Best Picture Power Rankings and the Super-Sincerity of ‘Sentimental Value,’ With Joachim Trier! Plus: Regretting ‘Regretting You.’

26:29And then Allison Williams shows up at the hospital and is looking for her husband and asks for her sister. And then Dave Franco carrying a car seat, like backhanded, like he's doing like a low five, like backside. I think that's how Nick carries his car seat to answer the question that you're going to ask. Why? But why? I think it's just an easier way to carry it. I think it lightens the weight. Yeah, but I mean, I feel like you don't have enough support and that's really going to mess up your alignment. Anyway. And he shows up, but he's confused because he's looking for his wife. They both received calls about the car crash that their spouses were in.

27:08And then they finally make it into the interior and the doctor just says, I'm so sorry. And then like all sound cutouts, cuts out, and they both just crumple. the floor and then huge swell of Grey's Anatomy score you know like you know Amen Dunes or whatever band is playing and so they're both in an accident so we learn that they're dead and thus that they were together and having an affair within this band of two minutes now this is the big dramatic incident of the film happening in parallel we've got McKenna Grace the boy that she likes Mason Thames are you sure that it said Mason Thames? Mason Thames?

27:48well I don't know Mason Thames? Is it after the river? Or is it just... I don't think he was given his surname after the river. Right, I know, but are they British? Like, are they pronouncing it like the Timbs? I'll call Mason. Let's see what he says. Mason plays a heartthrobby boy. Yeah, sure. Who is a cinephile. Yeah. And also loves his grandpa very much. And he's very close to his grandfather who's been ill. And he's sticking around to take care of him. and he keeps moving the city limit sign so that he can get pizza delivered to his house. And McKenna Grace observes him stuck on the side of the road.

28:23She picks him up, gives him a ride. They meet cute. This all happens in the setup to the movie. And then their story is sort of like the will they or won't they kind of back and forth where is he going to dump his girlfriend? Are they going to get together? Kind of classic teen romance stuff. But also she lost her dad. But her father dies in this car accident and she's coping with that and trying to figure out what's going on. And while all that is happening, and while Morgan and Jonah are trying to figure out how to deal, we start flashing back to them as teenagers. And this movie, for the second time in 40 minutes, shows us Alison Williams and Dave Franco, who I think are 37 and 41, as their 17-year-old selves.

29:06I believe there's been some digital alteration made for their faces. Yeah, and freckles on Alison Williams. Some freckles on Alison Williams' face. which I, that doesn't go away when you get older, but nevertheless. Well, but you get lasers and stuff. You think that this woman, Morgan Grant, has gotten lasers to have freckles removed? Yeah, it does not really seem in the budget, but. And they have, they share a moment as 17-year-olds in a pool. Mm-hmm. They look into each other's eyes. He's clutching her arms. Yeah. They have chemistry. They have something. Unexplored. Mm-hmm. Unexamined. Mm-hmm.

29:38They go back to their mates, their partners. Mm-hmm. but they're flashing back on this because obviously they're really they're in love they've always been in love yeah and we know this at minute 42 of the film yeah yeah and then there's another hour and 10 minutes in this movie where we just have to like wait for them to get to the point where they realize that they're in love with each other and then oh McKenna Grace finds out and she's devastated that they would be in love with each other but she doesn't yet know that her father was cheating with her aunt who was actually her best friend and she's the person who she texted and this would be devastating to her but then the movie goes on it's like it's actually it's okay because everybody's going to be happy and it's going to work out and people are going to get into college.

30:13Right. Drama school. She's going to get into drama school and he's going to become a film student and he's going to be the next Scorsese and he's reading Sidney Lumet's making movies. Yeah, it's on the bedside table while they're making it up. He's got a poster of Patriot Games and Witness on his wall as a 17-year-old boy living in North Carolina in 2025. I mean, he also has like the untouchables. He has everything. Yeah. What 17-year-old boy has a poster of Witness on their wall? If there is a listener at home, I mean, do they make movie posters of Witness anymore? It's probably$1 ,000. I'm sure you can get one, but like...

30:48I don't know. Someone posted on Instagram recently that the podcast they started listening to when they were 16 was like, now in the... I was like, I can't. Oh, about this show? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I mean, absolutely. We're all dead. If there are posters of the big picture, you know, send those to us. It is true that the movie references that I clocked in the background, Like, do you end in 2002? Are they just Josh Boone's favorite movies? Like, what? Is that in the novel? Did Colleen Hoover write him as a boy who was trapped inside of 1989? I'm so confused by all that stuff. I didn't Google.

31:24The movie is really silly. Like, tonally, it's trying very hard to be dramatic. But it has cast a bunch of people who are kind of like light comic actors. And then allows them absolutely no comic relief. Like, Dave Franco doesn't get to do one funny thing. But he does have to say, before, you didn't even talk about how they get to the flashback, which is like they're sitting there commiserating in her living room. And she says something about, you know, remember when, like, I don't even remember this time, or blah, blah, blah, I don't know. And he says, like, honestly, like a rope, truly like it's A.I.

32:06Dave Franco. Yes. You know what gets me there is the music of the time. And then he starts, like, that is a real piece of dialogue that I wrote down verbatim. On my phone during the screening. The song that plays is like an anonymous stereophonic song. I had never heard it. Like, it's just not a song that you're like, oh, God, this brings me right back to 2007 or whenever they're supposed to be going back to. And it's just like a series of near misses with this. Jack just texted us, I can't believe I'm getting this spoiled beat for beat, which is really funny sorry Jack I'm sorry to anybody who really wanted to see Regretting You it's been in movie theaters for one month there are a series of moments like that where characters say things to each other that I'm like who a person wrote this?

32:51and individually did a person write this? we actually don't have confirmation that some of this dialogue wasn't written by a robot I mean the screenplay is by Susan McMartin I assume a person wrote this let's talk about Alison Williams and Dave Franco I really like them both. I think they're both very funny and entertaining. I obviously have long had a soft spot for Alison Williams. Going back to Girls, I think she's really good at being in on the joke. Like one of the great aspects of Marnie on Girls is that she kind of knows the like weird, desperate, I need to be famous thing that is in the tension of that character.

33:26Because she's also embodying that as like Brian Williams' daughter and a young aspirant actress. And then if you've seen, like, the movies that she's made in the last 10 years, especially the Meghan films, there's an element of camp. Yes. You know, she's becoming, like, kind of a genre queen. And she's a very, like, you know, nervy, right-on-the-surface actor. And directors usually know how to play that for laughs. Right. I mean, think to the famous scene of her in Get Out drinking the milk and Googling NBA draft prospects. Yes. So, but this movie is like, no, you're Meryl Streep. you have to be the most serious dramatic actress in america and you have to sell this car accident you have to sell your love for dave franco who is normally extremely funny and energetic in movies and is a block of wood in this film just but also like a weirdly ripped block of wood it's so confusing i know but it's like it doesn't match his frame you know what i mean but if you just flipped this and you made willa fitzgerald and scott eastwood the two leads yeah and put alice Williams and Dave Franco in the other parts, doesn't that make more sense?

34:31Yes, but then Allison Franco and Dave, no, Allison Williams and Dave Franco like disappear within 10 minutes of the movie, which is the problem. We're not as sad about saying goodbye to those other two lesser known actors, but just in terms of like the quality of performance, like Scott Eastwood can definitely do what Dave Franco is being asked to do. Yes. You know, which is nothing, which is not very much, but to look good, right. to be desirable to a widow. Yeah. To be like a sweet dad who has a masculine energy that you're excited about as you're grieving. Right. At some point, Alison Williams and Dave Franco have to go to like the local Holiday Inn where Scott Eastwood's car still is.

35:13And they never, it turns out Scott Eastwood and Willa Fitzgerald never checked out of the local Holiday Inn. So first, Alison Williams is like we used to come here for special occasions, which is like really, really depressing. Extremely dark. Like they're trying to locate this. Is it a holiday inn? No. Is it not like a Kempton or something? I don't think it's quite a Kempton. I think it's somewhere in between. You're right that like it has more floors than I associate with a typical holiday inn or like extended stay. Yeah. But like they're in like a very vast empty parking lot that surrounds a hotel.

35:46It's not like it's not screaming like staycation, you know? I agree. And where in North Carolina are they? So I could, it seems like sort of, I was going to say more like Raleigh-Durham, like Research Triangle area thereabouts. Cool. Lovely area of North Carolina I've been. Yeah. So anyway, they drive there, they check out, they get their stuff. And then Alison Williams is like trashing her dead husband's car. Literally beating it. Literally beating it while wearing her home gear, which is like a dupe for a row sweater. I think that's the coast sweater and sweatpants and her little Birkenstock things.

36:27And she's like trying to separate the muffler from the car. And it was the least compelling physical acting that I have seen in my lifetime, perhaps. I'm just like, this is not a person who acts this way. No, I, you know, she's trying. She's miscast. I think the direction has let these guys down quite a bit. I think the material has really let them down. She's better when she's in worried mom mode. And it gets her closer to control freak Marnie. Though, Alice Williams is forever too much of a control freak to have had a teen pregnancy. That's a great point. And be at this point in her life where she's just let go of everything.

37:15But when they're doing the inspiration board, you know, you can see like, I can see Alison Williams being like, now I will manifest this. I can see her dipping and being like, you need to get your attitude right before you sleep with your. No, you're right. The stuff between her and McKenna Grace is actually probably the best stuff in the movie. And that is maybe the most that feels the most real. Like, I don't know if Colleen Hoover is a mom or not, but there's definitely something about the tension between teen girls and their moms and especially younger moms who are closer in age to their daughters and that there is like a closeness that then can really fracture hard.

