Joachim Trier - 'Sentimental Value' [LIVE]

33:58Like, can I make another film? And who am I? And at the time, I didn't quite know how to... I was grappling with not addiction. I wasn't so bad off as this guy, but I can understand how it is to feel a bit lost. So I thought it was very important to make that film. That's great. And there are so many scenes I could ask you about, but I want to ask you if you can just share a little bit about two. There's, first of all, the scene in which Anders and his friend Thomas are on a park bench overlooking the city. I believe it's a 10-minute scene. and one of the things Anders expresses is basically you know that if he takes his own life it's because he wanted to he wanted it to be that way like it seems like that was the gist and then the other one is a scene where Anders is in a cafe by himself listening in to other conversations between people who seem to be you know functioning better than he is and it's it's almost a amazing it is an amazing thing of sound design where it's like tuning in to different conversations almost like you know people have likened it to shifting the radio and so those two there are so many scenes that are memorable from that film but just anything you can say about those two i think we wanted to formally explore a film where we could have very different types of scenes in one movie and see if we could make it interesting and work dramaturgically because it's has the frame, the dramatic framework of 24 hours, you can kind of allow it to play out like a day.

35:36In a day, you will have moments when you're talking a lot and you have moments of great silence. And we try to make that a part of the way we told the story, basically. So we really went into long dialogue scenes and long silences in the same movie and tried to make those two energies work for the experience. and I think that impossible conversation of a friend who's kind of asking for permission to not be around anymore is an impossible conversation and I think both Eskel and I have felt we've been parts of being that person who has been with people who've had a really hard time and the impossibility of that and I'm not saying the film is made from a perspective of guilt but a sense of grief over the impossible tasks.

36:22Not that it's exactly the same again. I was talking to a young writer here outside who's amongst you now and we were talking about like how to make the personal distant enough so that you could as an actor put your own feelings into a character without having to defend the character. You know I find that liberating that all of these characters that you see in my film are not quite someone I know not quite me or not quite Eskil but I can understand them through some experience and some personal thing or maybe I can stretch myself into understanding them it's not always that I understand them completely but but through that I can create something where I keep pondering keep wondering keep being curious because it's just removed enough to fill in those themes I'm interested in and then just to follow up about the cafe scene oh the cafe scene yeah yeah thank you no again my dad's a sound designer so i grew up you know thinking a lot about sound which is a wonderful thing in movies and also silences but i'm i'm um i was interested in mixing a bit of documentary into oslo august 31st so some of the conversations you hear are documentaries some are planned some are amateurs that i'm getting to kind of ad-lib around certain topics uh and i i want it to be a snapshot again the idea of memory when i see that film now that cafe doesn't exist anymore it's obtained by a big franchise you don't have over here but kind of in the style of starbucks and it used to be a very specific place and it's just interesting how everything changes but that film has that moment and those conversations about those football games and those things people were talking about at that time in the film and they'll always kind of be there so the last thing i'll ask you about oslo august 31st is something that then it's a seed that was planted that only began to, I guess, blossom in a way 10 years later and then continued into sentimental value, which is you cast in a very small part towards the end of the film, late hours of August 30th into the early hours of August 31st, as one of two young girls who kind of go out with the two guys in your film.

38:35One of them was played by in a very small role by somebody named Renata Reinsfeld, who is now a Best Actress Oscar nominee for Sentimental Value. So going back 15 years to the making of this movie, where did she come from? How did you find her? It's a bit like Anders. She walked in on an open edition. I do a lot of open editions, and I have a whole team that film people and meet people. And she was in the Norwegian acting school that was the most renowned one and she came in but she was halfway through the course so she wasn't really allowed to I think she's kind of snuck they don't want you to work while you're there you're supposed to work after you're done with your education but since it was a small role she kind of took a chance and she came in and we thought she was remarkably charismatic and open to trying different versions of scenes and and had this kind of cool confidence about her and we needed someone that could be in the background but create something that was very lifelike and that's what she did so she had one line of dialogue but she was on set nine days because i was shooting a situation of night going into early morning to catch that light of that transitional beautiful early morning light i had to film many many many mornings just one hour every morning then we went the rest of the day and did other stuff but those mornings she was there for nine days and and every morning she came with that spirit and did stuff and kept the party going because kind of this party crowd that he ends up with at towards the end of the film and she was amazing so I thought she would go off and have a tremendous career after that and other people would see what I'd seen and and she ended up playing some like the competition to the main character as the other mean girl or something in a couple of tv shows and some great theater work but no lead roles in movies so 10 years later we wrote worst person in the world for her yeah then i know that's a that was for a lot of people the the gateway drug to your work so we are gonna of course come to that in a moment but between the two uh the first two renata collaborations what there was also in in 2015 four years after oslo august 31st your first English language film, or only English, primarily English language film, that's Louder Than Bombs about a father played by Gabriel Byrne, his two sons, one who's an adult played by Jesse Eisenberg, the other who's still in high school played by Devin Druid in the aftermath of the death of their family matriarch who was played by Isabelle Huppert in flashbacks.

