Joachim Trier on the Success of ‘Sentimental Value,’ Fighting for Theatrical and Ryan Coogler
The filmmaker, who earned Oscar nomination in 2022 for Worst Person in the World, says : “I’m trying to tell young people nervous about the theatrical experience: Keep fighting for it, because it’s possible.
Co-writer Eskil Vogt is a frequent collaborator
I grew up with a grandfather who was jazz musician, then became a filmmaker; my dad played jazz trumpet when he was young and then went into movies. I always thought I would do some music stuff and many of my friends are musicians, and I was just too bad of a punk drummer. (Laughs.) So I ended up filming skate videos. I had my gang of friends and I still have a lot of my old skate friends. That feeling of camaraderie, of friendship, is really important to me. I met [Sentimental Value editor] Olivier [Bugge Coutté] in the first film school. I went to European Film College and then we both got into National in the UK in London. Eskil went to France, but we kept writing together.
I know people are cautious as directors, like, “Oh, I need to change my style and develop.” But if you really know people, you also challenge each other to grow and and try new things. I like having smart people who don’t give a shit about your ego. We’ve always stayed hardcore to certain principles, to what we find cinematically interesting. We’ve never done one to become more popular, to try to make more money. I haven’t played the game so well.
My debut Reprise was quite successful. It’s easy to forget that 20 years ago, Scott Rudin stepped on as an executive producer. I was like 30 or something, and I was “Wow, shit, what’s going on?” It traveled quite well, and it came out here in 2008. I went on tour to all the places that don’t exist anymore — Paramount Vantage, Warner Independent.
But there’s a lot of great films being made here right now. One Battle After Another is a masterpiece.
Well the director of that movie thinks the same of your movie.
You’re in the Oscar conversation with more international films than usual
At the end of the day, it gets people to watch the movies and discuss the movies and whether it sometimes turns into a bit of Beatles versus Stones, and we know they’re both great bands, it’s okay. Whatever comes out of this discussion of, “Is it going to be this or that?” — we’re all a part of it, that’s wonderful. We’ll see where it ends. But along the way, for our expectations actually, Sentimental Value is going quite well. It’s building great numbers out of Spain, great in the UK, great in France — we are doubling most places what we had for Worst Person in the World, which was kind of that year’s art house. I’m trying to tell young people that are nervous about the theatrical experience for their movies: Keep fighting for it, because it’s possible. There are fewer films that manage to get there, but it’s possible. I want to be a witness of that.
You brought the “tenderness is the new punk” motto to Cannes Fest
I was more nervous making this film than anything I’ve done. It was risky because I was trying to talk about something that’s so unanimous, like the universally specific is the term in English. Things that deal with parents and children and transferred grief and lack of ability to put things into words that you feel in close relationships — those things are unavoidable in any human life. How to talk about that without becoming general? That’s what I was really nervous about. I’ve come off through my earlier films maybe of being more of a generational pop culture guy. I’ve always yearned for earnestness, but in this one it’s kind of “I’m making a film where I don’t quite know whether it’s the hip crowd that necessarily will attach to it.”
The irony is we have seen teenagers and retired people come to me and talk about it. But that felt risky because, oh, “He could just be making a boring chamber drama. People sitting around the house talking about sad things.” That was my nightmare. That’s what I want to avoid. I’m sure there’s some cool naysayers that feel it’s too emotional. I’ve heard those voices out there too.
I don’t read reviews to large extent. I get them sifted to me because if I do take it all in, then you just start focusing on the negative ones. But there was one intellectual newspaper in Norway that really went after me and wanted to take me down. That became part of a conversation. People in Norway started asking me about it without me having read it: “How do you feel about that article?” What can I say? The guy wrote his first film review — he does reviews of books — and he hates me. The stuff of “Oh, it’s cheesy, it’s not this or that, there’s a sense of selling out in making a more vulnerable, soft film” — then I thought, “Hey, that’s OK.” In American terms, the women’s films, the melodramas, were where you were allowed to explore psychological complexity. To me, the idea of the domestic being a place for great drama is true.
Again, what you’re describing is a tradition in American filmmaking that has fallen away somewhat.
