SENTIMENTAL VALUE — Joachim Trier’s different kind of meta-movie (w/ Stellan Skarsgård, Elle Fanning & more)

Heads up, this episode includes adult language, a blinding amount of star power, and warning right off the bat, spoilers. (upbeat music) Early on in "Yowa King Shire's new movie, Sentimental Value," there's this long sequence everyone who sees it talks about, 'cause it's so funny and painful. It's the introduction of a main character, Nora. She's a famous TV actor and Oslo Norway, in her dressing room at a theater, about to make her entrance for a big dramatic scene in a play. (sighs) Except she really, really doesn't wanna go out there. The crew tried to calm her crippling stage fright, and it seems like it might even be working. 'Til suddenly she just runs. Chaos reigns. While the audience waits awkwardly for something to happen, backstage the crew has to all but tackle this woman to get her to do her job. - It was very, very excited to play the first scene where she panics to go on stage. - Nora's played by Rennata Rienza. - I think it's such a good launch of a character because she's carrying so much emotional weight that she doesn't understand. She's never processed, but she doesn't necessarily know that. She's just panicking and trying to get people to slap her and trying to get people to, or she rips off her dress to get away from those emotions. And then when she's eventually pushed on stage, you actually see like her force as a performer with everything she is carrying. - Hey! (upbeat music) - So I really love the setup of the character and the setup of the whole movie too. (upbeat music) - Yeah, that scene captures at least part of what sentimental values about. The chaos of real life, the toll it takes to communicate it through art. And the whole time wondering, why do I even do this? (upbeat music) - I'm Rico Gagliano, welcome back to the movie podcast. Movies the global film company, The Champions Great Cinema. On this show we tell you the stories behind great cinema. We're laying down tracks for season 11, as we speak, that's coming in June. Meanwhile, today it's a special episode. We're gonna get deep into the making and meaning of the multiple Oscar-nominated sentimental value. Joaquim Trier's first film since his 2021 breakthrough, the worst person in the world. It is streaming on movies starting this week in the UK, Ireland and many other countries. And it's a movie that ended up being kind of about making movies, much to the surprise of the guys who made it. - To be honest, Escalade was kind of a little bit ashamed when we realized we were making film about film people. It's like, oh no. - That's Joaquim Trier himself, and I talked to him, his longtime co-screenwriter Escalade, and a chunk of the film's all-star cast, including the great Stellen Scarsgard, about how film people are and aren't, like the ones we see in the movie, but mostly are. - Hell I work with director Sornat, like that. - They are all that good. - You're also gonna hear me get schooled on the long history of meta-movies and where exactly this one fits in the pantheon. So sit back while I break the fourth wall of sentimental value. (upbeat music) I'm gonna start this story in Escal Votes office, somewhere in Oslo. Through the windows, I imagine the kind of gentle, Scandinavian light you see, and a lot of Joaquim Trier's films, kind of a soft glow. He was 2023, Escal and Trier, we're here to start writing their sixth movie together, and not only did they have no plans to make it about movie making, sounds like Trier didn't even wanna think about the subject for a minute. I spent a long time traveling with the worst person in the world. We got all-scan nominated, Bafta nominated. We were on a bit of a ride with that one. So it took a while to get back into the writing room. And by the time I had my first child and was going through that very profound experience of becoming a parent. And I think that affected me somehow in terms of being interested in family dynamics. So, you know, broad topic. To turn it into a story, Escal says they deployed their standard epic Lucy Goosey process, leading up in the office over the course of months, dreaming up random scenes and characters that might be cool to put in a movie, and listening to music. Maybe to procrastinate and not start the real work, we create a playlist. And we call it just film six, or this case maybe family, because we had some sense, we were about family. We had quite a few of that kind of music that you hear in the film. Sort of that kind of singer, songwriter, a music. That's beautiful, but it has a sadness to it. It has some melancholy to it. No surprise. They eventually came up with the elements of a story that was just as bittersweet. About two very different sisters. One is Nora, the actress. She's chaotic, having an affair with a married guy, haunted by a difficult childhood. The other