37:48Yeah. And that stuff is cool and we've seen it before in movies, but like it doesn't, it's not, it's not embarrassing. Kind of anytime there's a boy on the screen, it's like, who wrote this alien? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Mason Thames character and the Dave Frankel character are both so weird. Can we talk about how? They have no interior life. No, no, no. Excuse me. Excuse me. The teen boy character, I can't say, Mason. Yeah. One name Mason, because I don't know how to pronounce his last name. Works at an AMC. And there is extensive AMC SpawnCon. So much. In this film. So much. I mean, you've got the logos.

38:25You've got, do they make like a, like a A-list joke? They do. In the film. Like multiple scenes are set there. Yeah. Did these films, did this film play in Regal theaters? I saw it at a Regal. So I was like, what's going on here? It's fascinating. Do you think they had fewer screening times, fewer screens in other competing theaters because of this clear relationship between the studio? I didn't do the work. I didn't do the research, but I would assume so. So this guy works at an AMC, but he's like, my favorite movie is Patriot Games. Very weird. Like, not a movie you saw when you were 10? Listen, I don't know.

39:05In 2015? Maybe he's just really into Harrison Ford. again, like, what? I don't know. Mason Tameson's character's fine. There definitely are boys like that. I'm kind of a boy like that. I love old movies, and I'm a cinephile, and all that stuff, but it just feels very manufactured. He's employed. He's employed. And he has great care for his relatives, right? He's really looking... Clancy Brown, the great Clancy Brown, one of the great character actors, kind of just, like, doing his absolute best. I think he knows this isn't the best material he's ever been a part of. Also, Mason's character takes McKenna Grace's character on a date to see Clueless at the aforementioned AMC.

39:48Yeah, what do you think about that? And then they're making, well, they were making out too much to actually see the film, but that's okay. But then they do have a moment to discuss that she is still a virgin, much like Cher, and that she's going to wait until, they're going to wait until prom night and he's very respectful. So nice to just see Dan Hedaya projected on screen again, you know, just that his wonderful performance in Clueless as Cher's dad. So this movie, of course, is a hit. It's a more modest hit than it ends with us, but it's kind of tracking to get over$50 million in the U.S., which is a lot for these kinds of movies, especially this fall where we've been talking about how movies are not doing so hot.

40:25And you were kind of circling this, but like, what does this mean is an interesting conversation. We've got two more Colleen Hoover movies coming next year. You've got Reminders of Him starring Micah Monroe and then Verity which stars Dakota Johnson. Reminders of Him also stars Bradley Whitford and Lauren Graham as the parents. And Tyreek Withers. Yes. And they ask Bradley Whitford to punch Tyreek Withers at some point during the trailer which I only recently saw. And I was I was very, very concerned. I think Bradley Whitford also gets to say the line if not for her our son would still be alive.

41:03And I want to point that out because that film also features a critical car crash as a plot point. So like how many car crashes are there in the Colleen Hoover universe? I don't know. Is this a recurrence where like people keep dying in car crashes and then that gets the engine of the story going? Pardon the pun. I probably, I mean, I think some of the other, I have not read the full oeuvre. There are many, many books. I mean, I think like domestic violence or like bad relationships. are also a theme. And I shouldn't conflate the two, but like, you know, domestic violence is one theme and then also just sort of imbalance of power and, you know, like emotional abuse maybe.

41:46And then I think teen pregnancy definitely figures. And not a lot of things where it's just people, like ships passing in the night, you know? So - I just want to say, there's nothing inherently wrong with melodrama. And melodrama has been a part of Hollywood history, always. You know, like, Gone with the Wind is a melodrama. Douglas Sirk movies, like, The Way We Were, speaking of Redford. Steel Magnolias. These kinds of movies have always been here. They're always successful. The movies I just named are good. And these movies, these Colin Hoover stories just seem like real rickety and lame. I understand why they work.

42:33I do feel that for the last like 20 years prior to her rise, a lot of this stuff was confined to Lifetime, the Lifetime channel. Well, to me, Nicholas Sparks is the, is the comparison. Yeah. And, you know, I had written in my notes, like, it's like Nicholas Sparks, like minus the teen pregnancy. But then I Googled the plots of a lot of Nicholas Sparks. novels because there are many of them he's publishing at a volume not unlike Colleen Hoover and there are a lot of people who are single parents or had their kids young or whatever so he might be slightly more interested in older people that's what I was gonna say I think of that as a frame but I think but that's also just because those are the more successful adaptations that were you know like specifically the notebook which does also have you know the teens teen versions of those characters have sex in the room with the piano in the house.

43:30Colleen Hoover, to me, this is completely speculative, having just seen two movie adaptations of her work, but she seems to be singling out single divorced moms. Like that seems to be like her core audience in terms of the stories that she's telling and the kinds of characters that she wants you to feel for, which is, of course, like a ripe audience. There's plenty of people who would love to read stories where they feel seen in those stories. There's nothing really inherently wrong with that. But I'm just kind of like, okay, so now three movies in a row, just having seen the Reminders of Him trailer, where I'm like, something bad happened, and then we got to spend an hour figuring out what happens next after the bad thing that happened.

44:08Right, and do people... But I mean, that is... I'm looking at all of the Nicholas Sparks adaptations. The Notebook, for sure. Something bad happened. They were separated. And then dementia. A Walk to Remember. I haven't seen that. I think that's cancer. I think that's like terminal illness. Is that Mandy Moore? Yes. And Shane West? That sounds correct. Okay. Yes. And let's just make sure that it's Shane West. It is. Yes. Message in a Bottle. I don't really remember what happened to... That's Costner, right? Yeah, yeah. Kevin Costner. Robin Wright Penn? Yeah. And she's a newspaper editor. Okay.

44:44But I think he lost someone in his life. Okay. Dear John is Amanda Seyfried and Channing Tatum. Don't really remember what happened. I'd like to see that. Last Song. Miley Cyrus, Liam Hemsworth. That's young people and something bad happened. Should we do a Nick Sparks pod? I guess so. I mean, but it is, you know, these are all ridiculous. They're young love. Hit me with an anniversary. What's a good 2026 anniversary? Is there any 2006 Nick Sparks movies? So The Choice, which I've never seen. The Choice. The Choice. A 2016 romantic drama. Two neighbors who fall in love at their first meeting. The movie stars, Benjamin Walker, who I loved.

45:21Wow. Teresa Palmer, Maggie Grace, Alexandra Daddario. wait wait wait wait wait go back Teresa Palmer Maggie Grace and Alexandra Daddario in the same movie yes Tom Welling and I will give you one million dollars if you can name the ant and who's the last person credited here um Whoopi Goldberg Tom Wilkinson alright so what happens in this so Travis is a veterinarian and also another similarity between Colleen Hoover movies and Nicholas Sparks. Nicholas Sparks films are all set in North Carolina because that's where it is. So this is Wilmington, North Carolina. Falls in love with Gabby Holland. She lives in the house next door.

46:05They don't like each other at first. There's a complication with a rescue dog and puppies. They spend time together. They start a relationship. Other people come back. Uh-oh. Traffic accident. She survives. It is now in a coma. Travis has shown her DNR order and asked to sign it. Oh my God, does he sign it? A hurricane hits their house. Moby helps Travis find the wind chimes. She's welcomed Gabby. Gabby wakes up. Wait, I thought we were supposed to do this for the pod. What are you doing? Why did you do that? I was going to keep reading. It's on Wikipedia. And there's also, oh, there's a child, but it's not theirs.

46:50And great. Okay. Woo! So the choice was actually, it was not about abortion, but it was related. And they chose quote-unquote life. It's so perfect that we've talked about this film and this wave of films ahead of the sentimental value conversation. Yeah. Because they're not dissimilar. You're right. You're right. You're right. Like, sentimental value is a drama with elements of melodrama. It is a family drama in which misunderstandings between family members have seeded over long periods of time. Yeah. And has driven division between people who ostensibly love each other. It's kind of a perfect match, though, to say, like, here's how you can do it one way and here's how you can do it another way.

47:40Now, you don't have to like either one or you can love both. I'm not saying that they're mutually exclusive. And I didn't have the worst time ever regretting you. I thought it was... I think if you go in looking to laugh, it's a lot of fun. Because the line readings are preposterous. We didn't even talk about the Third Eye Blind Grey's Anatomy cover. Every one of these has like a ridiculous... The music is absurd. ...song of our youth covered in the like wispy style that was often featured of Grey's... Yeah. Yeah. And this was How's It Gonna Be, which is iconic stuff. All that. And sentimental value as well.

48:13Like music is a huge part of it. It's like kind of a needle drop bonanza where there's all these songs that Trier is choosing to kind of make you feel something, but they're all slightly more obscure and slightly more, you know, art house artistic. I've been looking forward to talking with you about this movie. So this movie is like one of the big movies at Cannes. Yes. I think we've seen now, and we'll get into it when we do the rankings, that really the Cannes films have kind of held weight over a nine-month period that has defined this year. And one of the reasons why I think that the fall has felt so soft to us is because we've kind of known about all these movies for a very long period of time.

48:48So when you look at this and you look at, it was just an accident, and you look at Blue Moon, which was at Berlin, and you look like a handful of films that really made their mark in the spring, it didn't feel like what hit in September and October felt very meaningful. But Sentimental Value now, after hearing about it for a long time, is finally in theaters. It's going wide this week. And it is a reunion of Trier and Renata Rensvee, who I think made a lot of noise in the United States with the worst person in the world. True, he's been making movies for 20 years, but that film seemed to click more.

49:20It was Academy Award nominated. Renata Rensby has now been kind of like integrated into the Hollywood system. And then also the film also stars Stellan Skarsgård and Elle Fanning, two very familiar faces to U.S. movie fans. Also Inga Ib's daughter Lilius, who is the sister character to Renata Rensvee's character. And Anders Danielson-Lee also appears in the film. He appears in almost every movie that Trier makes. So the story of this movie is after the death of their mother Cecil, sisters Nora and Agnes are forced to confront their father Gustav, who is a once famous filmmaker who's been kind of estranged over a period of time.

