Recently shown at the Berlin International Film Festival, The Quiet Migration from director Malene Choi tells the story of Carl (Cornelius Won Riedel-Clausen), a young man just out of high school living and working on his adoptive parents’ dairy farm. Carl was born in South Korea but all his memories come from growing up in rural Denmark. Choi herself was adopted from South Korea and grew up in Denmark. This is the second of a planned trilogy of films dealing with adoption.
Cornelius Won Riedel-Clausen himself was apparently adopted into this film’s lead role somewhat unwillingly. Choi’s casting agent spotted him and chased him down in the streets of Copenhagen. She describes him initially as “quite reluctant”. But she adds the seasoned actors playing his father (Bjarne Henriksen) and mother (Bodil Jørgensen) helped create a relaxed environment on set. This dynamic seems to come through nicely in the film. The performance of Carl doesn’t scream non-actor. His newness might have helped with the convincing shyness and quietness portrayed in the character. And despite not always fully having his back (like when his dad tells him he can stand up for himself after a drunken relative tells him he’s not really Danish), the parents prove themselves to be warm and loving most of the time.
In an early scene though, Carl explains to a child visiting the farm why the calf is taken away from its mother: so the cow can continuously produce milk. It’s placed so prominently at the start of the film you wonder if that’s how Carl feels about his own adoption. He doesn’t seem resentful. More like floating through life a bit, unsure of the missing piece of himself.
Andrezj (Dawid Ściupidro), a migrant worker from Poland, works alongside Carl. He is brought to the farm to work and to learn how to operate his own one day. He shares dinner at the family table with Carl and his parents. The two young men get wasted together more than once, communicating in English, their only common language. Since he’s white, Andrezj resembles the rural Danish population more, but it’s Carl who constantly translates for him into the local language.
The movie develops in a slow, realistic style with small blips of odd incongruent elements that gradually become more pronounced, but it always returns to its base of normalcy. The first indications are pairing the meditative cinematography with a hip hop song on the soundtrack and soon after an EDM song.
This progresses to Carl sharing gentle smiles with astral projections of different people, including a woman who might be his birth mother. The only other asian person his age around seems to be Marie (Clara Thi Thanh Heilmann Jensen). They make silent eye contact at a bar then later as she works as a caterer at one of his family members’ birthday celebration. They never speak to each other in the film. The closest they get is when she finds him alone after the party and leans her head on his shoulder, causing the camera to start rotating. They share one last very charming moment later on. Drunk at a bar where Danish people are wearing stereotypical Mexican clothing, Carl dances with her astral projection, another shy, blissed out smile on his face.
Through bursts of magical realism, Carl hurtles like a meteorite towards what he wants deep down: to visit where he was born. And an actual meteorite he finds in a field will help him. For his birthday, his mom suggests to his dad that they buy him a trip somewhere. The dad counters that idea with a Playstation and a farm simulator game but the trip idea wins out. Maybe there’s a feeling that his real life was in Korea, that it vanished when he was a baby.
The pressure grows on Carl to take over the farm after his dad suffers a slipped disc. He gingerly lets down his mom when he tells her he’d prefer to take his trip alone. His dad gets a second chance to stand up for him. Carl asks his mom if she ever wanted to have biological children. In a comedic editing choice, she closes the door on him abruptly when he asks this. But she does share with him later about it. All in all, the film has a very disarming, effective way of touching your heart.
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