41:19First of all, you know, I'm curious the root of the title and the idea, but also the idea that you, for the first time now, were going to go work in English language, that you were going to go work with internationally known actors. Was that something that you had been hoping to do or were being told it's time to do? You know, you should go do, you know, if it's the next step in a career. Just like set the scene for how that movie came about. Yeah, no, the seed for that whole script and the beginning of writing it happened before Oslo on August 31st. That's a reaction to that journey to America I talked about after my first film.

41:56And I really wanted to. I'd been educated in London. I had a first film that was received quite well in the US and I felt that that was a way to reach more friends. When I say friends, I mean audience members, people that will hopefully understand what I want to talk about. And I always thought about my life and the group I work with which is a lot of the time the same people. as an indie band who builds a rapport with an audience over time. Like people can see that we grow older. Anders, Renat, the people, they grow older. We follow them in different steps of their life. I like that idea. But Lauder than Bombs was trying that international thing, but still it feels equally personal to me.

42:39And it's a film that now is getting a revival because of sentimental value. I saw there was a great write-up about it suddenly in The Guardian and on Instagram, people are kind of quoting. So I'm like, good, maybe it's going to have its time now. Because at the time, you've said, I don't know if people almost were resentful that you were doing something in English. They felt it was a sellout, some people thought, and that hurt me. At Cannes, it was my first film in main competition. There's a lot of expectation. That year, there were several filmmakers from Europe who'd worked in other languages.

43:11Yorgos, Lantamos. Yeah, Yorgos did for the first time, and also... Oh, Sarantino. Yeah, Sarantino, Paolo. Yeah, he's a wonderful filmmaker, had also made a film in English and it became kind of a little bit of a group takedown as if people were scared that we were going to sell out. And I think all of us had made really personal films. And maybe I was the one that suffered the most from that critique. And also a lot of people in France loved Oslo August 31st. It became a cult film over there and I'm very happy. but it's sometimes like that. Your next one then will have an expectation to be a repetition and you want to go somewhere else.

43:49So there we are. But also a lot of people embraced it. I remember LA Times loved it. I mean, there's always going to be some naysayers but there's also going to be some love. So there we are. But regardless of that, I felt that the film developed my process with actors. I worked with some of the greatest actors in the world, really. Like to work with, for example, Isabella Pair is remarkable. We also had the amazing Amy Ryan and David Strathairn. I mean, we're talking about some of the best actors in America, in my opinion, that came and just did, you know, not the leads even in this film. So I had an amazing time, and I learned so much, and I'm very proud of that film.

44:28One quick last follow-up about that film. There is, late in the film, a scene with a very long take or long shot on Isabelle Huppert's face. she's not saying anything she's not actively doing anything what was the i'm curious what the impetus for that scene was and i believe you might have even been uh as you you're you're always near the camera you've said when you're directing which is not the case for for all filmmakers but in this case i think you were literally behind the camera yeah it's true actually wow your research man you know all this stuff no it's true how how the hell do you know that no jacob ira the wonderful dp that shot louder than bombs said, I think this moment you should hold the camera.

45:11And I did. I remember still, we always, five of the six films shoot on 35mm. It was an 85mm lens, an ARRI lens, I remember. And there was an LT camera. I had it on my shoulder. And Isabelle was sitting in front of the camera. And we listened to some Bach music that you can't hear. And she knew exactly what to do because it's kind of an enigmatic close-up. and we kept it for a long time. And I think it's one of the proudest moments I've had as a filmmaker. I love that close-up. And when I said cut, I was expecting, I took her hand because she was right in front of me and I expected this kind of emotional moment and she just smiled and laughed and said, hey, I didn't blink.

45:56And she doesn't. I didn't even notice. I just felt it, you know. That's great. That was 2015. Two years later, your first sort of step into, I guess what we could call genre filmmaking was a movie called Thelma not to be confused with the there's been like two other movies called Thelma one of them with June Squip this is very different this is about a sheltered girl from an evangelical family who goes off to college and begins suddenly having seizures which may or may not be triggered by some of the people she's making new friends with and new experiences that she's having, especially interactions with another young woman who has a very different kind of background.