49:58Nora is an actress. Agnes is a researcher. They have a complex relationship as sisters. They have a complex relationship to their father. And then the film uses the home that they grew up in, which then is now empty after their mother has passed away as a kind of portal into their family history. So much like the worst person in the world, this is like a very montage driven, very literary portrayal of a few people in crisis as opposed to a single person in crisis. Like worst person in the world was like one woman's Saturn's return, like going crazy for two and a half hours. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this is sort of like if everyone was all having their Saturn Returns at the same time.

50:36I'm really moved that you're using Saturn Returns. I think that's what it is. It is, but I didn't know you, once again, I didn't know that it's the internet you were on. Well, I have a lot of depth. So, I love The Worst Person in the World. I really like Trier's movies. I don't love all of the films that came before this. You know, he did this like Oslo trilogy. That was the worst person was the final film in that group. But this is one of my favorite movies of the year. I was like completely knocked out by it emotionally. I think there's like a discovery as an actor here there's like an actor that I've always loved in Stellan Skarsgård I think doing like some of his best work it has been interesting though to watch and I eagerly await your thoughts on it a mixed response in the last couple of months this won the what is the name of the second prize at Cannes the Grand Prix at Cannes and was immediately identified out of Cannes as one of the big awards contenders I think in a large part because of Worst Person in the World's, you know, success here in the U.S.

51:39And then you, I believe, saw it this summer and you texted me sentimental value will win best picture. Yes. Before I had seen one battle. Yes, exactly. But so I remember that text message very much. I absolutely loved Worst Person in the World. So I think that was my favorite movie of of that year. When I saw that movie, I thought of you the whole time. Yeah. I was like, this is such an Amanda movie. It was electric. So all this to say my expectations were incredibly high and I saw it much later than everyone else. And I think that the most responsible way that I can put this is that this is the After Sun annual I'm Dead Inside Award for the film.

52:17I just didn't, that I admired and I think is structurally and intellectually very sound, incredible performances. Like everything is there and I just didn't connect to it. Like I just didn't I understand why other people did. But I feel like a little outside, like left out. Like, what am I missing? I've seen it twice because I was so confused the first time. Interesting. I think some of that is because of the subject matter. And I think that this is a film about family relationships and making art and also like about depressed characters. about multiple depressed characters and how they express it over time.

53:01It is very much the cycle of depression through families. Yes. But a lot of it is centered in Nora, the Renata Rensvee character, who is playing... I mean, it's a very, very honest representation of depression, but it is, like, it's durational. It's cinematic inertia. Yeah, yeah, because she's not talking. and she's feeling pain but quietly. And so, and it communicates the inability to connect. And at some points I've wondered, is my inability to connect with this like part of the point because that is what it feels like to be depressed and I would know because I've been there. So, but it is still also a film and so you're trying to invest in their protagonists and I, like, I couldn't quite get there and then there are so many other things going on around it that I never knew what I was supposed to latch on to.

54:05And there was nothing to latch on to. And that is, again, a great definition of depression, but tricky as a movie. Can I tell you what I latched on to? Yeah. This was even more acute the second time that I saw the movie because when I sat down to watch it the first time, I was going in expecting Renata Rensby our new Meryl Streep. This will be her centerpiece performance. It will be an even bigger film than the last film. Right. You have to see this because of what she does in this movie. Yeah. And she's not given a lot. She's given a lot to do in that very first sequence that we see her where she has stage fright.

54:41And then after that she kind of recedes within the movie. And she has a couple of confrontations with her dad but it's not as explosive as you expect it to be. And in fact her sister and her father are the ones who get more to play in the movie. But a constant conversation between my wife and I in our life is what does our daughter have that comes from her and what comes from me? And what is a trait that I have and what is a trait that my wife has? And the way that you pass things down to your kids. And in this movie, Nora and Gustav, the father and the daughter, are very similar. And it can be beautiful to be very similar to one of your parents.

55:16And it can be really challenging to be similar to one of your parents. And they're like two magnets. And they repel each other. They can't connect. And so because we don't get any scenes, really, of Stellan Skarsgård and Renata Rensvee connecting and making sparks, it feels like anti-cinematic. But I feel like it's very true to what it's like to be in a family. And I have these relationships with people in my family. So you don't get some of the things that you – there's a real lack of catharsis in this movie at times where you're looking for it. but that felt like a very honest representation to me of what it's like to be close but apart from somebody that you care about.

55:55And the Gustav character, I think maybe just for me specifically, is just kind of a catnip guy. He's like a distant father who's a filmmaker. So all of his concerns, all of his egotism, all of his creativity, all of his nostalgia and longing, all of his sense of self, that's just a rich character for me. I'm just into that. I love directors. I've interviewed hundreds of directors on this podcast because I think they're so interesting. They're these like domineering figures who are also so sensitive and wounded and like really want to be understood. It's a really unusual personality type. And it's not just men.

56:30The female filmmakers are like that too. But there's especially an older male director is like is a rich character to me. And Trier is a guy who's from a long line of filmmakers in Norway. His grandfather was a filmmaker. His father was a sound designer. He's a director. this feels like a very true representation of those kinds of guys so i think there's also and you're saying it's purposeful and creating a that is the intent to create the feeling like the disjointedness um but there are there are several different movies in this film and so you can really see that the stellan skarsgård character and um his adventures with the l fanning character who is playing an American movie star who comes to Gustav's work.

57:18At the Deauville Film Festival, which I would love to visit. As would I. Deauville? Deauville? Deauville. I think Deauville. Okay. And she is at the height of, or ascendant in Hollywood and sees his film and wants to work with him and so he gets slurped into the Hollywood machine for a bit and it doesn't really pan out. And the whole process is played. She's like very responsible about the whole thing. All the people around her are hilarious, including the tall man who played Chevy Chase. Yes. What's his name?

58:00Corey Smith. Right. And, you know, she has she has a team that are just always on their phones all surrounding her as she tries to have an artistic connection with this person. This movie's a bit unsparing about Hollywood and Netflix. Yes. And so it did feel like that was written from his experience. That was all very knowing and very funny and very sharp. But then how it connects to the Nora, the Renata Rensby character, by the way, it was like not lost in me that her name was Nora, you know, like, hello. That's a, you know, from A Doll's House, which is an nidsome play. and one of the great female characters in the theatrical tradition but I it's not I guess it's like not supposed to connect until the end but like it really doesn't connect so until the end which part what aspect the Stellan Skarsgård's like Hollywood Adventures and you know Nora and Renata Rensby like not being able to go on stage I mean I I All right.

59:01I think I understood it much more the second time, but I felt like I understood it the first time too which is just like the failures of the Gustav character and his desire to reconnect and her unwillingness to reconnect lead him on this journey of trying to replace the feeling of having a daughter. And he can't. And I thought that the, first of all, the first time I watched it I thought Elle Fanning was a little out of place in this movie and then the second time I watched it I thought she was one of the best parts about the movie. Oh, interesting. And I think she's given a really hard job here with this part because she, nine times out of ten this character is written as like flip and uninteresting and unintelligent and just like a vacuous Hollywood vessel.

59:40Yeah. And I think she's really trying to they're trying to write her and she's trying to portray a really sincere person who's trying to do better work. And she's been cast into this impossible situation where she's not the filmmaker's daughter and she's not the filmmaker's mother and the filmmaker is trying to reckon with all of these feelings that he has about this long history that he would never know how to talk to his family about, but that he can only work through in his art, about the way that these people are trapped by their own despair. And Elle Fanning is like doing everything she can as an artist to try to meet the moment.

1:00:17You mean Elle Fanning's character? Elle Fanning's character, yes. She's trying to sound more like a Norwegian. She's trying to look more like his daughter. She's trying to live inside the experience of this home and try to basically go to, like, one of the darkest stories you'll ever see in a movie. Just a very Bergman-esque, like, you know, a despairing mother who commits suicide. And then, like, apparently that's the end of the film. That's a lot of weight to put on a character. And she can't get there. And the movie shows them. I think that scene is really beautiful where she comes back and he says, you could have just gone through agents.

1:00:53But, no, I do as well. And I think... I think there's, like, a radical empathy thing that is corny, but I think actually really works in his movies. And I know that some people are just going to reject it and not like it, but I just feel like it does feel sincere to me. I completely agree. And, you know, it's like I like both of those performances and I like that storyline. And there's also a part when Stellan Skarsgård is trying to make the film and he goes to meet his old editor, I believe. His old cinematographer. His old cinematographer. Yeah, Peter. And it's about, you know, like, oh, we can just pick up right where we left off, but time comes for us all.

1:01:29And also his, him confronting like his own loyalty versus his aspirations. Yeah, like it's great. And I also, I don't mean to dismiss the Nora plot line where like all of her stage fright, which is, you know, very obvious psychological stuff just manifesting is bizarre and riveting and memorable. And she's very, very good. And I understand intellectually how they're connected. But I think the only time I felt anything emotionally, there were two scenes, which is one with the other daughter, Agnes, tells her father, Gustav, that she doesn't want her son to be in the film because of the same experience she had being in one of Gustav's films as a child.

1:02:23and this actress, who is new to me, lights out amazing throughout. Also looks so much like our friend Carrie. I was like, I had to see it twice because the first time I was just like, this is really weird. They found like Norwegian Carrie. That's funny.

1:02:42But she, and I think her character is supposed to be the one who can synthesize emotion. And at the end, she also synthesizes emotion to, she acts as a conduit between these two characters. So I get it. But that means that you only really like feel emotion when you have her and or when they're talking about the house. This is a fantastic house movie. And I think some of it is that the film opens with from the house's perspective. You know, we didn't talk about this when we talked about Train Dreams. But this movie and Train Dreams use the same tool, which is a narrator. in an attempt to be even more literary, to kind of grace us with context for what's happening with these characters.

