Joachim Trier and the deafening silence

Translated by Mariateresa Tauro

“It's always a bit embarrassing to cry at press previews, with influencers next to you taking selfies with the screen.”

Today's article begins in this way, bitter, without context. Partly critical of society, partly an observation of our own present and past. A silence so deafening that, actually, it tells us everything.

There is no need to spell things out. It is a belief that cinema continues to stage events with a clarity that real life rarely allows. Because where the image is silent, where words are lacking or avoided, a space of understanding opens up that does not need to be declared. A fragile, almost artificial space that exists only within a precise, controlled, protected frame: the camera frame.

And that’s the point. Cinema, and, in this case, this film seem to promise a solution of “just get closer to mend things,” knowing that that “cure” does not belong to relationships. Actually, it belongs to the profession: to the scene, the camera, the role, the direction, and the acting. Reconciliation, if it comes, comes only when someone directs and someone else acts; only when emotional distance finds a set to rest on, a script that fits like a glove, a part to slip into without having to explain oneself.

Outside, talking would resolve certain situations much sooner. Inside, however, silence becomes language, and the unspoken bears all the weight that in life would break bonds.

It might seem that those two main characters, Nora Borg and Gustav, the father, reconcile. And, in fact, they do. But only on screen, simulating a somewhat mutilated victory of a relationship too torn apart to heal. This is Sentimental Value, Joachim Trier’s latest film.

Gustav, played by Stellan Skarsgård (Oscar winner), was an absent father, a director of great dramatic films about World War II that, even after all this time, still move people. He is a typical and recurring figure in cinematic storytelling and does not stray from the stereotype that characterises characters of this kind. After the death of his wife, with whom he has had no contact for a long time, he decides to return home and try to reestablish a semi-peaceful relationship with his daughters, Nora, Renate Reinsve, and Agnes, Inga Idsdotter Lilleaas, for ulterior motives, of course. Two completely different people, as they themselves say during the film: two polar opposites, two figures who only find peace because the chaos caused by one fulfills the other's urge to fix it. Gustav has a great script, written especially for that daughter who does not want to be part of his offspring, but above all, who does not want to work for him, who does not want to serve him.

And it is precisely on this conflictual relationship, on what the family triangle brings with it, that all the disappointments and feelings of each character are intertwined. Everything is written and rewritten by the history of cinema. So what is so important and interesting about this film? The topics? The stratification of the narrative?

No, I would say definitely not. It's incredible because it's simple, because it's redundant, but it's not obvious. It confronts us with a situation that, fortunately, not everyone has experienced in their lives: the loss of a parent. A feeling of reluctance towards discovering the other that, in reality, would be almost a natural impulse.

And that is how you understand other people's feelings: without putting yourself first, without hammering away at the person you are trying to understand, but tiptoeing around them. Listening and empathising, without saying a word, without being yourself, but annihilating yourself for the other person.

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Image source:

Sentimental Value di Joachin Trier – © Festival de Cannes