Like 30 percent of my mind when I do interviews is, I feel I owe a young generation that want to make movies — and also audience members — to stand for something about certain values, of not following trends. Try to allow yourself to represent stories that are risky to you because you’re figuring them out as you make them, because it creates electricity.
Between every film, I have a crisis. It’s inevitable: I’m like, “Shit, do I still have something to tell? Where do we go from here?” This is the first time I directed since I had children. I have two kids. It comes from more of a modernist point of view, but also punk, all the stuff I grew up with in counter-culture that you shouldn’t make polite art to please your parents. That’s been at the heart of post-war 20th century culture that I grew up on. But then you look back at your own kids and you’re like, “Well, I have to feel the same towards them. I shouldn’t make something to please them, but God damn it, I wanted to be truthful.”
Ryan Coogler mentioned you served as advisor in his Sundance Lab back around 2010s. That lab also featured now-major filmmakers like Chloé Zhao, Marielle Heller and David Lowery.
Ryan was developing Fruitvale Station. He and I really bonded. He was growing up in the Bay Area. Because of skateboarding, I had mixed group of friends, so with a sense of authority, I could talk about what it is to be a junkie in Oslo and to live a double life. He said, “Is this where junkies are, in Norway?” We were laughing a bit about where I come from. We had this deep conversation. And so he then invited me to be editing consultant on Fruitvale Station. I zoomed with him and the editor and had some earnest conversations, and I was very proud to see what happened to that film. To see him and Michael B. Jordan really moved me then.
Did it feel strange to you to be in advisory capacity?
Completely. I still feel that when people ask me to be a consultant once in a while. And we do a lot of help in editing or screenplay support for young people.
Efforts to connect with or reach young filmmakers
Pushing yourself in terms of craft on Sentimental Value?
Trying with this one to have lots of big group-dynamic scenes, where everyone’s acting has to be on point. Sometimes people think that directing thing is proven only through where you put the camera and where you cut. But it’s also very much about tone, tone shifts, getting different actors from different traditions to act on the same level, and coordinating that and creating a vibe when they stimulate each other without knowing all that. It’s very different to make a main-character movie than this kind of ensemble.
It feels natural to do it in Norway, the place I’ve lived in and know. I don’t have the inclination right now to do something very abstract like a sci-fi or a big period piece from a different culture. I don’t think I have that in me. I like details. Also, I think it’s fun to go to the national archive and the national theater [in Norway] and look at buildings that I’ve admired from the outside and figure out what they are on the inside. We’ll see. Maybe it’s healthy for me at some point to shoot something in different cities, but people in L.A. don’t make films about L.A. either, do they? (Laughs.) I also see how a lot of the big studios and stuff are eager to try different things, and all that, but I’m really concerned. I really want theatrical. That’s very important. It’s concerning.
You do have some Netflix commentary in the movie along these lines, when it’s implied to Gustav that there’s no theatrical guarantee on the movie he is making with them. Should I call it a dig? I know you’ve been asked about it before, but where do you sit with that aspect of your movie, vis-à-vis the feelings you’re talking about, right now?
(Smiles.) I would call it encouragement. People have asked me about it, yeah. Right before Christmas, I suddenly had this idea that my Christmas wish was for Ted Sarandos to wake up during Christmas like Scrooge and be haunted by cinematic ghosts like Charlie Chaplin or Robert Bresson, that we could convince him to go for full theatrical and he would come back in the New Year, buy Warner Bros., and say, “It’s all going theatrical because it’s the beautiful thing that we should support forever. All children in the world who go to the movies want to go back and they want it for the rest of their lives.”
It’s a great art form. It’s also an art form for — it’s always dangerous to say all classes, but all kinds of people can usually at some point during a year afford going to the movies. Not all art is accessible in that way. There are so many arguments for why movie theaters should be sustained in small towns around everywhere, too. I’m not saying that Netflix is making bad movies. I’m saying, “Dude, show them in the theaters. Let them have a theatrical run.” So yeah, I would call it encouragement.
You’re about to head off to a Q&A for your career retrospective. Any kind of reflection prompted by that?