46:41What made you want to do a genre film for the first time? And why was this? I don't know if this is still the case after sentimental value, but at one point or another, you've said it was technically the most challenging film you had to deal with. Yeah, it was. It had 200 CGI shots in it. And we had fire and ice and skin treatment, animals, breaking glass. It was complicated. And we didn't have the biggest budget in the world. So I was very proud of that film. I wanted to do genre stuff because I wanted to do something with a lot of what I call mental images. I wanted to have abstract ideas. I was getting tired of my own style in a way, and I needed to try something else.

47:18And, you know, like in the 80s, even Neil Young did a synth album. You know, I think you need to try different instruments. And we shot it digitally. we tried different things and I got some new friends there was a whole new bunch of an audience audiences around the world that embraced that film and that still I have people that don't know all my other movies that like that one and and but it was also thematic stuff about I was seeing around me a new conservatism coming about and I yeah I grew up with a lot of gay friends and I saw how there were religious tendencies in many countries also in norway that were making it tough to be gay which is the most ridiculous provocative you know thing i can imagine not letting people love who they want to love it's just awful so i don't know many things at once happened there and and we uh we were big bunch of people that made that film together and it was a great experience and your lead actress was a discovery yeah fantastic and i love seeing i i tried to like learn more about what she's been up to and when i see that all your leading ladies follow each other on social media and like even if they don't know we're all friends yeah absolutely yeah yeah and it's funny because actually i haven't i haven't talked about this but there was a moment when we were looking for the other girl than eilie in Thelma where Renata, I tried to get her into the film and she didn't fit the role.

48:46And she did an incredible audition. She just came in as if we knew each other then. And she said, okay, we'll try these scenes. And I was looking at her thinking, I got to write her something. I mean, she's so wrong for this role. And it's so important to say to all the actors out there, there are so many great actors. And as a director, you see them sometimes and you're just like, you're not right for this role. And you hope they believe you when you tell them. You know? And Renata was cool. She got it. She said, I felt it too. I was wrong for this one, but I'm so glad you came back, you know, and gave me some other role.

49:15But you're not bullshitting people when you're directing. You really say this to actors. There's so many great actors out there, and it's so hard to be an actor. And I just have to emphasize it. But it's got to be the right role. Well, and so you mentioned this kind of reconnection with Renata. So that almost 2017, 2021 is the worst person in the world, which, just for anybody who needs a reminder, centers on Julie, played by Renata, a woman who's on the cusp of her 30s, torn between two very different men, one of them played by Anders, but named Axel, that's the Anders character, and then Ivand, Herbert Nordrum, and just sort of figuring out what she wants to do with her life.

49:54What inspired the film, which we should note is the first one of yours, I believe it's correct to say, that is about romantic love as opposed to friends, or, you know, which would be, I guess, applies to both Reprise and Thelma, the friendships. I mean, but here you have a man or woman who, you know, are navigating the ups and downs of a relationship. I've heard that you were watching everything from, you know, Golden Age Hollywood movies to Annie Hall. Anyway, just what fed into that one? I came back to Eskil and when we were sitting down to do Worst Person, I said, you know, I shouldn't swear I said F it so I don't know how to edit this I just want to have fun I want to make something where I'm not scared of having to feel that I have to reinvent myself or being scared of repeating or whatever I just want to go purely with my taste I want great music I want it to feel like a musical at times and I want it to be funny and lifelike I want Renato and a lot of this came out of Escal as well it's not just me saying this is the film we're making we figure it out together But it was clear that I felt like making one of those films and Esco was like I get it.

51:06Let's do it You know was it a conscious idea for you guys that all right? This is going back to the thread connecting reprise Yeah, I was a August 31st to this we're doing a trilogy or did something other people then project that on no It's a good question So so we just wanted to do another film and not be scared of repeating ourselves and just feel that we are older anyway So it'll come out different and different actors, you know But again, we are revealing something about life stages and stuff. And I met my wife around the time, and we, during the process of that film, had our first child right before I locked the edit.

51:48And I wrote that film maybe about a period in my life earlier where, I don't know, I was looking for a different connection to making a family, but I was also one of these people who loved to fly off and do my arts, a bit like Axel in the film. And Eskil knows me so well. So we could talk about those subjects and create something that wasn't quite me, but something abstract. And then also then, what is the me for Eskil and me and Julie? And this kind of chameleon character, which is so fun to kind of feel, oh, she wants to be like this and that, and she changes her hair. And it's so fun to write a character like that, but also trying to find the existential core of how complicated it is to figure out love and life at any stage in life, but particularly when you're going from 20s to 30s.

52:37I've seen this in many people's lives. And, you know, it's the great Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, once said that you can only understand your life backwards, but you're forced to live it forwards. And we kind of played around with that as a formal idea in that film, I think. But it didn't turn out to be a musical, and it turned into a very melancholic piece as well. So we always start out, ha-ha, it's going to be funny, and then it turns damn sad. With all our films. Well, a couple other just quick things about why you decided to do it. First of all, why the title, The Worst Person?