1:03:25The key character that the narrator shares with us, especially the beginning of Sentimental Value, is the house that you're talking about where we learn about kind of its lifespan, what it has lived through, what the family has lived through in this home when they were in, when they were out, when someone came in to take care of it, when they returned to it. I can see why people would not like that, that there is like a pretentiousness potentially into the way that that's delivered that didn't bother you no no I mean the only issue is that like the film starts that way and it's so tight and so has such a point of view and like evokes emotions and sets the scene and then I think the rest of the film becomes a bit more distant until you get one more shot of the home where like to me the most emotional part of this film was a late in life shot of the home.

1:04:16Okay. I don't know what that says about me. Not Inga Ibsdodder, like losing it in front of her father about after they had that experience making the movie together. And then. No, I don't know. I mean, like, I thought that was really good, but the structure. You are dead inside. Well, I said that I was. That's the name of the award, you know? It's a good award. And listen, also After Son, also a film about parents and depression. Yeah. And I think communicates the experience and amazing performances, formally interesting and playing with those ideas as well. They're similar. Yeah, but there is just a connectedness that I know I've said that 45 times, but I feel on the outside.

1:05:00You may not know this yet because I don't think you've seen the film, but we will be talking about After Sun again because of a choice made in a movie that is coming out in December. I mean, I have seen, well, I don't know which film, but now that I'm thinking about it, I'm thinking about the shot in Sentimental Value where it's the three faces and they're going right, which is not dissimilar to the after sun. That's not what I'm referring to. Is it another Paul Meskel film? No. Oh, interesting. I don't want to spoil it for you. All right.

1:05:32It's probably good because I think we're... Oh, I know what movie you're talking about now. People got to just really keep their display tighter because I know now and it's been spoiled for me. I'm sorry to hear that. It's okay. I think it's probably good that we're representing the two sides of the coin in terms of how this movie will be received because I think some people will be like this didn't really do too much for me but I do respect it and some people will say like this kind of moved me to tears I think I really like what Trier does formally too I think like his use of montage his sense of like disorienting where you are in the story at any given time his ease and comfort moving back and forth between the past and the present day and then you know there's a very clever reveal at the end of the film in terms of what is being displayed.

1:06:14I think he's got real moves. Like, I just think he's a really interesting designer of movies, you know? And it's been so interesting watching a lot of critics that I really respect be like, I didn't buy this at all. And I get, you know, it's obviously a completely subjective experience, but he is trying to do something that is super sincere. And that sincerity can sometimes really bump up against people too as being just like a little bit too much, a little bit too cute, a little bit too... But I would also say that there's a real distance to the sincerity. That it doesn't, you know, you can feel both of those things, but you'd like to have it, you know, far away from you.

1:06:52But you always frame me as that way. I know. But I love a really sincere movie. I mean, so do I. Like, the right kind of, I mean, it's a great title for a movie. Like, I actually will buy into sentimentality more than you will. And I think that this has none. And I mean, it's, which is the point, right? That's the thing. So... This stuff is sincere, but it's meant to be missing the kind of gloppiness that comes with sentimentality. Now, as I said, I've seen some critics say, like, it's actually working against itself. That by trying to reveal that there is, like, a hard truth underneath the performance of family or love or whatever, that it's actually exposing that there's, like, artifice in this creation.

1:07:35I don't see it that way, but I do respect it. I did think a bit the second time I saw it of The Royal Tenenbaums. I do think that it actually has a lot in common with that movie. The narration and starting with the house and where everyone is in the house. Strong patriarch comes back into the family, a family of artists or lost artists, people who are aspiring to be bigger. Depression. Yeah, the mental stability of the family, you know, the fact that like someone like Chaz is inherited a lot from his own father, but they can't really connect with each other. So I also think it's like pretty funny.

1:08:03Like, there's an incredible scene where Gustav, who's reconnected with his family, comes to see his grandson on his eighth birthday, and he gives him a birthday present, and, you know, we love to see it. He gives him physical media, gives him The Piano Teacher and Irreversible on DVD. Really funny. Which is just great stuff for an eight-year-old. And it is a movie about, like, reconciliation, which is hard, but also I feel this very much in my own life. Once I had a kid, I just have immediate empathy for my parents, and I just understand my parents a lot better. I understand why they did what they did to survive.

1:08:35I understand why they, it doesn't mean that everything is forgiven or everything is accepted, but I understand. And it's funny. I don't at all. Opposite direction. But that's, you know. Well, but that's. That's so you. I just, I think mistakes were made. Well, of course, of course. But the circumstances under which they transpired matter. They matter. Think about how you felt when things were hard. Well, we don't need to get into it. This is not my therapy session. I think it's the fact that it wants to confront you with those ideas, though, I think is to its credit. And I'm kind of curious about how this movie goes through the world.

1:09:13Yeah. It is, I think, been the highest grossing per screen release of the year. And it's a limited release. It does seem like it is connected. It feels like one of the very few arthouse movies where it has strong word of mouth. you know the Angelica theaters of the world are like we love this movie right the kind of the more informed cinephile cineists are checking it out you know I don't think it's going to make a hundred million dollars or anything but it it's going to be present in our lives over the next few months let's talk quickly about the Oscars around it unless there's anything else you want to say about the film you can listen to me talk with Joachim as well he spoke in great detail about the making of the movie but we'll get into all the best picture stuff soon I mean, it's definitely going to be nominated for Best Picture.

1:09:57I would be stunned if it was not nominated for Best Picture. Actress? Everyone's been holding a spot.

1:10:08It is a good performance, but again, sort of the, by definition, the black hole at the center of the film, because that is what she's trying to represent. So, I don't know. I think it's, there are 10 spots in Best Picture and five spots in Best Actress. so you could see it going a little to the wayside. There are two contenders for supporting actress. You've got Elle Fanning and Inga Ipsdottir-Lilius. Inga Lilius Ipsdottir? No, Inga Ipsdottir-Lilius. Either, neither? I think it would be Inga Ipsdottir-Lilius. I know Elle Fanning's having like a, you know, she's in Predator, she's in something else.

1:10:50Will you watch Predator Badlands? I listen to most of you guys talking about it on the podcast. My tradition is to enjoy the Predator films as acted out by Chris Ryan. Okay. So I respect her and salute Elle Fanning and all that she's doing. What's the third thing that I'm not thinking? The Hunger Games trailer. That's right. Everyone, I'm very sorry. Lenny Kravitz was the stylist in The Hunger Games, but he made such... I know. I fucked up. I'm really sorry. You were so confident too. I know, because I remembered the stylist being so key. I think his name is Sina with a C, and I didn't Google that.

1:11:23So I fucked up, but also, like, it did stay with me. Yes, and made this feeling stay with you. Listen. Of being incorrect. When you're wrong, you're wrong. And you gotta own it. That's right, you gotta own it. Here I am. Absolutely. I fucked up. Yeah. Let's talk about supporting actor. Yeah. Because this is very, this is probably the place where this movie gets recognized. Yeah. Now, Stellan Skarsgård, I think you could make the case as the lead of this film. I do as well. I think you just made the case that what you responded to in this film was Stellan Skarsgård's story. He gets the most depth.

1:12:00Or at least, if Renata Rensby doesn't have as much dialogue because of what her character is enduring, he gets to explore the most about his life and how he sees the world and his relationships through a number of different ways. he's being pitched as the supporting actor maybe because they think he has just a better chance to win there I think at the European Film Awards he was nominated for best lead which should tell you something so supporting actor this year I'm going to give you some names okay this is again coming from Variety Andrew Scott for Blue Moon yeah Billy Crudup for Jay Kelly rising in people's minds yeah Delroy Lindo in Sinners William H.

1:12:39Macy in Train Dreams Adam Sandler in Jay Kelly And then the top five here, Jacob Elordi and Frankenstein, Paul Meskel and Hamnet, Benicio Del Toro in one battle after another, Sean Penn in one battle after another, and sitting in first place is Stellan Skarsgård. Yeah. I think Stellan, Benicio, and Sean Penn are locks. Maybe not locks, but... They feel tight. So what do you think of the last two, if you had to guess? Who is four and five on the variety list right now? Meskel and Elordi. So, Lordi seems rising, especially as Frankenstein just kind of locks in. And that is what people are responding to.

1:13:23And he's just, I mean, he's great for award season. I'm obviously biased. So are you now. We sat together in a movie. Let's see. My little sister Grace could not have been more excited about that news. I mean, I was also so excited. And I was like trying to rein it in. uh i've just i really understand what everyone's very tall he's i listen you don't have to tell i'm kind of tall he was very tall he's very tall um i i the hamnet thing i i guess you gotta get gotta get your head around it i know i know i know it's happening no i totally know it's happening and it's happening more and more and more yeah and so i think that it's strong enough that that probably brings Meskel in as well.

1:14:05So. I think so. I'm not totally sure. You know, I thought very certain that Sandler would be nominated after seeing Jay Kelly. And now I'm seeing people say like, oh, actually, I like Billy. Billy Carter basically has one scene in that movie and we'll talk about it in a couple of weeks. But it's a very memorable scene. And he's always great. In Venice, everyone started applauding. During that scene. During that scene. And it was otherwise silent in that theater. That's so interesting. Yeah. I know. And people love him and he's been working for 30 years. I think that would be a bit of a crime against Sandler.

1:14:32and I think that's a tough part that he had but we can talk about it when we get there. William H. Macy and Delroy Lindo and Andrew Scott I don't think is happening. So maybe it's the two guys from J. Kelly the two guys from One Battle Meskel Elordi and Skarsgård in a knife fight. Skarsgård being the leader is interesting. It would be a good win. It would be kind of in its time win somebody who's contributed a lot to films over the years. He's like really leaning into it you know and like the real life film patriarch and you know Alexander is like out on the trail sort of for Pillion and sort of, you know, part of the Skarsgård family legacy.