is Agnes, stable and seemingly not so haunted. She actually lives with her husband and son in her and Nora's childhood home. In an early scene, Nora goes there for the wake of their mother. Nora's pretty stoic about it. - So obviously with the kitchen, I feel about a stress. Well Agnes, weeps. I think one of the first things we talked about here was the idea of growing up in the same family, but having quite different experience of childhood that you can really be very close, but still feel that you had a different childhood, even though you had the same parents in the same house. And I think that's where it started. Then at some point, Tririn Eskel made the house itself a character too. An unseen narrator describes the big old place like it's alive, a witness to the sister's lives. - For them, they had a great man who'd like to have a little family at home. - And of all the families who ever lived there. - We're going to be looking for something that would give that story about the sister's sort of perspective of a lifetime or more, that perspective on how shorter lives are. And we were sitting in my office, and Joachim sometimes had to excuse himself because his mother was calling, because she was selling a house that we know by his family for a long time. And then suddenly we realized, I think both at the same time, that that could be that house. You know, that could be a house that hasn't been around for 100 plus years. - The two guys took a field trip to Tririn's old house, to talk to his family about its history. And that's when things got meta. (gentle music) - Joachim's grandfather was a film director, and he had lived there. - I'm a third generation filmmaker. My grandfather, Eric Lookin, didn't get to make as many films as he should have, I think, there wasn't an infrastructure around him. Yeah, and my parents were both in movies, and I find to grow on an up in a family like that, I constantly questioned the paradoxes of how you express yourself in art, and how you express yourself differently in social life. So he and Eskelwendard, what if a reason Nora and Agnes' childhood were so fraught? 'Cause they had a dad who did exactly that. It was so perfect that he would be someone who made these very emotionally complex films, very personal films, and really expressed himself through them, but when it came to expressing his emotions to the people closest to him, like his daughter or ex-wife, he wasn't able to do that. And then he became so interesting to us, to kind of threaten to take over the film. - They named the guy Gustav Borg, an aging Swedish art house director, who left the family years ago, and has only kind of been around since. He reappears for his ex-wife's wake, and then over lunch, asked Nora to star in his next movie, in a role he says he wrote for her. - I roll it. - It's yours for me. - It'll be your big break, he tells his actually already famous daughter. Guess what, she declines the offer. - - - So instead, Borg was a big American movie star, played by Elle Fanning to take the role. And it's slowly dawns on her, this movie he's making, is some kind of take on his own family traumas. Even Blythly tells her they're gonna shoot a suicide scene in the room where it happened, while they're standing in it. - Your mother? - Yeah. - Oh, but not here. - Yeah. This is a very long time ago. - No. She used that. - That? - Uh-huh. He's a pretty nasty character. If you look at the lines he's saying, especially in the first half of the film. - That's Stellan's "Scar's Guard." If you've watched movies at any point in like the last 30 years, you've seen him star in something from goodwill hunting to the "Dune" franchise. Treeer figured he might be perfect to play Borg, maybe because he's as no bullsh*t as the character. - I didn't say I'll do the film, and he didn't say do the film. To begin with, we were sort of circled each other like two, like two dogs, you know, sniffing at each other's asses. But eventually he gave me the script, and he asked me to do it. - So what did you think as you were reading it for the first time? What drew you to this, what seems like an nasty guy? - What interested me was not the bad guy in him, but why he was doing it. And that's very exciting. It's very exciting to show a man who does not know what he's doing. He does not know why he is making a film that he hopes will bring him and his daughter closer, because he doesn't know he wants them closer. And he's saying the wrong things. He's very bad at communicating feelings in his private life, but he can in his work. And that's a very common thing. I mean, you meet a lot of directors who are like that. - My first question was going to be, have you worked with directors like that? Is there anybody that comes to mind? - Have I worked with directors who are not like that? - They are all like that. - Possibly an overstatement. Anyway, for his part, Trir