53:08What is that title to you? Yeah, maybe it's a Norwegian word to kind of have that self-deprecating, oh, I'm failing, I can't figure out my life, I'm the worst person in the world. It's kind of a self-deprecating statement. but I also thought it was interesting to do kind of a romantic our take on a romantic comedy a romance called the worst person in the world it's kind of the opposite right why did you structure it with 12 chapters plus a prologue and an epilogue why I could see you know I've seen with with films that are not that do not work well you unlike this one you sit there and you're like how many more chapter five, it makes you just actually be more conscious in a bad way of time.

53:52But in this case, I think you've talked about there are upsides to breaking it up. What were those for you? I think one of the main kicks I get out of a film is trying to think that every film has its own logic and its dramaturgy and its structuring of emotion and time. So in this one, first of all, it fits the character Julie, who has these kind of great expectations that it has a kind of a faux novelistic feeling to it as if that's how she would perceive herself. Of course, it's a novel and it's going to be an epilogue. It kind of mirrors the character. So that allowed us to do that. But it's also fun to let the audience feel a bit like it's like, I want to make a, I know this is a bit pretentious, so forgive me, but a hit album.

54:34I want all the bits to be really good songs. And I want it to be like, you have to put it together yourself a little bit and that you feel the form of it so that you can do some jumps in time. And then actually we follow her from her early 20s into her early 30s without it being obvious. We kind of jump sometimes and it's winter and summer again and oh, the year passed, but you have to kind of fill in the blanks a bit. I have not seen this film, but I read that one of the films that your grandfather made was a film where it was designed so you could watch it out of order. the set it was maybe like a five-parter or something five-parter yeah right and you could watch part four and then part however many combinations that yeah so a feature film in the old days before a digital copy of dcp came in usually five reels five big reels of film and he constructed his film from 1971 called remonstrance the second feature 10 years after the first in such a way that it could be changed around and he he meant it almost like a political statement that he felt which i think is still an interesting idea that the media was getting quite homogenized in the sense that he was feeding us narratives that were quite absolute and he wanted people to engage with how are we telling stories almost like a political act so he'd say he would invite the audience like put it together your own way let's you know let's make this film together if it kind of had that humanist spirit to it.

56:04It's just interesting because in a way that's, you're not necessarily telling people go watch chapter nine and then two of Worst Person in the World, but that. It's an invitation with a dialogue almost, with an audience to say, hey, I won't give you everything because I owe it to you to have some imagination and to come with your own interpretation of this. Was it different or harder or did you approach it seeking input from others where so you and Eskil are these two you know guys in your at this point 30s or four early at 30s at this point in our 40s in your 40s and with Thelma and then this you have for the first times female protagonists how does that work are you guys you know people you don't have to be exactly who you're writing nobody's I think that's silly but I just wonder if your approach was any different because you're going more outside of your own experience perhaps than...

57:04Absolutely. And we have a lot of readers that beat the shit out of us and challenge us. And we have had a lot of discussion about representation of class, addiction, gender, all kinds of things. And I think that's healthy. It's healthy to open that up early, have those discussions, figure out your relationship to it. where do you feel you can stand truthfully with your material? Maybe sometimes you drop something, maybe sometimes you, most of the time you get better ideas. And I think also actors. I often say this, both Anders, Renat, Estelle, and Gabriel Byrne. I mean, all of these ones, they come in, they say smart things, they do their own research and they challenge it and make it better.

57:46So going back to that question of writing women, First of all, I think gender is one important aspect of identity, but it's not everything. So I primarily always think every character has some specific aspects to them. I know there have been a lot of people who have identified with Julia that are women. And I've also had a few that have said, no, you don't get it. And that's life, you know. But primarily, I feel we've managed with our collaboration with Renata to catch something that a lot of people have felt was true to them. that means a lot to us. And this was, again, her first leading role in a film.

58:23She said that, you know, there was this very close collaboration with you and has continued to be. But this idea, you know, even the way you direct her, it's it's and other actors. But, you know, the way you direct her, we can talk about it in regard to worst person or sentimental or however you want. But I mean, you one of the things she says you do is you say you talk about going to zero. I wonder what that means. And also if you can talk about, I think I referenced it earlier, but we didn't get into it, that when you are directing, you're not in Video Village off watching on monitors far away from the action, which plenty of great filmmakers do, but you choose to be somewhere else.

