to do his solo project. So I looked at it when I was trying to gather songs up for the tree of forgiveness. and I liked the song except I didn't think it was enough of me in it, like John Prine in it. So I called up Dan and said, I'm going to John Prine this song up. And he said, what do you mean? I said, well, instead of the word food, I'm going to put frying pork chops in. And I said, and I got the whole thing. I want to replace the whole second verse with my old heart. It's like a washing machine. It bounces around until my soul comes clean.

36:19So Dan laughed, and that's what I did. I just John Prine the song up, and it came out really pretty. And now I consider it kind of my song for my wife, Fiona. Found this love. Well, let's hear it. And John Prine, it's been a great pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much. Thank you, Terry.

36:43I woke up this morning to a garbage truck Looks like this old horseshoe's done run out of luck If I came home, would you let me in? Find me some pork chops And forgive my sin Surround me with your boundless love Confound me with your boundless love I was drowning in a sea Lost as I could be When you found me With your boundless love Sometimes my whole heart Is like a washing machine It bounces around Till my soul comes clean And when I'm clean And hung out to dry I'm gonna make you laugh Until you cry Surround me with your boundless love Confound me with your boundless love I was drowning in a sea Lost as I could be When you found me with your boundless love John Prine, speaking with Terry Gross, recorded in 2018.

38:34A new collection of John Prine's music is out today. It's called Found Dogs and includes alternate takes, acoustic solo performances, and five previously unreleased Prine originals. Let's close with the last song Prine ever recorded, which was released two months after his death in 2020. It's called I Remember Everything, and it was recorded in his living room. I've been down this road before I remember every tree Every single blade of grass Holds a special place for me And I remember every town And every hotel room And every song I ever sang On a guitar out of ten I remember everything Things I can't forget The way you turned and smiled on me On the night that we first met And I remember every night Your ocean as a blue How I miss you in the morning light Like roses miss the dew That's John Prine singing I Remember Everything, written with his longtime friend and writing partner, Pat McLaughlin.

40:11Coming up, Justin Chang reviews the new film Fjord, starring Sebastian Stan and Renata Rinesveigh. This is Fresh Air. Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from Prolon. Want to look and feel your best this fall? Prolon's five-day fasting mimicking diet is a clinically developed nutrition program with the goal of promoting fat loss while protecting lean body mass. Developed at USC's Longevity Institute, it aims to assist the body in entering a fasting-like state that helps reset metabolism, target visceral fat, and support healthy metabolic markers.

40:47Get 15 % off plus a bonus gift when you subscribe at prolonlife.com slash NPR. This message comes from LinkedIn ads. Ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first, but didn't live up to the hype? For marketers, that's impressions. When ads don't create revenue, that's a tough conversation with the CFO. Instead, invest in results your CFO will love. LinkedIn ads generates the highest ROAS of all major ad networks. So advertise on LinkedIn. Spend$250 and get a$250 credit. Just go to linkedin.com slash NPR pod. Terms and conditions apply. This message comes from Google Workspace with Gemini.

41:30One subscription that does it all. Personalized AI in premium business versions of Gmail, Google Docs, Drive, and more. Try it free for 14 days at goo.gle slash workspace with a Gemini. The new drama Fiord takes place in a small Norwegian town in which a recently arrived couple, played by Sebastian Stan and Renata Rinesve, suddenly stands accused of abusing their children. The film, which won the top prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival, is the latest work from the Romanian director Cristian Mungio, known for his acclaimed dramas like Graduation and Four Months, Three Weeks, and Two Days.

42:12Fjord opens in theaters this week. Our film critic, Justin Chang, has this review. The gifted Romanian writer-director Christian Munju makes tense, realist thrillers that lay bare his country's history of corruption and authoritarianism. In Beyond the Hills, he took aim at intolerance within the Romanian Orthodox Church. In his 2007 masterpiece, Four Months, Three Weeks, and Two Days, he laid bare the cruelties of the communist dictatorship in the late 1980s. That film won the Palme d 'Or at Cannes and announced Munju as a major international talent. A few months ago, Munju won a second Palme d 'Or for his new drama, Fjord, which in many ways marks something of a departure.

43:00It's his first movie shot outside Romania, but even in a fresh setting, his eye for institutional oppression and hypocrisy is as sharp as ever. Sebastian Stan and Renata Reinsveh give superb performances as a married couple, Mihai and Lisbeth Gyorgyu, who have just moved from Romania to a small town nestled among the fjords and mountains of Norway. They have five children. The oldest is in high school, the youngest still in diapers. They're also strictly observant Christians. In this scene, which features mostly English and some Romanian dialogue, they're singing hymns at home with some church friends when they get a visit from a friendly neighbor, Mia, and her teenage daughter, Nora.