and Sis, they never had a real director in mind. - I think Gustav Borges' complete fiction and Stella always makes this joke that, you know, "Oh, time for revenge." You know, you can make fun of the directors and stuff. But we found it to be more interesting to think about him as a human being and a character than just a director. - Although Eskel says that hasn't kept film gigs like, "Yeah, me, from suspecting Borg, "might be based on an actual Swedish art house legend." - When people say he's inspired by Bergman, we find that a little bit too easy and also like, don't people know that Bergman loved theatre more than cinema and this character hates theatre shouldn't that be obvious enough that he's not Bergman? - I mean, I'm sorry to say a lot of people outside of Sweden probably do not know vagaries of Ingmar Bergman's attitudes towards theatre. - What? - So disappointing. - In fact, at first, they wondered if Go In The Metta Root and sparking exactly this kind of conversation was going to distract from the actual emotional core of the film about families trying to talk to each other. - To be honest, Eskel, I was kind of a little bit ashamed when we realized we were making film about film people. It's like, oh no, it's kind of self-centered. Film people think film people are so interesting. But we did it because it gave us a key into discussing a different form of communication, a different language, if you will. - And then of course, we would start to have a lot of fun because we know that world, you know, we know what it's like to be a film director, we know what it's like to have been. But the fear of not making another film, we know what it's like to be part of that filmmaking family, sometimes at the expense of your own family, you know, just felt like something we could do and it wouldn't just be a joke. It would be something we could tell in a truthful way. - Especially of course, the family part. (Applause) - There's a sequence in sentimental value that drives at home when Gustav Borg attends a screening of one of his old films at a festival. Afterwards, on stage, he's interviewed about it. - It's 20 years ago, probably, since I saw it. And I remember vividly in detail the days on the set, the people. You know, I feel with friends, they're all my family. Except, of course, they're not really. Because after every shoot, which only lasts a few weeks, maybe a couple months, a film family immediately breaks apart. - It is a little crazy, maybe. - That's Inga Ibsdotter Lilias. She's up for an Oscar for playing Agnes. After a decade starring in movies, she's experienced a lot of these breakups. - It's just the way it works, you know. It's like this movie was very special to make. And I felt it when I was in it and I felt on the last day I was very sad because I realized that this is over and this is never going to happen again. Like these people, all of the people in the crew and the actors and the director and writer, like that constellation, that was now and it's never coming back. No matter, I can work with the same people again, but it's never going to be that, you know. - Because you, the sort of the language that was invented for the film, you invented a special language, with special references, and that's gone as well. - Stellan Scarsgard has put himself through this ever since his days as a child actor. - It's the first films I wrapped. I cried because of the separation. - What do you think it is that attracts people to that life? What is addictive about that? Or even like acceptable? - It's the work and it's the work with other actors and the director and the crew that is fantastic. To be honest, that isn't fantastic. You get high from it. You're sharing everything with those people and you can die for them and it's really intimate. It's dangerous, it's life-threatening, it's really exciting. And then after three months, you go and it's gone. - In sentimental value, Trier and Eskol Voat give you the feeling Gustav Borg has been chasing that high his whole life, always looking for a reason to gather with his film family. Instead of his real one. - You live very intensely on a film set because you lived so much during those six, eight weeks that they are worth so much more than like two years of everyday life. I think that's part of the allure. - For a lot of meta movies, that would be the cautionary point. But not this one. A brief history of films about films and how sentimental value breaks the mold. That's coming up in just a minute. Stay with us. - All right, everybody. Movie is the global film company that champions great cinema, bringing it to you wherever you are in as many ways as we possibly can. We stream movies, we produce them, we distribute them in theaters from legendary otures to brilliant first-timers. There's always something new to discover. And hey, once you've checked out sentimental value, which is