59:02So can you just, I guess, to give a little sense of what it's like to be directed by Joachim Traer, going to zero and where you are physically while your actors are acting? Sure. It's a big subject. I'll try to be precise and short. First of all, I believe in rehearsals, but not because you're going to nail the scenes or train yourself in doing the exact thing you're going to do on set. Rehearsals is a time to get to know each other because everything when working with actors is about trust. If they can't trust you, and trust needs to be earned, you can't just say, trust me. We know that in real relationships.

59:36Like when you work with someone closely, you need them to feel that they can be silly and maybe actors sometimes have vanities that they're not aware of, ways they want to be perceived and they want to go beyond that to create some more lifelike performance. And they need to trust you that you're taking care of them, showing them in an interesting light. They don't need to be beautiful all the time. You see that from my films, that they're humans and they're faulty and sometimes their crying can be a bit, even though it's sweet, it's ugly and messy. I don't want it to be perfection. or sanitized you know and you need actors to want to go there with you and that's a negotiation that's based on trust so we get to know each other they need to build relationships with each other in the sense that they are playing sisters or family or lovers or whatever they're playing in these films you know so they need to i don't want people to come on set and think about all that other stuff i want them to only focus on being in the pocket in front of the camera being in the moment so we get done with all the intellectualization analysis and getting to know each other so by the time we're on set they we just keep working like we're already in the groove then i feel my job at that moment is to have them explore without me getting in the way too much so in psychodynamic therapy you have this idea of transference which is a natural human mechanism which is that if you sit and talk to someone and you find it boring maybe they're boring themselves or maybe they are used to being perceived as boring and they're scared of being anything else and they're they're getting you into the role of finding them boring and actors can sometimes do stuff that you don't ask them to do which is incredibly interesting maybe you have asked them to be funny but they're kind of feeling some sadness in the scene that you that's underneath it all and if you're too concerned with your vision and i'm the ego director i want it to be my way then you lose the best possibility of the moment in the scene so i can't feel those vibes or transferences that's going on unless you sit and really feel them so i sit next to the camera of course i do a lot of technically complicated shots difficult tracks one-ers, we work with steady cameras.

1:01:57Sometimes I have to be by monitor. I can't just run next to a long tracking shot. But most of the time when we're doing more intimate scenes, I sit there, I have a handheld monitor. It's in my hand. I can check the frame so I know what we're getting, but I look at them and I feel with them. And I get intuition and can help them go further. And sometimes it's very quick. Even though we shoot on 35, we have the most wonderful camera team in the world, in my opinion. And they change magazines like Maniacs. It's like Formula One car, tires, on with a new magazine, and we're ready to go. And sometimes it's just like we say, okay.

1:02:30And in Norway, we don't say cut. We say thank you. Talk, which is beautiful. So I even in English, when I direct English actors, I say cut, thank you. Every time they laugh at me, but I'm grateful. So whatever happens, and I say, so I say cut, and then maybe I just whisper some little thing to one of them, you know, and it could be just, I feel where you're going. You should go further. try that I know we didn't talk about this try that and they go yeah I know I know okay ready go again you know you're just in the loop with them and you're sitting like we're sitting here with you know just close to each other and it's can go very quick it's like a tumble dryer just retakes retakes retakes sometimes we also do big magazines which is a nine minute roll and you can just loop it and just we're about to come to the end or I I know them so well so I feel they've gotten on the wrong trajectory in the scene and i say all right let's go back to be and they're like thank you okay we go again and then and the camera just rolls and we have it on tape and the editor laughs at it later because he hears my stupid notes and then we go again you know keeping them in the pocket and then it's like wow i think we got a lot of good stuff there let's do one more little jazz take okay and the jazz take is just now mess it up completely maybe they already did by intuition but it's like even one more layer of revealing the pressure of the expectation it's remember this if you're working with actors however famous and great they are they're always if they're good actors vulnerable don't feel that directors have to be the visionary coolest person in the room sometimes you just need to be a friend supporter you can sometimes when the when everyone's feeling tense maybe just show that you're also stupid and you're not like the mean father who's demanding everyone to be so damn correct all the time i think to create safety trust and the will of risk is always at play and keep it loose you know it's if everyone's stepping oh they're you know they're they're walking eggshells because they're oh it's this great film and i have a lot of amateurs or first time on feature film actors or children on set in in ensemble film like you know sentimental value there are some amateurs there's some real pros some famous people even in this one, and then some kids, and how I'm going to make them all work together.

1:04:50It's about creating a vibe of a safe zone where we're all human, and we're doing our best. And it's an amazing explanation. I think people really can learn a lot from that. Thank you. Thank you. Just quickly, though, going to zero, which is apparently a very effective direction for Renato, what does that tell her to do? It means that because she's a great actor, in my opinion, one of the greatest in the world. And I know other people feel that too. Now, Paul Thomas Anderson's record saying something similar. I mean, we're all admiring her. She's doing an Alexander Payne movie right now, right?

