Talk to Joachim Trier about sentimental value

It may surprise you to know that one of this year’s awards season contenders is a Norwegian film. But it’s not the first time. In 2022, Joachim Trier’s cunning and shifting relationship drama The worst person in the world He snuck into the Oscars with nods for Best International Film and Best Original Screenplay. and his family follow-up, Emotional valuehas been pegged as an Oscar contender since winning the Grand Prix at Cannes, along with a number of other European awards.

Trier’s latest film is embroiled in the chaos of patriarchal issues. Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård) plays a neglectful father and film director who returns with his magnum opus: a screenplay written about his mother, who died by suicide. He wrote the lead role for his daughter, Nora (Renate Rensef, a frequent Trier collaborator). But she is less tolerant of her father’s absence and eventually abandons him.
As much as Trier’s film functions as a pair of moving portraits of characters, he believes his use of space and location is just as important. The house in which much of the film takes place is treated as much as the character himself. “It’s as if you can smell it, feel it,” he told me. “And that’s cinema for me.” (Longtime Trier fans may recognize the house from an awkward scene in it Oslo, August 31the second of three films in the Oslo Trilogy.)

The manager spoke with Edge About how he uses what he calls “polyphonic structure” to move Emotional valueThe story of the protagonist’s pain, the key to discovering a good actor in just two minutes, and how the process brought this awards season contender together.

I heard that you and (co-writer) Eskil Vogt watch a lot of movies while writing. What were you watching while you were writing? Emotional value?

Joachim Trier: Not as specific references, but I think we like kind of human story films. It’s just inspiring something human and entertaining and heartwarming. I showed the team Opening night By (John) Cassavetes. This is a wonderful performance piece, and it’s also about someone grappling with creativity and crisis in his personal life.

Is this how you want to set the tone?

Yes, I try not to imitate other films. We do our own thing, but I want to remind the team members — all of them, my great collaborators, all their assistants and everyone — that we’re shooting 35mm film. There is beauty in that and watching it on a big screen. We got a 35mm copy and the atmosphere of this film was really beautiful.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but was that the same house from Oslo, August 31 Which you shot?

Oh, you’re so attentive.

I haven’t told anyone, but, well, you can guess. Let’s put it this way.

It’s like you have a nice relationship with that place, and I’m wondering what it is about this particular house that you love.

It’s very strange. He’s like another human being. You’re just like someone. You think he’s onto something. I don’t know what, and this house is very close to where I live. I know people who live in the house and we looked at a hundred houses to go back to that one and look at it. So I walked in and within 30 seconds I said, “We’re doing this.”

How does architecture play a role in how shots are composed? What I love about this movie is that your exteriors are beautiful, but your interiors have a kind of romance to them. How do you compose that shot list?

This is the most intuitive thing we do, me, the team and the cinematographer, Casper Tocsén. But I think without sounding too academic, I know for a fact that scenic design, like the composition of images in film, the way we build repetitions, the way we look at spaces and all those things – it’s very important. Talking about it, it sounds very intellectual, but actually experiencing films, the most interesting thing about them is the mood, the people and the light that strikes in a special way in the room and reminds us of something.

Eliciting the details of the tangible nature of the place is very important. It’s as if you can smell it, feel it. This is cinema for me. The problem is, I hate talking about it because people think, “What are they talking about?” Close your eyes and see. Think of a David Lynch movie. It’s the most mood-filled cinema you can get. Then people suddenly say: “Oh, wow.” But that’s an aspect of old movies regardless of intent.

And sometimes I watched old Norwegian films from Oslo, like the stupid gangster sitcoms that everyone saw, which were so mainstream, they weren’t well received by the critics. But I love them because they showed Oslo summers in the 80s during my childhood. And I just look at the backgrounds and feel something profound in those movies even without the narrative being very interesting. So this is the aspect that we play with when we make films and tell the story of a particular place or house. This specific house is trying to capture all the childhood home ideas people can bring to the table.

In the film, Gustav Borge says he knows a good actor in about two minutes. Is it the same for you? What makes a good actor to you?

It could be many different things, but sometimes Renate Rensev was involved in the casting Oslo, August 31 And I watched the tape and I was like, “What a great energy. Like, who is she?”

It’s energy, but it’s also, say, looking at someone and being curious about their thinking. That’s probably number one: a good listener and thinker. You look at them and wonder, “What’s on that person’s mind?” Because that attracts the audience to the interpretation.
Acting, as in all filmmaking, is both on display and not on display. And good actors will draw you into a space within them that is a mystery that you want to step into.

It moves the story along by periodically fading to black. It’s a fun move and also feels a little slimmer The worst person She explains chapters all the time.

TRUE.

Why did you want to tell the story this way?

The story starts off with what are hopefully hopefully entertaining bits of different lives in the family, and then transitions into a cohesive and sort of one-two story of the two sisters and the father. It gets to a sense of flow towards the end, but we also do it to leave room for interpretation and what I call “polyphonic structure,” where our drama is not about pushing the plot all the time but trying to create enough entertaining songs on the album so you’ll listen to the next one and have that as a driving force in the first half. So, also focusing on those omissions, there’s an absence and then they come back and you have to redirect yourself. I think it creates a kind of interesting energy in storytelling.

How do you find the right time to make those stops? It occurs at the end of moments but is prevalent throughout the editing process as well.

No, it’s in the script and then you reinterpret the structure during the editing process and it’s there. That’s the art of it. This is music. It’s hard to explain. It’s an emotional thing.

Do you stick to the script while filming, or do you take it easy?

We soften it. First we rewrite the script while doing some rehearsals just to get the actors to wear the dialogue, and bring their own stories. In this case, I felt, for example, that Inga, the younger sister, when I picked her – I think she’s remarkably good, and I’ve never worked with her before. She’s not very popular, but she was also different from the written character. So we had to adapt. The character of Agnes was written in a more fun and wholesome way, but she was more grounded and deep and silent, and I thought: “Oh, this is more interesting.”

That was a surprise. I’d rather have that. Take gifts instead of kind of manipulating your vision. I’m all about the process.

Since you’re shooting with a 35mm lens, which costs more than a digital camera, do you ever worry about breaking free? Or do you allow yourself to have that space?

Sometimes if we have long rolls that are nine minutes and short rolls that are four and a half minutes, so if I have short rolls, I can get rolls if I just repeat the scenes. But I have it in my instincts. Most of my films except for one – like five out of six were shot in 35 films and shorts in 16 films – so that’s how I structure it.

Emotional value It is such a static film. With all this stress, there are no crazy outbursts. Can you talk about striking that balance?

It’s true, and it builds to more chaos at the beginning when they’re panicking and all that, but it turns into almost silence. This deep intimacy that I try to crave with sisters and all that… I think life’s biggest dramas happen in those silences sometimes. Yes, we can scream and scream, but we turn ourselves off when it gets to that level of aggression.

So I’m interested in cinema’s ability to try to reach those intimate spaces between people. We are also allowed to look at each other differently in the movie theater. So a close-up, for example – (inclined terrier) – Like in real life, if you sit and stare at someone like that, it’s either you’re psychotic or you’re deeply in love or something. But in movies, we are allowed to look at a person, actually his behavior, his pain, his joy and everything in a very intimate space.

Emotional value In theaters now.