Sentimental Value: Musings and songs that elevate this masterpiece
An absentee father and his two daughters grapple with generational trauma and healing in this Joachim Trier film that asks the question, can art transform pain and anguish into catharsis?
There’s a bird in a tree singing a song just for me
Just for me _ Cannock Chase by Labi Siffre
At the core of Sentimental Value, Danish-Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s ineffably moving story of a family dealing with generational trauma and healing is its commitment to honesty, as much as in the craft as in the articulations of its principal characters. Layered with the complexity that arises out of the constant collision of history and memory, both public and personal, its understated brilliance lies in the way these come to life on screen, alternating between seamless narrative and fragmented interludes of time and people long gone.
Bearing witness is the family home with a gap in its picket fence, Trier’s escape hatch to nowhere whenever memory calls. It’s a home that has gone on to feel lighter, its silences getting louder with every passing year. Amidst this tug-of-war of explorations of love, loss and choice through overlapping timelines is the film’s music, the quietly luminous score (Hania Rani) and the kaleidoscopic range of the soundtrack, in particular two songs of yore that stand out for magically bookending the continuing journey of Nora, her younger sister Agnes and their estranged father Gustav Borg.
Nora and Agnes’s life is disrupted when Gustav, a celebrated filmmaker looking to resurrect his career with a new project, returns to their Norwegian home after decades, though not entirely unexpected given that their mother has just passed. However, what turns the tables is his decision to stay back. He wants to cast Nora, an established theatre actor going through issues of alienation and performance jitters, and Agnes’s nine-year-old son in the hope of repairing, and perhaps rebuilding, their relationship rudely halted when he had left the family. Both Nora and Agnes refuse to have anything to do with his new film, unable as they are to come to terms with Gustav’s sudden reappearance to “play daddy” again.
I saw a dream last night
bright like a falling star.
And the sources of light,
seemed so near, yet so far _ Dancing Girl by Terry Callier
Just before getting on stage, Nora experiences a panic attack. She almost tears off her dress, running helter-skelter backstage. Only when a fellow cast member and boyfriend slaps her — on her request — is she able to go on stage. Finally, when the curtain drops, she receives a standing ovation. This is her life, on and off stage.
Renate Reinsve’s portrayal of Nora is stellar in the way she brings out her troubled dynamism, her panic attacks, which are a manifestation of her existence, mired as it is in her sincere devotion to theatre. She has bouts of self-doubt though, feelings of inadequacy and a tearing loneliness. She also harbours anger. The only person she opens up to is her younger sister Agnes, who is seemingly less resentful of their father.
The quietly dignified and ever helpful Agnes, played with a rare composure and elegance by Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, is the one who is always there _ for her husband, her son and of course Nora. As a scholar of social history, she learns about her grandmother Karin, a member of the 60s’ anti-Nazi resistance squad who faced terrible torture in jail, ultimately dying by suicide. She weeps for her, realising that Gustav has had to deal with this reality since he was young. It is she who is able to tell Nora about how difficult it must have been for their father too.
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Gustav’s affections and devotion have long been limited to his drink and filmmaker persona. In the twilight of his life, he’s looking to re-focus though, something that the magnificent Stellan Skarsgård depicts with disarming reticence. Gustav’s back with a script he’s written for Nora, trying desperately to convince her to play the role just as he had done with Agnes when he cast her as a young girl in an earlier much celebrated film. Nora’s acceptance would open doors for funding, too, he admits. But Nora is vehemently against working with her father _ ‘we can barely talk to each other’. Enter Rachel Kemp, a Hollywood star, played by the radiant Elle Fanning, as replacement, who is equally sincere and committed to try and do justice to the role.
You can leave with only what you bring.
Things we cannot see appear
Singing songs we cannot hear _ Dancing Girl
About halfway into Sentimental Value, Trier (The Worst Person in the World, 2021) deploys a stunning collage of dissolves. One by one, the trio of Gustav, Nora and Agnes morphs into one another as though taking turns to face each other, again and again. It acts as the precursor to the denouement, a classic film-in-film resolution that comes after bouts of introspection over awkward family gatherings, staccato conversations and cheeky references to cinephile commentary on the state of cinema itself.
When Agnes reads Gustav’s script and requests Nora to read it, she listens, and for the first time ever allows herself a peep into Gustav’s mind. For, the script holds a startling revelation, something Nora had no idea her absentee father knew.
Coming from one of the modern masters of humanism, Trier, who co-wrote the screenplay with Eskil Vogt, Sentimental Value is a symphonic exploration of emotions in the way it looks at the past from the lens of the present, an exquisite cinematic adventure laden with snow, light and shade. It offers resolution in the form of prayer, acceptance and redemption. Also, that at times the conscious removal of the “self” from the centre of one’s existence can help individuals open the door to healing. In telling the story of one family, therefore, Trier is daring us, the human race, to engage with an age-old idea: can art transform pain and anguish into catharsis?
American singer-songwriter Terry Callier’s Dancing Girl (from his 1972 album What Colour is Love) provides haunting nuance to the film’s opening sentiments, citing dreams, light and the distance of time. As for the ending, the snow has been cleared and house has changed colour. Labi Siffre, British singer-songwriter, gay poet and conscience-keeper, sums it up with the wistful Cannock Chase (from his album, Crying Laughing Loving Lying), coincidentally also released in 1972. A transcendental experience of what cinema should aspire to be, Sentimental Value is among those that stay with you forever, deserving multiple viewings to fully appreciate the lightness of touch in its nuanced exploration of a complex theme.
I’ve been down for oh so long
It seemed like my soul was dead and gone
But it’s alright, I’m back in the fight
I thought my day would never come
Maybe it won’t, but I’ll have fun
And I’ll hold tight, ’cause that way it might _ Cannock Chase
[Sentimental Value is headed for the 2026 Academy Awards with nine nominations and has already bagged several recognitions, notably Cannes (Grand Prix, 2025) and the Golden Globe Awards (Best Supporting Actor for Stellan Skarsgård, 2025)]