streaming right now, we've got plenty more of Joaquim Trier's truly great movies to discover, all co-written with Eskylvote. Like if you're in the UK and many other countries, you can check out their international breakthrough, the worst person in the world about a modern woman navigating relationships, mortality, and occasionally psychedelics as she looks for love in Oslo. I am not alone in loving that movie. It made a lot of people laugh and then it broke everyone's hearts to pieces. It's already classic, just go and watch it. And in the US, UK, and elsewhere, you can also stream Trier's Oslo August 31st about a day in the life of an addict. Incredible performances in this one, including what Renata Rinesve told me is her first epic appearance in a true movie. - I only had one line. I had, let's go to the party. That was my line. That's why my voice is so rusty today, because I said that line for you yesterday. - You know, there are no small parts, etc., etc. Anyway, bottom line, we've got lots of Trier movies, which means you have got lots of reasons to subscribe to movie at movie.com. For a list of the films, which countries they're available and all the links you need to get started, check the show notes of this episode, speaking of which, let's get back to the episode. - So as much as Trier and Eskouvo were surprised and a little worried to realize they were making a film about film people, it's not like they're not fans of the genre. - I actually love a lot of films about that. I love Older Jazz. I love Eight and a Half. I love La Nuea American by Truffaut. I mean, I, there's so many fun and wonderful films that deal with that. - And it seems like most of my friends who are not filmmakers are also enjoying it, because maybe there are original scenes that come up, because not everyone's on a film set, not everyone knows what the process is. - Which partly explains why almost as soon as people started making movies, they made movies about it. - So I've been working on film long enough to know you should never say that there's a movie that was the first one, because you're always going to one day be proven wrong. - That's David Roche, professor of film studies at the University of Montpellier in France. He wrote a book called Metta in Film and TV series, and he won't risk his reputation to name the first Metta movie. - But amongst the early ones in the silent era, there's a Charlie Chaplin movie called Film Johnny. - Film Johnny, literally. That's what it's called. - Yeah, Chaplin 1914. - 1914. How old is cinema at that point? - Well, the Hollywood studios start setting up in the early 1910s, basically, so 1914 is really, really very early in terms of Hollywood, at least, as for sure. - And you can imagine it, blowing people's minds. In it, Chaplin, as his legendary little tramp character, watches a movie starring real-life starlet Mabel Normand, and gets so crushed out on her, he actually weedles his way onto one of her sets. where he collides with other real-life stars, playing themselves, and then he watches a Gog as Mabel shows up and then transforms into a swooning damsel for a scene. For a lot of viewers, it might have been the first time they'd ever seen a movie set. And it set up tropes that have been the hallmarks of Meta movies into the 21st century. One of the key scenes that we often see in these movies is the focus on either rehearsing or shooting a scene. The idea of the magic of cinema is the performance, the moment where the performer becomes someone else right in front of you in Mulhund Drive. I'm sure you remember the scene where Naomi Watts also does her audition. We all do, right? David Lynch's Mulhund Drive, where Naomi Watts' happy wide-eyed wannabe actor suddenly turns into a sultry seductress at an audition. You're playing a dangerous game here. If you're trying to blackmail me, it's not gonna work. Well, the roots of that scene go back to Chaplin, 1914. I mean, I would say that it's kind of a way of representing the magic of cinema in a magical way. Because one of these things the films don't do, and I'm not saying this in a critical way, is show us how tedious and laborious making a film actually is, right? Typically, these films focus on one scene being shot and it's gonna be the good take. But it's very rare that you show how complicated it is. Which is your first clue that for a film like this, sentimental value is pretty rare. That's the one's within listening. Like there's a scene in the movie that's kind of a lower key version of the one in Mulhund Drive. Elfanning's character Rachel, the movie star, is going over Gustav Borg's art house script, just sitting with him at a dining room table. When he asked her to rehearse a monologue, and we watch her flip from everyday mode, deep into character. I sat down on the floor, and prayed. I don't know who I said it to, but I said it out loud. Help me. I can't do this