1:15:09He saw it for the first time at Telluride and he was like blown away by it and also, you know, it's a movie about like kind of an absent father who's working in the film industry. Other nomination potentials, I mean, I really think Best Director is in play. Screenplay, original screenplay, definitely in play. International Feature, definitely in play. I mean, this is like, also Neon having every international feature nominee is going to be utterly bizarre, but that's very much in play. We'll have to do, I was thinking about how we probably need to do like an international feature episode and a documentary feature segments in January.

1:15:40So we can plot that out too, which takes us to best picture. So let's talk about the rankings. I think a lot has changed. I do as well. Last time we did this, I felt like not much had changed and now it's been 30 days. Yeah. Last time we went Begonia at 10, Jay Kelly at nine. It was just an accident at eight. Marty Supreme at seven. Wicked for Good at six. Frankenstein at five. Sentimental Value at four. Sinners at three. Hamnet at two. One Battle at one. I think our top five could stay the same. If you want to like switch Sinners and Hamnet. I think Marty's going to five. Oh, even over Frankenstein?

1:16:15There's a ton of people have seen it now and everybody loves it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I haven't talked to a person who doesn't like it. And like the Timmy, the campaign thing is unreal. Marty might be at four. Okay. I mean, I love it. Like, give me a jacket. A24. Josh. Timothy doesn't know who I am and we'll never see this, but like I will wear it for the Marty Supreme episode and for like, let's guarantee like five wears before Oscar night. Five wears? Yeah. Just like out and about? I mean like, like as a Marty influencer? No, no, no, on the show. You'll wear five times on the show? Okay, maybe three?

1:16:49Just to get a jacket? That's a lot. Think of your, what is your self worth? I know, but like wardrobe is like getting really annoying. So if I could just get through, I'd like the blue one. You should just do what I do, which is just get a dark sweater. And just wear variations all the time. You don't think I don't have dark sweaters? I have to coordinate with you and the set design about, like, who's wearing navy on any given day. We have 300 people here working on set design. So, I would welcome a jacket. I don't want pink. I don't think pink is my color. I thought it looked great on Timmy. I would prefer the blue.

1:17:18If you have black, I'll take a black. Okay. But I'll wear it. Like, I'm in. Okay. I like this film. I liked this film before the jacket came out. So, you're not buying me. I'm just saying. Can we continue in another direction? Well, you wanted to talk about it being powerful. And it's number four. I think the marketing's been very good. And they have kind of gotten a lot of people. There have been many screenings in LA and New York in the last six weeks or so since the New York Film Festival premiere. And it's working. The same feeling that you had the day after I saw it where we were both like, whoa, this is really fun.

1:17:47Like this is a really good and exciting and energetic and Timmy living up to the thing that we want from him. So I will say. They should send me a jacket and you a ping pong head. And you just wear a ping pong ball head for that entire recording. I do not agree to do that. Do you have any, do you see anything changing about One Battle Hamnet and Sinners in the order in which we have them? Spielberg just hosted a Hamnet screening. Yeah. And people loved it. Sinners, there's a lot of like, if you forget about Sinners, I will kill you on social media right now. So there's that energy going on. Ryan Coogler just got a star on the Walk of Fame.

1:18:23Yeah. I spent at least 10 minutes last night trying to figure out how much time Haley Steinfeld spills in Buffalo every year because the Bills were playing. Yeah, it's been a tough season for the Bills. I know. And she hangs back. I did learn that there's an Italian restaurant in Buffalo that they like to go to. That's what Josh says. One Italian restaurant? Before, that's sort of their pre-game ritual, which would suggest, and they were photographed in downtown Buffalo once this summer. That's all I was able to learn about Haley Steinfeld. I have nothing bad to say about Buffalo. I've never visited.

1:18:50Yeah. It is, of course, my home state of New York. Uh, they are by far the best football team in the state of New York, like bar none. So I hope Josh Allen is fine. I have nothing bad to say about him. He's an amazing football player. Haley Steinfeld says things in centers that blew my mind. I thought she was fantastic. So Oscars are March, so he would be on the offseason. He would be able to go to the Oscars. He will be there. You think so? I'll bet a million dollars he'll be at the Oscars. Good for him. You don't want to take that bet? No, I don't. Okay. Remember when I offered you a million dollars to be able to name Tom Wilkinson in the 2016 film The Choice?

1:19:27Wait, it was 2016? I thought it was 2006. No, 2016. 10 years next year. I've literally never heard of that movie. You told the entire plot. Okay, so do you want to keep One Battle Hamnet, Sinners, and then Marty in that order? I mean, do you want to do... Let's pull back for a second. Is there any chance in your heart of hearts, let's fucking get into it, okay? Let's do it, Amanda. So hot. Is anything going to beat one battle after another? Or is this just going to be the same conversation between you and I for four months? And then it wins everything? Yeah. I mean, the Hamnet thing's real. It's not out yet, so we can't really do the thing yet that we're supposed to do.

1:20:04And I suppose now I have to go see Hamnet again. I do too. I haven't seen it in months now. So that movie comes out in limited release on November 26th, but we're not going to talk about it on the show until wide. So it's going to be a little while before we actually get into it. Yeah. I liked it with notes. You had different thoughts. I was very mixed on it. And the things about it that worked really worked for me. I was blown away by them. And the things that didn't work, I remain really frustrated by. Okay. Well, we'll get through that. I wonder how many people will feel the way that you do.

1:20:40I feel that both that film and Sentimental Value both have a lot of like, are we sure that this is totally working? And that makes it just a little weaker for those two movies. I guess Sinners has, there's no perfect film this year. The One Battle Thing most closely fits the like, let's just anoint. You know, it's time to anoint. So I haven't really been moved off of that yet. Marty is really interesting because it's getting a lot of positive response. But Josh is so early in his career that I think it's going to be really hard, even if that film ends up becoming like a box office hit in Beloved, which it could, like that could happen.

1:21:15It's still going to be really hard to get over the One Battle Thing. Because he's so young. he's turning 30 two days after the release of this film I mean if I had to give the award to somebody this year I would give it to him I'm also available for his 30th birthday party just to let him know available to do what? just to be there to attend yeah okay what if you were asked to do a live pod from the event would you do it? live jam session from Timmy's party? 1000 % you think they would want you to do that? no I don't but like if he asked why do you want to go to the birthday parties of these 30 somethings?

1:21:45why is that interesting to you? because I want to have fun I don't have enough fun in my life you know I feel that you have a panic about the loss of fun. It's not that I have a panic. This isn't existential. This isn't like, oh, I've made the wrong choices. No, I didn't say that. I didn't say that. This isn't like, you know, some like self-antholatizing thing. It's like, I just want to go take a tequila shot and dance to Nelly, you know? It's like, let's just do it. I will bum a cigarette off someone at 11 p.m. Like, I just, I want to go have fun. Remember when I used to say that the CR Heads was like 3 ,000 single guys like crying, masturbating to Chris doing voices?

1:22:22There definitely is like a Dob Mob, like 3 ,000 Dob Mob girlies like at home quietly masturbating every time. You're like, I just want to drink tequila and dance to Nelly. That's your contingent. Well. Maybe it's 300 million. It's good to know what you want. It's good to be able to articulate it. I found that in life. Okay. Let's try to finish this list. Jack, if you're listening, One Battle at one, Hamnet at two, Sinners at three, Marty Supreme at four. Yeah. I think Frankenstein at five and Sentimental Value at six. Yes. Now, here's where it gets messy. I'm gonna, I think Wicked for Good is off.

1:23:00I do as well. We could live to regret that and we might just put it back on in a month. Will we regret it or will we just reflect, be like we were reflecting the moment that we were living in? That's all I can do is be a mirror, you know? Absolutely. That's what many people are saying about you. Someone who has no strong feelings whatsoever, you merely are a portal to other people's feelings. Some people are saying that there can only be one big box office movie on this list. I guess you could say Sinners is a big box office movie, but Wicked for Good and Avatar, Fire, and Ash operate in a big blockbuster zone.

1:23:32I have floated that I think it's going to be, that I think the Academy is unlikely to do both of those for the same reasons. Do you think Avatar goes into that spot? We haven't seen it yet. We see it in 10 days. That's going to be December 1st. It's going to be one of the most incredible days. We probably should. Tell people what we're doing. So on December 1st, I am so excited to announce that Sean, Chris Ryan, and I will be hosting. Are we going live? No. So we're recording a watch-along of Avatar The Way of Water. Right. Chris Ryan will or will not have seen the original Avatar. I don't know.

1:24:10I'm not going to arrange that. He can make his own decisions. So we'll be doing that for three hours or whatever. And then we will be driving. I hope you're going. I'm going to Burbank. Yeah, to Burbank to see Avatar, Fire, and Ash the same day, because that is when the screening is available. So that is going to be at least six hours of Avatar. Nearly seven hours of Avatar. Now, here's the thing. It's kind of smart. Well. We're going to be really up to speed on where the story left off. Right. Should we just then record the episode that week before things get really dicey? Oh, that's a good point.

1:24:46Maybe we should. Okay. I'm very excited about Fire and Ash. I think Fire and Ash, we can put at eight. Okay. And Wicked out. Yeah, vibes are very bad. Ariana Grande has COVID, apparently. Oh, that's too bad. Yeah. I mean, it just seems like it's been a bummer. I do think it's going to do well at the box office. Now, here's a bigger question. Yeah.

1:25:10are begonia and j kelly out right now so you would toss them out before it was just an accident i yes and i won't i'd like to hear your line of thought about that well i you know i i think i said to you i did see it was just an accident which i thought was um exceptional and also did not scream like pop international feature crossover best picture hit um kind of in the same way that you saw no other choice and we're like yeah this is really great um no other choice is obviously you know the latest from like one of our great living filmmakers not that Jafar Panahi is also not but the it was just an accident is getting like the palm door spot here which in the last few years has become a transfer.

