A chance encounter with the sibling they never knew existed is just the tip of a bizarre tangle of secrets and mysteries for two eccentric, 60-something sisters from the north of Norway in The Gullspang Miracle. Deeply peculiar, expertly crafted and utterly gripping, Maria Fredriksson’s debut feature documentary had its world premiere at the Tribeca Festival and screens at DOK Leipzig.
Kari and May recall how a search for a still-life needlepoint of fruit coincidentally led them to an apartment on the market in the small Swedish town of Gullspang. Its owner, Olaug, bore an uncanny resemblance to Lita, the sister they had been told died by suicide in 1988. The doc opens with several takes of the sisters re-enacting (and comically over-acting) this discovery, which to their devoutly religious minds had all the hallmarks of a divine miracle. Keeping the filming process very much in the frame, Fredriksson with deft flair balances the doc’s tone between an entertaining, buoyant playfulness, exploiting suspenseful music and other genre trappings to raise audience neck hairs, and the genuinely unsettling, as eerie details that would be at home in a Shirley Jackson supernatural tale defy all rational explanation. A voiceover message from the sisters eager to tell their miraculous tale seeded the project, and the director milks a sense that, rather than moulding the narrative, she’s being pulled along by family happenings outside her control, and perhaps even by forces from the beyond.
When Kari and May meet Olaug, it is like they are seeing a ghost. Some investigation and a DNA test quickly indicate she is their deceased sister’s long-lost identical twin, who was secretly removed at birth and raised by foster parents as a desperate measure to avoid the experimentation on twins undertaken by Nazi occupying forces. The sisters are overjoyed at first, as Olaug’s dig into records also suggests Lita didn’t take her own life after all, removing the heavy Church stigma around suicide that they imagined had barred her from Heaven, and tarnished their memories. Half-way in, the upbeat plotline of fortuitously reunified sisters lurches off course, and poisonous resentments bubble over. As in any dysfunctional family, disproportionate reactions and outlandish projections abound, coming to a head as the sisters converge with other family members for a celebration at their brother Arnt’s countryside home, with differences in class, education and religion all stirred in the chaotic mix. A fascinating meditation on nature versus nurture develops from this existential identity crisis writ large. Is joining a family Olaug does not recognise herself in compulsory because of blood, or is she free to be who she decides herself to be?
Olaug’s growing conviction, with every odd and chilling twist, witness interview and autopsy revelation, that Lita was murdered after an embezzlement scandal, takes on the shade of a true crime suspenser, while her family, wanting to hold tight to their new hope she died naturally, are staunch in their resistance to considering yet another dark possibility. The camera hones in on a framed portrait of Lita staring down from a shelf, which echoes the prom picture of fellow lake victim Laura Palmer from David Lynch’s surreal 90s show Twin Peaks, stoking a chilling sense she is watching over proceedings as the facts surrounding her fate are scrutinised. As the labyrinth of secrets and lies keeps bending in unexpected directions, with no stable ground beneath the audience’s feet to determine what is true and what is not, the question of how we subjectively interpret and grant meaning to events and their traces comes into sharp focus, along with the constructed nature of documentary filmmaking itself. This is an impressively intricate and mind-bending ride that, for all the joy it takes in bonkers, postmodern theatricality and unreliability, doesn’t lose sight of the raw emotion of loss and the human yearning to belong. It’s an unforgettable cinema experience that doesn’t neatly tie up its prodigious mysteries, but instead lingers as a haunting oddity and endless conversation starter.
Director, Writer: Maria Fredriksson
Editors: Mark Bukdahl, Orvar Anklew
Cinematography: Pia Lehto
Producer: Ina Holmqvist
Music: Jonas Colstrup
Sound: Rune Hansen
Production company: Ballad Film
Sales: MetFilm Sales
Venue: DOK Leipzig
In Norwegian, Swedish
108 minutes