anymore. Except unlike a lot of scenes like this, we later realize Rachel hasn't magically nailed the performance. Rachel Fanning told me that was the hardest part. It's a tricky line because that's the moment where we get to show the audience that she isn't a joke, that she actually is talented, but also at the same time I have to be slightly off and not perfect for the role. Yeah, the perfect take comes later. When Gustav's daughter Nora reads the script aloud for the first time in her father's own language, and it comes out totally different. Rachel's trying to push her emotion out and actually getting excited by the fact that she's crying, Renata is completely surprised in trying to hold that emotion in. The fact that it's in English is so interesting because it's something that Rachel brings up later to Gustav where she's like, I don't think that you want this movie to be in English, either. The text just sounds so much better the way that Renata says it. There's also something there when Rachel's saying those words. It's like, it just doesn't quite fit. In other words, this is not a tale of instant movie magic for Trir and Vote. Art takes work. On the other hand, also rare, the movie isn't about the brutality of the business. Often one of the things that's said is that these movies are actually by and large more critical than celebratory. There's this paradox where the industry is making movies about itself, that are critical of itself, but it's also exploiting that and making money out of it. Many of the movies are like that if you think of Sunset Boulevard, if you think of Barton Fink or other movies. And of course includes arguably the King of Meta Movies. A star is born. From 1937, about a farm girl who wants to chase fame in Hollywood, right from the jump, even her supportive grandmother warns her. It won't come easy. "Could you do it? Could you do it even if it broke your heart? Because you remember Esther for every dream of yours you may come true, you'll pay the price in heartbreak." And Esther does, as she falls in love with the alcoholic movie star Norman Maine, who launches her to start him while his career crashes and burns. "I'm gone outside for you, right? I'm Norman Maine. Well, it's not my fault. I don't bother to charge him out. He's homeless." "All right, Mr. Levy, if you say so. Sure, let him go. What can he do? We can't fight any better than he can act." Since 1937, filmmakers have pumped out remakes of a star is born about once every 20 years. Showbiz's ongoing myth of itself is a tragedy. I think that if we're in something like a star is born, clearly we're banking on this idea that Hollywood is potentially the American dream, but that this American dream could turn into the American nightmare. And I think that one thing that Hollywood has always been very good at, of course, is that they will always cultivate ambiguity to potentially broaden the audience. There might be people who'd disapprove of the glamour of Hollywood and this kind of godless bunch of artistic circus performers out there in the West. You can see a movie that kind of says, "Yeah, be careful what you wish for. Maybe you don't want to be part of that circus." While simultaneously playing to people who want to see behind the scenes of the glamour of Hollywood industry in a way, it's playing both sides. Exactly. What can I do for your Walter? Don't tell me you came here to pitch me a story. In the irony drench 1990s, I grew up watching tons of indie movies that played exactly that game, like Robert Altman's Awesome Noir "The Player," in which a slick Hollywood executive murders a screenwriter. Or there was swimming with sharks about an abusive Hollywood mogul that was even living in oblivion and art house movies, curing the pretensions of art house filmmakers, especially their dream sequences. Have you ever had a dream with a dwarf in it? Do you know anyone who's had a dream with a dwarf in it? No! But for a film with a character like Gustav Borg that could easily take this kind of jaw-dressed view of the movies, sentimental value never does. In fact, kind of the opposite. Like there's a beautiful sequence towards the end of the film where Agnes visits Nora. She's worried about her. Nora seems depressed, maybe suicidal. She suggests Nora actually read the script her dad wrote for her to star in, the one she turned down. Nora does. And she finally gets it. It's about their family. And the two sisters start communicating. In a way, Inga Ibsdot or Lillia says, "Even the actors themselves rarely ever do." It was just very true the whole thing. It felt like we were talking about real life, like what it is to be an older sibling and a younger sibling. And I really wanted to hug her at some point, but I was scared to improvise and ruin the take. But then in New York, he's sitting in the room. He's not behind the monitor, so he's very present. And he