1:26:00But I am just sort of, all of the international features seem a little bit softer this year in terms of, well, everyone is now catching up to the festivals and being like, well, actually, I don't know, or I liked this, or there's no anatomy of a fall, as you keep saying. There's no anatomy of a fall, but I think, so let's just talk about what that combination of films is. So The Secret Agent. Yeah. It was just an accident. Mm-hmm. And Sentimental Value are all canned films. They're all going to be out for international feature. You know, you've got to remember that I'm Still Here, which was a much more conventional film than neither of those three.

1:26:35But that did slot in late in the period last year. The Brazil contingent is strong, whatever that means. The Secret Agent is very unusual. More unusual than it was just an accident, which to me is probably the most conventional movie in Panahi's career. Panahi, who has been under house arrest over periods of time, who has been like kind of fucking with the form of what is a movie. He literally made a film called This Is Not a Film. He has been exploring what he can accomplish while making films in secret. This film was also made in secret but has a much more traditional structure in terms of being a thriller.

1:27:11But it is also a very contemporary movie about living under a fascist regime that I think is going to resonate very deeply with a lot of voters around the world. I think it's like in a lock personally. because Panahi has been in the United States for a long time now. He was in the studio. He'll be on the show in December. Which is awesome. I'm not saying I didn't like it. He's a good advocate for his film too. The only other thing is that that film has been available for a while here in the U.S. I mean, it's a limited release. Yeah, it hasn't made a lot of money. Yeah, and it just doesn't feel like as many people have seen it.

1:27:47I think it's really more about the absence of other films that can go in. Now, if you want to say we'll take it off, we can take it off. No, no, no, no. I just wanted to have the conversation. Let's do the exercise. Let's take off. It was just an accident, J. Kelly and Begonia. What three would you put in its place? Because Avatar is taking the wicked spot. Right. Okay. Are there three other movies that could go in there that you see happening? I think that's very plausible. Okay. That to me is going in the J. Kelly spot. Okay. So that's at number nine. Yep. And that is also trading a Netflix film for a Netflix film.

1:28:17Yep. Now, what else? Okay. So the other things you have listed here as possibilities. Wake Up Dead Man and Knives Out Mystery. I don't think that that will be a best picture. No other choice. I don't think so, even though I really liked it. Rental Family, still haven't seen. I haven't seen it either. That's one of my big gaps. So we've got all the searchlights right here. We've got Rental Family. We've got Springsteen Deliver Me From Nowhere, which absolutely not. And The Testament of Anlie, which is my pet favorite. And is this thing on? And is this thing on, which I also still haven't seen. Yeah.

1:28:52but Bradley Cooper went to the Eagles game instead of the Governor's Awards so I don't know what he thinks is going to happen so Searchlight almost always gets a movie in yeah one of would one of these are one of these four movies going in now I've seen is this thing on yes I have a lot of strong feelings about it I mean I'll save them for the episode I don't think it's going in okay oh okay I mean you and Bradley Cooper clearly don't so well he loves football and so do I I mean he does If my team was as good as the Jets, I would be going to the Jets games. You meant as good as the Eagles. Sorry, if my team was as good as the Eagles because the Jets are visible.

1:29:27I recently learned that the Jets are 2-8. As of this recording, I don't know what's happening this weekend. They're 2-8. They're 15-point underdogs to the Baltimore Ravens. We're recording this before that game. Yes. I'm going to make a prediction here on the pod. We'll hear it on Monday. I think they will lose by fewer than seven points. Okay. That's riveting stuff. I can't wait to find out. Testament of Italy is too weird. I agree no I agree I agree it's cool I hope it happens for Anna Seyfried yeah it's cool I'm glad it got picked up Springsteen has no chance Rental Family is really soft Searchlight not having a movie is kind of fascinating yeah I think that that is really a product of there being two big fat Warner Brothers movies in here and they're kind of taking a Searchlight spot yeah and if Avatar gets in then you get a Disney movie so so what's left you have Song Sun Blue here we haven't seen it it will definitely get a Golden Globe but I think that's this is my point about taking it was just an accident off it's like there's not enough movies to go in would you say you haven't seen the secret agent yet so it's hard to say Brazil is powerful I've learned never to underestimate going into this episode my thinking was that the secret agent is at 10 and it was just an accident I think that that is smart based on what we know using our knowledge now that would be three international films and that would be no searchlight one Focus one A24 two Neon two Warners two Netflix seems reasonable yeah seems reasonable that's kind of how it gets parceled out by the time we record again we will have seen I will have seen Rental Family Song Song Blue I think those are my last two movies that I haven't seen yet okay and I gotta see Ellen McKay but that's not coming up in these conversations.

1:31:19And an avatar, you have to say. An avatar of Fire. Yes, yes. But we've already explained when we'll be seeing that. Yes. So I just want to say something really quickly. This is our 13th episode this month. Yeah. We've recorded them in 21 days. We've also done a live event. I've also done six filmmaker interviews this month because everybody's been in town for the Governor's Awards. Yeah. We've also recorded four episodes of 25 for 25. Okay. This is the most intense month we've ever had on the show. Yeah. I think we're a little overexposed. Okay. And by that, I mean, I'm on camera way too much right now.

1:31:49Okay. But we did it. We're here. We did it. We're about to have a little break here. It's well-earned. How do you feel about this month? I mean, I'm really psyched to have a week off to reset my brain. You know what that means for me? It's and or time. Oh, wow. Okay. Pretty fired up. I think what it means for me is Zootopia and Zootopia 2. because I heard from Max, the cousin who went to see Lady Bird when he was 10. Yeah. And there's a Thanksgiving tradition. Did he like the episode? Yeah, he did. And he said he was going to revisit it and see whether the movie holds up to his 10-year-old standards, which was very sweet.

1:32:30I also reminded Max that we took him to see Creed II and as the lights went down, he said, so what happens in Creed I? I remember this. Yeah, Max is a legend. But there's a tradition of taking the younger kids to see a movie at Thanksgiving and now that Max is a grown-up and in college, Knox is the younger kid. So I floated Zootopia and Zootopia 2 because Knox hasn't seen Zootopia, obviously, nor have I. Zootopia's pretty funny. Is that the one that is an allegory for the Reagan administration introducing crack? Remember the Instagram message that I got? Yes. That is the one? I don't think that that's the intention of the filmmakers.

1:33:06Okay, sure. But I think that that is a reading that it can withstand. Okay, Jack says yes, correct. Thank you, Jack. And shout out to that person who DM'd me. I'll also be seeing Zootopia 2 this weekend. Okay. Maybe after I see it, I'll add it to the list of best picture contenders. We'll see. Anything else you want to say about all this? Why don't we just read the 10 as it stands now? I'm not sure if I feel good about this list, but we're going to do it. Yeah. Number 10 is The Secret Agent. Number 9 is Train Dreams. Number 8 is Avatar, Fire, and Ash. Number 7 is It Was Just an Accident. Number 6 is Sentimental Value.

1:33:35Number 5 is Frankenstein. Number 4 is Marty Supreme. Number 3 is Sinners. two Hamnet won one battle after another. I'm so excited to not talk for a while. Yeah. Until a mic. Same. Let's go to my conversation now with Joachim Trier.

1:33:54Joachim Trier here on the show. Wonderful film. I heard you spoke in 2022 about the process of writing with your co-writer Eskil Vogt and you said you guys get together and you talk about a lot of ideas and you talk about what's going on in your life at the time. And the worst person in the world came out of that. And I was wondering what was going on in your life when you guys got together to start talking about sentimental value. Yeah, no, thanks. That's interesting. What was going on? First of all, we've made worst person in the world. So as always, you try to accept that there's a kind of an anxiety for failure in the room of creating something from scratch like we do every time.

1:34:38Since The Worst Person had had a good ride and people had seen it, it was a film that I felt met people on the right premise. People talked back to me about it in a way where I thought, hey, I think we talked about something here that was okay. Then, of course, we thought, what are people going to expect from us? We try to get rid of those notions because it's not very creatively stimulating to work from that place of what do they expect. What had happened was that I'd had two kids and Eskil has had children for a while. Our parents are still alive and almost like in the old friendship that we have, we start talking about stuff from life.

1:35:17And then we have all these other ideas of cooler films we want to make, but then actually, how can we make it interesting and cool and specific to talk about family dynamics and stuff like that? So I think that's kind of what happened. So there is something related to that too, which is that it felt like, you know, you've been making films for a long time, but it felt like the worst person in the world got into the culture more. You know, Academy Award nominations, probably more exposure to Hollywood than some of your films have gotten in the past. How much did that influence what you were writing?

1:35:45Because that's a significant strain, too, of Gustav's story and Elle's character. Did that particular experience on the last film inform that strain of the movie? Honestly, I don't think so. So I think first film we did, Reprise, was bought by Merrimax and came out and that's almost 20 years ago, man. So after that, I had the whole ride of meeting studios and reading scripts and trying to figure out as a young filmmaker who I was and realizing then that even though I grew up adoring Hollywood movies and still do, it wasn't the place where I would feel the most free to do my thing. So I went back to Norway and made Oslo August 31st.

1:36:29And, you know, so I've had a bit of that. And then since then, I have friends and colleagues and I do come out to L.A. I'm in L.A. now and we're talking. And I do feel that there's a beautiful dialectic between American and European cinema that's always been going back and forth and all that. So there's not skepticism, but it's more like this. how can I make a love letter to movies through making sentimental value, but still have fun and create some humor around the fact that on one level, an American actor that Elle plays in this one is kind of an outsider. And then she comes to Norway, which I think is more unusual than, than maybe making a story about a director going to Hollywood.