1:05:23Right now, in Denmark even. They're shooting over there. So anyway, I can't say enough wonderful things about Renata. She's incredible. And whatever she does, it's always, to me, very interesting. So I want to give her a chance to explore the scene properly. And the thing is, you can get stuck in your previous take, but every take is a chance to go from zero, to do something completely different. So in Norwegian, we don't actually say zero. We're more like saying wipe it clean and start again is more like the way we're talking about it, I guess. But I think that's what she's referring to with go to zero.

1:05:58And it's just trying again with a clear mind and not burdening yourself with the pressure of the previous take and also feeling that kind of don't care too much about what we talked about. see if something can occur and what what we discovered through worst person in the world is that and this is a technically complicated it's a very delicate matter because all people have things or ticks or charms things they do strain and some actors feel that they have to put on this thing and you see it when you go from they're sitting before they're taking to say an action and they kind of changed your face in that moment or they strain up.

1:06:44And that's what you want to get rid of. You want them to flow like life straight into the take and not push. And then most actors I talk to, at some point during doing a scene, they feel, am I giving enough? Won't this be boring because I'm doing nothing? And that's exactly the interesting thing if they're good actors. So that's the zero. It's the fact that you trust the situation. because already you have gotten so far. Maybe you shot for five weeks. You know the character, and if the scene is working, the dramatic tension is already there, and they know what they brought from all those previous scenes that they've shot anyway.

1:07:24So maybe they have to do very little and just respond to each other, and suddenly more interesting stuff occurs, and that's the zero thing, rather than to say, I'm going to plan how every beat of this scene is going to be damn interesting and dramatically charged because it creates a weird strain. But on the other hand, also, if you do nothing, it'll be nothing. So you need a skilled actor that brings an understanding of what it is that's going on in the scene, and they allow themselves to open up to the possibility of that feeling without pushing it, I guess, is my best way of putting it. One last worst person in the world thing, and then we'll close with great excitement about the sentimental value questions.

1:08:05But there is a scene, a kind of magical scene in Worst Person, that is going to be a part of every career tribute montage you're getting for the next 70 years, which is when Julie decides to go find Ivan and Oslo kind of freezes and she runs through the streets. What made you think of doing that and how was that achieved? it's again a formal idea that doesn't mean anything until it means something and then you know the idea of freezing time is something we've worked on trying to get into several films but this is the last part of us trying to make a musical out of the worst person in the world we really wanted to have the musical feeling you know something with levity and a romantic feeling that lifts off into something more abstract and beautiful so that's it and it's a simple trick but it's also in my opinion justified thematically by the fact that Julie's main problem is the pressure of time and how quick it moves and the conclusion of the film is also about how loss and the idea of mortality manifested in your life will sharpen you to make some choices and maybe will be the fundament of understanding more about what love could be.

1:09:34And that's a sad but true experience in a way for a lot of people that you need to understand loss to live. So in the middle of that, her romantic notion that to be, how do you say, alleviated or removed from time for a moment as a kind of a beautiful idea. I thought was kind of interesting. That's great. You go to the Cannes Film Festival with that movie. Renata wins the Best Actress Prize, which further explodes her career. The film goes on to receive not only an Oscar nomination for Best International Feature, but also for Best Original Screenplay for you and Eskil, which makes people even more further appreciate you guys, I think, around the world and look back at these other films we've been talking about.

1:10:20And then four years later, you're back in Cannes, with sentimental value. And the difference, though, is, or an interesting thing, is that I think the vibe of this film is so different from any of the others that we've talked about. Some, you know, have called it kind of more, use the word tender. You have said, quote, tenderness is the new punk, close quote. So talk us through that and just what you were drawn to here in terms of just looking at grief and trauma and the way things can be passed down. It sort of anthropomorphizes the home itself, which is a character in this film, but also the things that your grandfather, who we've talked about, was a survivor of the Holocaust whose trauma was at least felt by you and others.

1:11:17Here, I think the mother of Gustav Borg's character was a Holocaust survivor and seems to have shaped him. I'll just also note, you also, of course, come from Oslo, apparently right around the corner from where this home used in your film is. You come from a family of filmmakers. Your parents divorced when you were quite young. so just wondering how much those things also may have shaped this kind of this story and this kind of new direction for you as a filmmaker tonally no i think all of that matters but it's nothing until you find a form when i say form it's not a cold structuring mathematical thing it's the actual shape of the film the the shape of each scene the the way that you you try to create something ideally in my opinion you're yearning for what you call sleight of hand in english where you're looking at something but something bigger builds emotionally and and thematically i think there's a lot to answer in that no no but thank you no no but i'm so impressed with your perspective and research thank you for going so deep into this i really appreciate it i think with this one something radical had shifted in my life primarily that's the starting point and i've i had a daughter while I was editing Worst Person in the World.