43:47It was there by faith I received my signs And now I am happy all the day What else it was like that I've been Goes to Chilean

44:11Hello Are we interrupting? No, please come in

44:18Come in, I'll come and greet your new neighbors Hello We brought some gifts for the newcomers. Oh, so thank you very much. The townspeople are welcoming at first, and Munju uses wide shots and long takes to immerse us in this open, bustling community. But things get unfriendly fast for the Georgus. One day, a school administrator notices that their eldest daughter, Elia, has bruises on her back, and overhears her and her brother talking about having been disciplined by their parents. A call is made to Child Protective Services, and with dizzying speed, the five Georgiou children, including the baby, are taken away from their parents and placed in foster care.

45:04The rest of the film follows Mihai and Lisbeth's efforts to get their kids back, pitting them against an unyielding Norwegian legal system. In the testimonies that emerge, we learn that one of their children had expressed anti-LGBTQ opinions in class. This raises the question of whether the Georgius were targeted for abusing their children, which they vehemently deny, or for refusing to adopt the progressive, secular humanist values of their new home country. For all the acclaim and awards it's received, Fjord has proven remarkably divisive for a Munju movie. Although the story was inspired by a widely publicized case from 2015, involving a Romanian-Norwegian family that endured a similar ordeal, Some critics have accused the film of reducing the European welfare state to a strawman villain, an overreaching government entity that denies parents due process.

46:02Others have claimed that such responses merely prove Munju's point about the intolerance of the left and how tribalism and racial and religious discrimination can arise even in ostensibly inclusive communities. For my part, I found Fjord to be a blatantly yet skillfully manipulative drama that craftily withholds as much information as it reveals. Munju traffics in ambiguity, sometimes to the point of coyness. The episodes of alleged physical abuse are strategically obscured or kept off-screen. A plausible alternate explanation for Elia's bruises emerges, but it's never confirmed. Fascinatingly, the kids themselves never come right out and say whether they've been physically abused, and their silence on the matter feels dramatically evasive, but also, from a parent's perspective, eerily fitting.

46:57It's as if the film were saying that, with or without state interference, our children begin to become unknowable, drifting away from us the moment they're born. I thought a lot about my own kids while watching Fjord, and the outrage I'd feel if they were taken away from me. I also sifted through my complicated feelings about my own distant evangelical Christian upbringing. Stan and Reinceve's performances, full of tightly controlled sorrow and fury, make it easy to feel for Mihai and Lisbeth, and to believe that they're genuinely good, loving parents, whether or not you share the rigidity of their beliefs.

47:35And I suspect that, deep down, it's that rigidity that Munju takes the most issue with. It's no accident that the most sympathetic character here is that friendly neighbor, Mia, who turns out to be an attorney and agrees to represent the parents in court, noting at one point that she feels a moral obligation to defend the minority. Mia, for her part, isn't religious. Yet she's one of the few characters here who fully embraces the biblical commandment to love thy neighbor. Justin Chang is a film critic for The New Yorker. He reviewed Fjord. On Monday's show, Mahershala Ali. In his new film, Your Mother, Your Mother, Your Mother, he plays a devout Muslim father of three who also is a professional killer, and suddenly is left to care for his children after his wife dies.

48:29Ali won Academy Awards for Moonlight and Green Book, becoming the first Muslim actor to win an acting Oscar. Hope you can join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com slash thisisfreshair. We're rolling out new videos with in-studio guests, behind-the-scenes shorts, and iconic interviews from the archive. Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brigger Our senior producer today is Teresa Madden Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Schorach, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yacundi, Anna Bauman, and Nico Gonzalez-Whistler Our digital media producer is Molly Seavey-Nesper Our social media video producer is Hilary Kissinger.

49:29For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm David Bianculli.

49:55and I. This message comes from Jerry. Car insurance gives drivers plenty to be skeptical about. Jerry gives them a way to check. Jerry shops rates from over 100 insurers, so drivers can review their options and switch all in the app. No spam calls, no hidden fees. Jerry has saved drivers over$1 billion on car insurance. It has 4.75 stars on the app store and over 5 million drivers. Still skeptical? There's only one way to find out. Download Jerry today.