1:37:10It's happened before though, right? Yeah, there's a humor in that, you know, we thought. Yeah, I mean, we've had, you know, Elliot Gould worked with Bergman. Like it did happen a couple of times. but it's not that common right yeah yeah it's a good film um i want to talk about gustav and stelle's character and i'm curious about your specific relationship to this character obviously he's a flawed person he's a filmmaker he's got two kids how much of you is in him the irony is when we wrote the film i only had one and then i make i make this is a true story i make a story about a difficult father and a director who i imagined while writing it most of the time was not me at all i said he's much older generations difficult you know i was thinking much more about the family dynamics of the story and the characters and then just as we finished the script i realized we're having another child and that turns out to be girl too so now i have two daughters who are exactly three years apart like the the sisters in the film so 20 years from my poor daughters so everyone's going to think that this is an apology to them or something but that was not the intention it's on the record now it's not the intention so no so to to go back to the film i i feel um it was really fun to make a film about a filmmaker and be allowed to make pieces of his movies like we see piece of his masterpiece from the 90s called anna and you know it's the hardest thing in the world you're oh we're making a film about a great painter we have to have some great paintings you know and in this case we have to have some okay pieces of film to believe he was a good director so i was really suddenly in this position of oh la la how do i make like these crazy wonders there's a scene in the film like this one shot um with no cuts on a moving train and people are running outside the train inside the train there's a child who needs to cry on cue and i really i really had to step up here and be a better director so however much he's a flawed character, I really, really did my best to make him an okay director.

1:39:11Now, you do really communicate that he had, at least he had a greatness to him at a certain time. And what you do put in that film that he directed does kind of feel like a film of that era too. I mean, were you thinking, like, were there any movies that you were thinking about when you were attempting to recapture that? We were trying not to be so specific that it would be a parody or a hit job on some director or something. You know, it's more type of European auteur that would do wonders throughout each scene and maybe have a poetic relation to the wind and the trees, a bit Eastern European influence, but not something completely specific.

1:39:50We wanted Gustav Borg to be his own guy. Like, I'm not going to be able to get you to name names then, I guess. No, but I'll give an example. Like, for example, you know, it's obvious he's not Bergman because Ima Bergman comes from theater and Gustav Borg does not. He's about tactility and he doesn't like the theater. He even says to his daughter, the kind of difficult dad he is, and she's a stage actress. So that's a very patronizing moment when he says that. But, and he's not Jan Trouel either, the great Swedish director that I adore, but Jan Trouel was more about tactility and nature and humans almost in a Terence Malick way being perceived as creatures of the world, you know?

1:40:28So maybe it's more over in that corner. I don't know. Yeah. So like you, I have a four-year-old daughter. And it's an interesting ride. It is like the most beautiful, wonderful thing. And it is a very emotionally dynamic. And obviously your daughter wasn't four at the time when you were making this film. But I'm curious about specifically what that unlocked or allowed you to be able to communicate since you've got Inga and Renata's characters as the center, the focal point of the story. Yeah. please forgive me for maybe this is a little bit of an abstract um entry point into something you're asking about but i think i want to i want to talk about when you look at people developing kids what we all come from there is a sense that before the spoken language takes prominence all these other modes of communications are at play i'm sure you experienced that with your child as well that dancing singing hitting things rhythmically drawing all that stuff just happens it's it's a part of expression it's a part of getting into contact with the people around you as it's almost and sounds a bit cheesy but it's almost like we were all artists at some point before social conventions came and took us so i know exactly what you mean you know what i mean right and also you sing to them to make them calm and sleep and suddenly all these creative things come into play that has nothing to do with the business or with the function of art or any of that it's just like being human is doing stuff like that right so i thought in this film where eskal and i are talking about a creative family not all of them the younger sisters certainly stepped away from wanting to have anything to do with theater or movies or anything and that we can talk about that later but for some of these characters art making movies and theater is really important and we were ashamed about writing that eskiel and i we were like oh no are we doing that again but we realized that it gave us a key to talk about identity in a family and communication a lack of communication in a family because these artistic expressions gustav's film that he wants to do with his daughter or films from the past gave us an insight into the characters and i always thought at the end of the day that this is also a film about two women who have a very difficult relation to their father somehow coming to terms with the fact that inside that father is a wounded child i'm sorry you know to say it straight he is a man who comes from his own story and his own difficulties and i think that's the only way to try to reach some sense of reconciliation is to see the honesty about your parents' struggles.

1:43:18And that's a really hard place to go for most people. So when I look at the fact that Gustave as a child had a language which he'd certainly put into art in a beautiful way, but has no capacity to be socially available to his daughters in the social language, he's so clumsy. He says the wrong thing. He doesn't know how to be present with them. So I thought that dichotomy in life of this artist who actually seems to make really beautiful films, but has no ability to be a great dad. That interested me. So that's that wounded child that's still playing his art somehow or something. That area interested me.

1:43:56There's something really metatextual about Stellan portraying this character too, because of course he has children who are in the business, who are performers, who are artists. And so we as viewers, if we know about him, we bring that to the table. It did make me wonder though, like how you feel about the idea of your family getting into the arts your kids you told me before we started recording your father was a sound designer like you I presume there's a history of working in the arts in your family like how does how does that make you feel no it's um at times it's almost been a bit embarrassing I mean one grandfather was a painter the other was a filmmaker and I I I'm so inbred it's ridiculous like I it's so ironic right like as a as a creative person it's all about autonomy and individuality and here I am just being served up from these obvious you know family relations I come from but here we are that's what I do I wasn't great at school I filmed since I was a kid I skateboarded I filmed stuff with my friends all the way through my from before I could write even you know I had super eight and video cameras available that I it was a privilege enough to be allowed to use and so i'm just super grateful that i'm allowed to do this stuff i love making movies so it wasn't like a great plan or a choice i kind of slid into it and here we are you know but i also felt very comfortable on film sets as his child the grown-ups didn't seem so scary and boring they were playing and i remember very well being on set with my dad and seeing you know grown men lying in the mud trying to hold some you know some light up as the wind was blowing while the take was rolling.

1:45:36And they were like down in the mud, grabbing metal to try to keep it from not falling over during the shot. And, and kind of no one could make it sounds. It was all silent, but it was kind of crazy and fun. And I was like, wow, this, these people really care about getting this shot done. How fun is that? You know? So I'm sure I was very inspired by the process. This question is a little bit of an abstraction as well, but, you know hearing you say you were into skateboarding as a kid thinking about anders's character from the worst person in the world thinking about your early films you feel to me like a lot of people that i'm friends with that had basically a kind of like a little slightly harder edge punk rock youth and is getting older and becoming increasingly empathetic open-hearted and trying to find a way to kind of like reconcile the ethic of the past with the present day?

1:46:28Like, is that, does that feel accurate to you when I say that? Yeah. Um, if you mean by ethics, the idea that you had the virtue of wanting to be hardcore and autonomous and the grownups were idiots and the structure didn't give you the answer. Certainly. I still feel like that a lot of the time. And I think the world is unfortunately presenting itself to us in that way a lot. Um, but yes, I have come to a more emotionally open and tender place. I'm older. You know, I, I, I really used to laugh at kind of hippie stuff and was more of that punk guy that you described. I completely identified with what you're saying.

1:47:10And now I realize I'm not laughing at all about John Lennon. Not that I ever did. I always loved the Beatles by the way, but you know, like flip about something like that. I know I, I don't, I actually see that there's kind of a strength, I would even say a masculine strength to being emotionally available and that there's power in trying to see the other and listen to it and stand in opposition to disagreement with an openness because it's harder than to be so damn sure about everything and have that kind of sensitivity to things. I think I value more and more and i think also in art that it's kind of easy to get cynical sometimes and i'm certainly i don't want to be cynical and i don't by the way think that punk was necessarily cynical like some of it was a bit like and we don't care but at the core of it was was an emphasis on do it yourself a collective experience a collaboration uh wanting to create something that was beautiful and fun And, you know, so, so again, you know, punk isn't so simple either.

1:48:19It's interesting to me that the last two films, you know, you've not just worked with Renata, but they've been stories told through the eyes of women. And specifically in this case, two sisters. That's not exactly an experience that you or Eskel have literal access to. So how do you build that relationship? And then how do the two actors become credible as sisters in the film? Yeah, no, thank you. That's an interesting question. so first part of that i often get asked this thing about how writing for women and stuff but that presupposes i guess that we write ourselves all the time which we don't we you create characters outside of yourself exactly for that reason that it's fun to create characters and yes you have to have a deep understanding of them and in that process like an actor you will you will maybe use for sure something of yourself but um i i've just found it really wonderful to work with these specific actors and in this case like renata reinzve is a dear friend and i feel i can express myself for her just as i have also with male actors like anderson lee you know um and again a part of creating and making movies is to try to be a good observer listen be sensitive to what you see in the world and i think so through that i i hope we create these characters regardless of gender or you know who they are that that they are truthfully uh put into the story um so how do you create then with the actor this relationship you're asking about sisters um i had renata from day one because we wrote it for her she was one of the motivations to do the film the and um how do we then find her sister and it was a long casting process and we we we then encountered Inga Ibstotter-Lilleås and you'll see in the film that that you know she she has an earnest groundedness which is a wonderful different energy than Renata's frenetic charismatic actor of an older sister with all her neuroses and you know it's it's this kind of grounded more held and and contemplative character of the younger sister so the chemistry between them were awesome when we did like tests with both of them early on um no i really enjoyed that it was wonderful and they they connected it turned out they'd been in a theater play 10 years ago and they really like each other so so that was also something to build on their their chemistry is a part of what makes the film so exceptional there's two or three scenes between them that are just kind of that you feel like you're levitating a bit because it feels very knowable.