1:12:39So I was almost done with that film when I had a child and became a father, which I'd been longing for in my life for a long time. Pieces weren't in place until then. And that whole new experience of taking on the responsibility for another human being gave me a big reflection on my own life, on my parents, on my grandparents. The whole idea that when you have a kid, life throws you a kind of a natural psychoanalysis right in your face whether you want it or not you have to confront what it is to have responsibility for someone and you suddenly also realize the vulnerability of what your own parents and their parents must have gone through and so forth back in generations because you're suddenly your sense of mortality changes because you're not living for yourself you're kind of living for someone else in a more fundamental way so what since you've now seen sentimental value i think i hope it makes sense that it comes out of that moment but also a wish to do a more hopeful i wanted to feel a bit like a hug that says it's it's it's tough but it's you're going to survive this it's okay listen you know like like a friend that's those are the conversations eskel and i have have kind of been having when making this and everyone else casper Tux and the DP, Olivier the editor, all the actors, the producers, we've all actually ended up sharing a hell of a lot of stories that deal with how family in its fundamental concept is just complicated and that's human nature.

1:14:13It's not easy. You never get quite what you need from your parents. And I will also on some level that I can't plan for or avoid fail something in my being a father and that's life. And you play it as best as you can you know so I wanted it to be about reconciliation on a deep level and again that Nora who's so angry at her father has to understand his mortality to try to get to a better place and accepting what is and what isn't between them you know but then it also became this big idea about cinema and making movies and creativity and how that works the mystery of how the mechanisms of you You know, this is becoming quite sort of a grand conversation, like thematically, so forgive me.

1:15:01I don't mean to come off as pretentious, but I feel sometimes when I defend what I do, because there's a lot of smart things to do in life. There's a lot of people who work as doctors or nurses and help people, and a lot of people who are working in social, political engaged situations where they're actually helping people one-to-one in a very specific way that I admire tremendously. So many jobs I could mention. And once in a while you ask yourself, what is the purpose of art? But when the world has gotten more complicated, as I feel it has recently, without going into that rabbit hole of mentioning all those things, I think we can all recognize that we are in tough times, politically and internationally.

1:15:45It's not like everyone's collaborating so greatly at the moment between countries. And not all people are being treated well inside countries either. A lot of countries we expected to be different in the way they treat their population. So how do I find a place to make a hopeful film in art? Well, I know that people have always made art. It's the primary thing we know people have always done because the cave painting is in Lascaux in south of France. We know that we've found pieces of tools. We probably had to have agriculture, make food, kill some animals, eat them. We can speculate about everything else we've done, but we know that someone had to emulate something from reality on a wall, whether it was a religious ritual or we call it art or whatever it is.

1:16:28We know we've always done it. And it's a mystery why. But I know in my life that I have needed a song to comfort me when I was heartbroken. And I've needed to sing to my kids to calm them so they sleep. And I know that I need movies to understand who I am, to mirror myself in. And it's not a technical one-to-one thing. It's just if we aren't allowed to talk to each other through that other language of art, whatever it is, then we are missing something fundamentally human. So I care about movies in that way, too. And I care about I didn't want to make a navel gazing film with this one. I didn't want it to be like, oh, Jogun's making a film about how great film people are, you know.

1:17:09And these are not ideal people either, by the way. I mean, they're kind of messy in the way they live. But I wanted the film to deal with that there are other ways of communicating. So my final thought on that is when I say tenderness is the new punk, that I often felt that the critical position I came from, like the skater who had to smuggle skateboards and be against the stupid adults who didn't get me and what I found was real and all that. Maybe being kind to each other and being hopeful and being empathetic and not be polarizing can also be a position of rebellion right now. That's what I meant.

1:17:46It's just that we need people to really be mad and stand up and say this is wrong. Yes, but we also need other energies alongside that. And we also need to believe that there is reconciliation between us. So that energy, because also I have small kids, I need to believe in that, you know? Yeah.

1:18:12This was a 64-day shoot I read. You wrote this, again, for Renata and for Stellan, who you'd never, one, you've worked with forever, one you never worked with before. And then, you know, discovered Inga, who was great as well, and now has another, all of them are, along with Elle Fanning, nominated for Oscars, the whole group's gone, along with your editor, who goes back to film school. Yeah, yeah. The first film school, even, in Denmark. Just amazing. So during the shoot, was there a scene that gave you the most pause? I mean, I heard you say something perhaps about the final scene, but just like the one that you were most daunted by until it got done.