said, "Go hug her." And so I did. I hugged her and I felt like I wanted to say, "I love you." I was crying. Which is in Norwegian, a very big thing to say. It's not something you say. We have other sort of phrases. Like maybe less tender phrases, maybe? Yes, it's like something you say to your husband or your wife. I love you. And maybe your kids, "Now I say it to my kid now because I want that to be. I want him to have the biggest expression of love that exists in the language." So I said it because I felt like Joachim had shown me that it's okay. In the same way, in the final scene, moviemaking brings another pair of characters closer together, this time without even saying a word. It's a moment between Gustav and Nora, right after he's directed her in a scene and says "cut." It's very worried about it because of the paper. It can be very overly sentimental. I mean, it's a fox thing. Are they going to have a happy ending? Others film. But when we shot it, we shot it last of old scenes. And we found the tone directly. First he is surprised. What happened? What was this? And it looks at Renata. And Renata looks at him too. And she's also surprised. Something has happened. And then they look away and then he smiles a little. It's the beginning of something. And maybe there's reconciliation coming. And maybe there's forgiveness. And that's the hope. Later I told Joachim Trier it's pretty clear to me making movies for him is a love language. It's very beautiful. And I feel like there's been movies about moviemaking or even TV shows about moviemaking. And I have been trending that way. Weirdly. Whereas I feel like in the 80s and 90s there was a lot of you'd make a movie about the act of making movies and it was all ironic. But I wonder if you think like your movie there's a call your agent even which could be very successful. I've seen it's funny. I saw the Friends show. Yeah, but it's also very loving at the end of the it's a TV show that you expect to be actually a harder on its characters than it is I think it times and I'm winning first of all why you think that might be like why is this an era where we're treating filmmaking with maybe a little bit more gentleness maybe that's a great question. I'm speculating how to like that first of all I mean times of change in terms of fashion everything was ironic in the nineties and kind of intimacy and authenticity seemed fake and done and now I think we're yearning for that. Sense of seeing each other more we're experiencing fragmentation and distancing through a lot of communication tools that are perceived as getting as close or but perhaps it's removing us from each other so I think that's that whole cultural thing of tenderness and yearning for some sense of contact. But I also think on top of that I think more than anything we are now suddenly feeling vulnerable as filmmakers because our form is being threatened by small screens and streaming yeah I think that's the thing and I because we love cinema we love the big screen experience and we are aware that we got to sharpen ourselves. To be allowed to make films for the big screen that needs to be a purpose something to make people feel that it's valuable to sit in the dark together and laugh and cry and get some human contact from a big face on a screen you know that actually matters. That's something I'm really engaged in at the moment to try to make a see each other and listen to each other more through making movies which could at its best. Be kind of an empathy machine. And that's the movie podcast for this week if you missed sentimental value on the big screen I promise it is still gorgeous on a small one we've got it streaming on movie right now in the UK Ireland to Latin America and many other countries. All the filmmakers you heard in this episode are up for Oscars for it meanwhile follow us so you don't miss an episode of the movie podcast right now we are putting together a new season all about great movie needle drops those moments when filmmakers take existing tunes drop them in their films and magic happens. There are million contenders if you've got one you think we just have to cover tell us about it the email our address is podcast at movie dot com. And now let's roll credits this episode was written and hosted by me Rico Galiano Kira McAneth is our producer with help from assistant producer cat co-walsic Christian Coons edited and mastered this week. Our original music is composed by Martin Ostwick except the tune blueprint by Jizar that's courtesy of tribe of noise. Thanks this week to the Miranda and classic families everyone at movie who helped wrangle all these luminaries and the people of the Twin Cities. This show is executive produced by me along with FHKRL Daniel Kazman and Michael Takah and finally to watch the best in cinema subscribe to movie at movie dot com. Thanks for listening and go watch the movies they matter.