1:50:59It feels very familiar, even though we've just met them. I know you're being asked about the house nonstop, but I'm going to, I'm going to ask you about the house. I know it was close to where you live. In where you live, is it easy to just say, I want this house for my movie? I mean, how does that, how does that work? It's not. And I'm a fool as always. So I looked at a hundred houses and then the house I wanted was right up the street but you know this is the process you try you you look and you fumble and then you find and we found this great great house um it was thank god the people that live in the house in the real house uh it's a singer and and writer of a great band that i grew up admiring in the 80s called the lillos a great kind of post-punk new wavy norwegian rock band that i really loved and he he he understood he's seen my films and i'm grateful for that and he really said hey listen dude i really want to support you i love the stuff he's also someone who's actually made a lot of songs about oslo so i think there's a kinship between us about like representing this silly little city in northern europe that most people don't care about so there's kind of that sweet connection and he said yeah so hey what if we make a deal that me and my wife and you know we we can go to italy for a few months and you guys shoot in the house and you pay for the holiday or something and i was like yeah great so we made a kind of a deal with him and um but but the interesting thing was we also did a replica of the whole house in a studio because we're shooting the story of the house through the 20th century basically and we had to like do 1918 1930s 1940s 60s 80s so forth and we had to redress and go in and out of the real house and the dress that's the past built in the studio.

1:52:49So at some point, we had done a replication of his family home and his ancestors from pictures that we gathered in the 30s. And I took him and his whole family and his kids and they're not grown up and everything. We invited him and his brother as well to the studio. And they walked into a set and outside the set was VP screens, digital screens, LED screens, that where we had created complete photorealistic replications of also in the 30s exactly research what the buildings around that house had looked like and the cars on the streets moving around and we put them in that time machine and his brother teared up and he's like my god this is incredible we're in the time machine we are in our house reconstructed from the 30s with this outside looking at the window the trees are measured to be smaller and over there they weren't have any trees and that house wasn't built until 10 years later and you know and it was such a joy and his brother kind of teared up it's like like what you guys do in movies it's crazy like you know and i felt so proud to be a filmmaker and this is the big you know kick of making movies sometimes is that you just construct the past and reality and you grab it and these shots and create stories out of it but even like furthermore that's what the movie is about too the movie is about this attempt to kind of recreate this memory, this vision of experience within the space in which it happened.

1:54:15So you gave them that gift while making a movie that is about that feeling. That's true. That's quite fascinating. It's weird, huh? Again, like my kids, they're suddenly having another daughter. Life imitates art. Yeah. A couple more for you. The funniest joke in the movie by far is the gifts that Gustav gives his grandson. I laughed so hard. Can you just talk about that? Where have you and us? So, talking about punk, I mean, he's a counterculture guy, and he doesn't like bourgeois, middle-class life. And he's coming to his nine-year-old grandson's birthday party. He brings a lot of wine. He's probably very nervous.

1:54:52He knows that he hasn't been a great dad, and he's trying to connect now. And then his nine-year-old grandson has a birthday, and he's supposed to bring something. So, he brings some DVDs that he gives him, probably because he wants to connect. And the DVDs he gives is The Piano Teacher by Michael Haneke, and Irreversible. by Gaspar Noé to the rest of the family's big shock. And, you know, I sympathize with him. He's trying his best, but it's obviously not good films for children. He even says to his grandson, looking at the piano teacher, that this film teaches you everything you need to know about women and their relationship to their mothers.

1:55:27And the mother just, his daughter responds, well, we actually don't have a DVD player. Thank God, you know, it's... So yeah, that's a bit of a comedic scene. The fun for me was we were suddenly, you know we were invited to screen at canon main competition in that big theater that we all adore and i'm sitting there and that scene arrives on screen and everyone laughs and i realized that both irreversible and the piano teacher screened in that exact room in competition so it was again complete meta so i want to ask you about the soundtrack i know that you got asked about the soundtrack a lot on the last film and that you have talking about soundtracks.

1:56:08I love music. Well, I, the decisions in this film are really interesting because you hear a lot of filmmakers, especially in the nineties in America, were using this kind of jukebox style where you'd get a lot of different kinds of genres, a lot of stuff that came from the filmmakers youth getting, you know, reinterpreted in this new art form. Yours is even more wide ranging. I find like, it's not just a series of pop songs. It's classical, it's gospel, it's these dirges. It's a real smorgasbord of music. So how do you determine what, is it just what it feels, what feels right? Does it have to be thematically coherent with what you're trying to say in the film?

1:56:46How do you make the choices to pick songs? It's very similar to when you ask me why I made this film in my life right now. so it's a mixture of many things these songs many of them i listened to a lot at the moment or recently some of them are from the past some of them i had a friend show me and i suddenly realized it would fit a scene i mean we write in the writing room eskel foch and i with a lot of music like terry callier is someone an artist i've listened to a lot terry callier came out of the Chicago soul scene, folk soul scene in the early 70s. His producer, Charles Stepney, who passed away way too early, also was a part of Road Reconnection and produced Manny Ripperton.

1:57:34And, you know, there's this kind of that whole area of music I've loved for my whole life almost, but now recently really focused on Callier. And I was then trying to analyze why I opened the film with that song. And I realized that it had some of the artistic, formal virtues that i was trying to embrace which is that it's quite light and beautifully orchestrated and has a sense of levity but at the core of it there's a human voice that's very soulful and melancholic and i thought hey man that's the vibe i'm after and then he has kind of a a mirroring artist from the uk lobby cifre who also made a lot of beautiful and still he's still around and makes great music and made some stuff in the 70s that i felt had the same vibe and that's the end of the film.

1:58:21So they bookend the film, you know? So you try to find a structure that you can also justify aesthetically a bit, but at the end of the day, it's taste and what you enjoy. What does the title of the film mean to you? Yeah, that brings us back to music. I think sentimental value, the word and what it looks like and sounds like could have been an old standard. It could have been a Cold Porter tune or a jazz stand or something. It has that kind of sweet, sweet melancholic feel to it. But it's also a word I find fascinating. I remember as a child, we have a similar word, which is the Norwegian word for sentimental value in Norwegian.

1:59:02And I remember as a child learning that word and thinking, wow, that describes something very human. This idea that you have a subjective relationship to something that's only yours. So it's about identity. And since we're talking about a family who are kind of negotiating, who are we? And we feel so different. I thought it was interesting to bring in that subjectivity into play. It's not only about that coffee cup that you remember your grandmother having and now you have it and it reminds you of her. I think it goes beyond that. So you mentioned earlier that after reprise, you kind of did the, I assume, the water bottle tour movie got bought by Miramax.

1:59:39You got to get exposed to Hollywood. is there any world where you would make a hollywood movie you seem to have this wonderful setup in norway and i know that the country is much more accommodating of artists than it can be in the hollywood capitalist system but could you see yourself making a hollywood movie at any point i i always thread carefully here because i don't want to offend the fact that the Hollywood locomotive pulls cinema and people through cinematic history it's a big important locomotive that also creates I mean look at this year look at the Warner Brothers this year and who they support the great filmmakers some of them are people I know I mean Ryan Coogler I met at Sundance Lab when I was you know an advisor there and I love his work and Paul Thomas Anderson is made again a masterpiece i mean one battle after another is just an extraordinary piece of cinema so you know i don't want to say that hollywood doesn't make great stuff but on the other hand i i have an ability to and i'm being allowed to make films still in europe that where i have creative control and and i can do it at home and i can tell the stories i want and and And yeah, it's a system that works.

2:00:54I shoot on 35 millimeter. I can still work with my friends and cast who I want and have final cut with still like 60 days, 64 days of shooting, which is ridiculous amount on a budget, which is not crazy. So that's a pretty sweet deal. So yeah, never say never, but at the moment I feel very free in the way that I'm allowed to make films. What's your favorite part of the filmmaking process at this point? the most intense unique thing is to be allowed to be with actors on the camera on set and completely identify with the moment like when i was a skater if not thinking just being there and really losing yourself in the moment with what you're creating but i love writing with that skill and finding stuff and the the rush of knowing that oh my god we have a film coming or a new idea or scene oh i look forward to filming that such a rush and then of course editing is such a torment at the beginning it's so hard to get any structure in place but that towards the end when you start showing it to people and it starts being a movie and mixing sound and color and refining it finally coming towards the end is such a beautiful part of it and i'm present at all these stages i'm in the writing room 90 of the time he says he'll have some writing days without me towards the end because he's a better writer and he refines and creates it that way you But in editing, I'm there almost every day.

2:02:20So I really love the whole process. But I do slow work. I mean, I make a film every third or fourth year, and that's okay with me. I used to be ashamed that I wasn't sitting in a lumet in Woody Allen and could churn something out every year. I admire those people that can, but I'm okay about my pace now, I think. It's producing great work. Yoki, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing they have seen? I know you're traveling the world and showing the film and you're busy, but I assume you're watching some stuff. Yeah, I gotta go back to one battle after another.

2:02:54I had the great fortune of becoming friends with Paul Thomas Anderson. And I feel, speaking of music, I grew up really, really inspired by Martin Scorsese. And I know that Paul in his own unique way is also someone that plays around with music and movements. And you feel that Paul's camera is connected to a soul, to someone there's a gaze and a movement and a temperament where the mise-en-scene is completely connected to a sense of a voice someone expressing something you know and i love that in movies you feel it sometimes that a film can feel remote or it doesn't you don't know what the vibe or who's making it or and it's not it's it's a group endeavor of course but you feel with the through line and all of paul thomas anderson's movies is something of a very personal nature yet you don't know what it is.

2:03:44It's still mystical and interesting. And I don't know, I admire him a lot. I think he's one of perhaps, you know, the master, I think of our generation of filmmakers. And I, I'm so relieved and happy to see him continue, you know, and make films on this scale now. It's incredible. I echo those sentiments and congratulations on your own film, which I think is absolutely wonderful. Thanks for taking some time to talk. Thank you so much.

2:04:13thank you to Joachim Trier thanks to our producer Jack Sanders for his work on this episode later this week our number three movie in 25 for 25 hardly anybody's guessed it yeah nobody sees it coming I mean we're recording this in advance so there's five days for everyone to spoil it I'm gonna spoil it right now it's the 2016 film The Choice and I'm so pumped to finally be able to see this movie for the first time see you then Thank you.