1:18:58I think you get caught up in technical challenges of dramaturgy and narrative functionality sometimes. and then the stuff you're anxious about everyone puts a lot of energy into it and it can become quite wonderful and I think an example of that is when Agnes I heard there was applause when Inga's name was mentioned and that moves me because she's one of the amazing collaborators you know I I was just with her in London this weekend and with all the cast you know like just hanging out with her she's such a good person and she's such a good actor i'm so excited she's being recognized and it was hard for the younger sister to come to the older sister who's depressed and doesn't want to have anything to do with the dad and just get her to read the damn script towards the end of the movie that scene is tricky why the hell would nora bother to read that script and inga found the way we we worked on it a lot and the way that she came in and was so clearly moved emotionally by what she'd read that her sister can't not read it became much more moving than I thought and at the top of that also solved just a dramatic turning point question that I had been struggling with and Eskil and I have discussed a lot do we have it and it's just how wonderful it is when you collaborate and you have good actors and the way that Renata reads it and all of that stuff and the scene afterwards on the bed, you know, all of that was just really interesting to me and one of the greatest days I've had on set, yeah.

1:20:35Last one for me, I will note that, again, 19 minutes standing ovation in Cannes, they go along for a lot of things, but not that long. That means a lot. That's significant there. The grand prize, by the way, this was right on the heels of Coachella where Charlie XCX declared Joachim Trier summer, which it really was, and fall, and here we are. And then Oscar nominations where, again, not just Best International Feature, not just Best Original Screenplay, these are what you've received before, but to have a non-English language film nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, it doesn't happen all the time at all.

1:21:15to have all four of your principal actors, again, your editor for your whole career. I guess I just wonder how you're feeling and if you could describe in this moment, here we are, February 24th, a few weeks before March 15th when this is all gonna come to a head and then you can get on with your life. Just sort of what's your headspace now and looking ahead beyond this. I'm super grateful. I wanted to explain something technical, which maybe you're all aware I wasn't when I was a bit younger but the nominations for Oscars those are the branches voting for you so the directors vote for the directors the actors for the actors the editors for the editors the writers for the writers when you got your nomination everyone votes for everything but it means in this moment just being nominated amongst those incredible other four directors for example who I actually know and admire means a whole lot because it means that someone stepped up beyond the idea of competition.

1:22:19Just someone said, so which films this year did we think was well directed? The directors voted for me as being some of those people. And that means a lot. And it's not about competition. It's more about the collegial appreciation of each other. And when I was a kid, staying up late at night watching the Oscars because I'm from a film family, And I grew up equally watching Fred Astaire dancing and Charlie Chaplin and The Breakfast Club and, you know, like Tom Cruise in Risky Business, as I later also loved Godard. It's not like we just watched European movies. I grew up on Hollywood primarily in my youth, you know.

1:23:00So watching the Oscars, once in a while there would be a nomination for Ingmar Bergman or Fellini or someone, but it wasn't so often. And usually it was what they called best foreign language. so the fact that once in a while these directors from more my neck of the woods geographically even though you know I felt equally excited if Kurosawa got nominated but just that there were some outsiders from outside Hollywood it was seen by Hollywood made the Oscars even cooler to me so the fact that now the Oscar Academy has gotten even more international and taken everyone into consideration it feels like makes the Oscars more relevant around the world also for us who don't necessarily come from L.A., you know?

1:23:48So I feel gratitude because of that generosity that there's actually a lot of people over here who are curious about movies from even a small, weird country like Norway who don't really, as I told you previously, have a great film history. And no one from Norway has ever won an Oscar for a fiction feature film. So I don't know what to expect, but we're super excited already by being nominated. I have to say that. Well-deserved. Well-deserved.

1:24:17thank you thank you again

1:24:33thanks for listening to awards chatter we really appreciate it and would really appreciate you taking just a minute more to subscribe to the podcast and to leave us a rating and review on your podcast app. And to follow us on Twitter and Instagram, where our handle is at awardschatter. On those platforms we announce upcoming guests and provide details about special live recordings of the podcast that you can attend. Until next time, thanks again for tuning in.

1:25:00Joachim Trier:But what I wanted to say, my daughter is a very good study. Semesterbeitrag, laptop, books, software, Handy, Internet. So a master is really expensive. Oh, tell her, she can you mean from the Steuer to get back, right? But she doesn't pay. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You make it simple with Visa Steuers. And when she works, it's Kaching! That's it? Save. Visa Steuers. Hol dir dein Geld zurück. Now, you can try it. Now, you can try it.