Note: Spoilers for Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga
Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga is exactly what you’d expect from a film based on the annual singing competition Eurovision. If you want a five second review, it’s this: If you like Eurovision, you will find something to enjoy in this film; if you don’t, you’re probably not going to get much out of the experience. The film shares the same frenetic, colourful, and light-hearted humour that the contest has become known for, and the result is two hours or so of relatively harmless comedy and some genuinely great music.
So, with that said, is it a stretch to try to find a deeper meaning in The Story of Fire Saga? Yes. Am I going to do it anyway, knowing that it’s probably just Covid-19 lockdown getting to me and making me sentimental and sappy? Also yes. And since no one but God himself can stop me, here we are.
Before we get to that, a basic outline of the plot: our male lead, Lars, played by Will Ferrell, has dreamed of representing Iceland in the Eurovision Song Contest since he was a child, much to the disappointment of his father. Together with fellow band-member Sigrit, played by Rachel McAdams, he works his way through a series of hijinks and ultimately manages to fluke his way into the final, whereupon he throws away his dream in favour of giving Sigrit the chance to shine. The pair acknowledge their love for one another and despite being disqualified from the contest, return to Iceland as heroes, The End.
Now, I’m not going to talk about the cookie-cutter storyline, or the tongue-in-cheek jokes about various European countries, or the accents so terrible that you might think the actors doing them had never even heard of the country their character supposedly hailed from. As I said, this is not a film trying to be taken seriously and all of that is just evidence to that effect. Instead, I want to talk about two of the primary supporting characters: Alexander Lemtov and Mita Xenakis.
Within the context of the story, they are rival contestants representing Russia and Greece respectively and both are considered heavy favourites, i.e. the primary competition to our protagonists. As soon as they appeared on screen, I was certain I knew how their storyline would play out. Everything else so far had followed pretty standard film tropes, and a hundred films before have paraded the same tired story: Alexander and Mita would get between the two protagonists to divide them, nullifying any threat they might pose in the competition, before Lars and Sigrit realise that they care more for each other than whatever petty squabble has been introduced, and reunite to defeat the ‘antagonists’. Almost every film that centres around a competition has this trope; Pitch Perfect, Dodgeball, and Bring It On, to name but a few.
As it happens, I was completely – brilliantly – wrong. Alexander and Mita are both introduced as though this is exactly how the story will play out, immediately separating Lars and Sigrit and trying to woo them once they have, but that’s where the trope dies a cold death. Mita does get Lars into bed with her, but as soon as she realises she’s upset Sigrit by doing so, she makes sure to explain that she didn’t actually sleep with Lars and goes on to encourage Sigrit’s attraction to him. Similarly, while Alexander does make Sigrit an offer to stay and sing with him once the competition is over, he never tries to use that offer to hurt Lars and when Sigrit hesitates, he doesn’t pressure her. At the end, when Lars and Sigrit finally reunite and kiss, both Mita and Alexander express how happy they are for them, albeit with Alexander pointing out he still wins the competition. We leave the pair of them embracing, planning to go to Greece to seek their own happiness.
For a film that makes no real effort to be subversive or do anything particularly surprising, this was a delight to watch. It’s a tiny fragment of the story, firmly relegated to the B plot, and yet within it, it manages to more clearly encapsulate the spirit of Eurovision than the entire rest of the film.
The Eurovision Song Contest is not something to be taken seriously. Plenty of the singers there are exceedingly talented and the music can be incredible – no one is saying it isn’t – but ultimately, that’s not really the focus, strange as that might sound when talking about a singing competition. Instead, it is one night a year where the countries of Europe (and a few stragglers from further afield) come together to embrace each other’s cultures, to dance, and, above all, to laugh. The competition has its problems and its controversy, but at its heart, Eurovision is about unity.
I didn’t expect much from Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga when I went into it, but what I found was something that managed to effortlessly demonstrate that core goal. Instead of catty, underhanded rivals, Alexander and Mita showed themselves to be genuine and kind people, and the only true antagonist the film has is so inconsequential to the plot that he gets murdered by fairies half an hour before the end and absolutely no one cares. It’s not a film designed to be taken seriously or examined for deeper meaning, but it still sets itself firmly on the side of cooperation, kindness, and unity, the virtues extolled by the competition since its inception in the wake of the devastation of World War 2. For all that The Story of Fire Saga is mostly meaningless comedy, given the year we’ve all been having in the existential nightmare that has been 2020, I think that’s a message we all sorely needed.
Even if it did come to us in the form of a closeted gay Russian with naked Greek statues of himself, who sings a song called Lion of Love.
Nerd Talk 