I, too, found Sentimental Value a bit tedious. I wonder whether the accolades owe something to the scrim a non-English language creates between a film and its English-speaking audience — hiding flaws, elevating attributes. The language creates an aesthetic distance which encourages audiences to fill in the rest. Add the subject of filmmaking and incredible acting and you get a Golden Retriever of a movie: inoffensive, placid and easy to pet.
Far be it from me to make sense of any given awards body psychology, but that's a great point. It would be especially potent in a film like SV, which actively concerns itself with the divide between an impression and The True in the same way that an emotional grammar/philosophy at the root of one language could only ever partially be reflected in another. Gives the audience way more room to play and infer. Really fond of that, even if Trier writing a Norwegian-language film is no more a creative decision than me writing in English.
Off of that, it does also seem to me like Trier is just turning into an awards season comfort pick à la Yorgos Lanthimos. Which, fine, whatever; it's all a rodeo at the end of the day, no different than annually betting on a consistent playoff contender in the NBA or something.
I have not seen Zombies vs. Strippers (2012), but I have seen Zombie Strippers! (2008). Does that count? (Leave it to the horror genre to double down on a concept like that!)
Hard agree on Sentimental Value. Though they’re completely different filmmakers I’m reminded of Christopher Nolan‘s lauded run with some of the most convoluted stories I’ve ever witnessed. You can’t deny their craft as directors, but the writing leaves me wanting and frustrated. If Trier is going to continue to make films about women, I wish he’d write with a woman because in his last two films his characters have betrayed themselves for the looming men in their lives in the final sequences — while the films try to portray these decisions as enlightenment and contentment — and it makes me want to smash things.
I do think the ending of the film is moreso grounded in a recognition of shared powerlessness, or arguably a counterbalancing power that Nora now has over Gustav as an impression of who she once was, and who Gustav can never access again; there's some poetry there between the intangibility of her art and the ghost she becomes - as far as Gustav is concerned - by the end of the film. Generally though yeah I get the impression that the text rested on its laurels at the expense of the subtext.
For a film that spends much of its time exploring how much accountability we can and “should” expect from a parent in the context of their child, acceptance of powerlessness is a deeply unsatisfying final note. And if the acceptance of powerlessness were simply about these two characters recognizing their shared melancholia I could maybe see it as poetic, but because it’s depicting Nora accepting powerlessness within the context of her relationship with her father, it feels glaringly like a betrayal of self based on the character we’ve been watching for the entire film. And that’s punctuated by the fact that Agnes lets her son be in the film, even though she’s been vehemently against it the entire time and is on no emotional journey where that conclusion is meaningful. And both do this seemingly bc of how powerful and/or emotionally revealing That moment in the script is (a text that is extremely underwhelming and tells us the audience nothing new.) Both daughters fully resign themselves to Dad‘s needs in the end. Which, similar to how Worst Person in the World ends, says a happy ending comes from putting the needs of the men in your life above your own no matter the cost to you. I think your ghost theory is generous but for me centering Gustav’s point of view is exactly the problem. Especially because, as you said, the film is not particularly interested in subtext. I need to watch it a second time because I would love to change my opinion on this but I’m not confident that will happen…
I, too, found Sentimental Value a bit tedious. I wonder whether the accolades owe something to the scrim a non-English language creates between a film and its English-speaking audience — hiding flaws, elevating attributes. The language creates an aesthetic distance which encourages audiences to fill in the rest. Add the subject of filmmaking and incredible acting and you get a Golden Retriever of a movie: inoffensive, placid and easy to pet.
Far be it from me to make sense of any given awards body psychology, but that's a great point. It would be especially potent in a film like SV, which actively concerns itself with the divide between an impression and The True in the same way that an emotional grammar/philosophy at the root of one language could only ever partially be reflected in another. Gives the audience way more room to play and infer. Really fond of that, even if Trier writing a Norwegian-language film is no more a creative decision than me writing in English.
Off of that, it does also seem to me like Trier is just turning into an awards season comfort pick à la Yorgos Lanthimos. Which, fine, whatever; it's all a rodeo at the end of the day, no different than annually betting on a consistent playoff contender in the NBA or something.
I have not seen Zombies vs. Strippers (2012), but I have seen Zombie Strippers! (2008). Does that count? (Leave it to the horror genre to double down on a concept like that!)
I'm sayin!! I'm sure there's a Stripper Zombies (20XX) lurking somewhere amongst the dust
Hard agree on Sentimental Value. Though they’re completely different filmmakers I’m reminded of Christopher Nolan‘s lauded run with some of the most convoluted stories I’ve ever witnessed. You can’t deny their craft as directors, but the writing leaves me wanting and frustrated. If Trier is going to continue to make films about women, I wish he’d write with a woman because in his last two films his characters have betrayed themselves for the looming men in their lives in the final sequences — while the films try to portray these decisions as enlightenment and contentment — and it makes me want to smash things.
I do think the ending of the film is moreso grounded in a recognition of shared powerlessness, or arguably a counterbalancing power that Nora now has over Gustav as an impression of who she once was, and who Gustav can never access again; there's some poetry there between the intangibility of her art and the ghost she becomes - as far as Gustav is concerned - by the end of the film. Generally though yeah I get the impression that the text rested on its laurels at the expense of the subtext.
For a film that spends much of its time exploring how much accountability we can and “should” expect from a parent in the context of their child, acceptance of powerlessness is a deeply unsatisfying final note. And if the acceptance of powerlessness were simply about these two characters recognizing their shared melancholia I could maybe see it as poetic, but because it’s depicting Nora accepting powerlessness within the context of her relationship with her father, it feels glaringly like a betrayal of self based on the character we’ve been watching for the entire film. And that’s punctuated by the fact that Agnes lets her son be in the film, even though she’s been vehemently against it the entire time and is on no emotional journey where that conclusion is meaningful. And both do this seemingly bc of how powerful and/or emotionally revealing That moment in the script is (a text that is extremely underwhelming and tells us the audience nothing new.) Both daughters fully resign themselves to Dad‘s needs in the end. Which, similar to how Worst Person in the World ends, says a happy ending comes from putting the needs of the men in your life above your own no matter the cost to you. I think your ghost theory is generous but for me centering Gustav’s point of view is exactly the problem. Especially because, as you said, the film is not particularly interested in subtext. I need to watch it a second time because I would love to change my opinion on this but I’m not confident that will happen…