Yeah, I’m old. (Laughs.) I don’t feel old, but I guess I am older and I have to embrace that. I am very aware that, to end where we started, people are still following this band and we’re gaining more friends. I’m feeling good. It’s kind of wonderful. A lot of people are referring to my old films and seeing patterns and structures way beyond my intentions, which is a wonderful thing. It means people care. It means people look closely and are attentive, and this is the biggest privilege a filmmaker can have, that people rewatch your stuff or discuss it. The Criterion Channel has been generously putting up some of my films again, and I’m like, “Fuck. They’re actually alive.”
Film College and then we both got into National in the UK in London. Eskil went to France, but we kept writing together.
I know people are cautious as directors, like, “Oh, I need to change my style and develop.” But I feel that if you really know people, you also challenge each other to grow and change and try new things. I like having smart people that don’t give a shit about your ego. We’ve always stayed hardcore to certain principles, to what we find cinematically interesting. We’ve never done one to try to become more popular, to try to make more money. I haven’t played the game so well. (Laughs.)
It’s interesting the way you refer to it as a game. Is that noise you feel like you have to drown out?
So [my debut] Reprise was quite successful. It’s easy to forget that 20 years ago, Scott Rudin stepped on as an executive producer at the time. I was this kid, like 30 or something, and I was like, “Wow, shit, what’s going on?” It traveled quite well, and it came out here in 2008 I think. I went on tour to all the places that don’t exist anymore — Paramount Vantage, Warner Independent.
Don’t make me sad.
Yeah, I know! It was that era and then the financial crisis changed everything, so I saw while I was reading tons of scripts sent to me, with exciting producers, how volatile the industry is. Through making [the American-set] Louder Than Bombs a few years ago, we went back to European financing and I cast exactly who I wanted to cast — Gabriel Byrne, Isabelle Huppert, Amy Ryan. Not for the name, not for the money. I’m super proud of that cast.
But I mean, there’s a lot of great films being made here right now. One Battle After Another is a masterpiece.
Well the director of that movie seems to think the same of your movie. I’m sure you saw that.
I did. I was very, very grateful. I told Paul the other day, his generosity means the world to me.
You’re in the thick of the Oscar conversation with more international films than usual, though — even compared to years past, as the Academy has turned more global. There’s an argument to be made that directors such as yourself are filling a void in the midbudget, character-driven space among American films right now. I know you made Sentimental Value in the spirit of those films which feel rarer here now, so what would you say to that?
That’s a compliment if I’m considered in the context of that. There’s also something about the Academy opening up to members from different places, so that allows a discussion. But look, right now, Norwegian newspapers are treating me like a sports star, with the nervous expectations that I won’t get what they hope or something. And we were just in Brazil — Kleber [Mendonça Filho] and Wagner Moura have been super supportive; I love their film, it’s wonderful — but I feel like the Brazilians are in every interview like, ’Oh, you’re competing with them.’” (Laughs.) It’s all good. But the Academy Awards are getting eyes on them from beyond America, which I think is healthy.
I have to be honest, Sentimental Value rips off of the experience I had growing up of seeing Kramer vs Kramer or Ordinary People. Robert Redford — someone who we lost this year, who’s been a tremendous force in American cinema beyond what can even be explained because so many things trace back to him, that man, what he’s done for humanism in cinema. I grew up thinking that that was America at its best. It’s still around, but it’s rare.
It’s hard.
It’s hard. So back to your question, at the end of the day, it gets people to watch the movies and discuss the movies and whether it sometimes turns into a bit of Beatles versus Stones, and we know they’re both great bands, it’s okay. Whatever comes out of this discussion of, “Is it going to be this or that?” — we’re all a part of it, that’s wonderful. We’ll see where it ends. But along the way, for our expectations actually, Sentimental Value is going quite well. It’s building great numbers out of Spain, great in the UK, great in France — we are doubling most places what we had for Worst Person in the World, which was kind of that year’s art house. I’m trying to tell young people that are nervous about the theatrical experience for their movies: Keep fighting for it, because it’s possible. There are fewer films that manage to get there, but it’s possible. I want to be a witness of that.
You brought the “tenderness is the new punk” motto to Cannes, and it’s an interesting way to label your film. I wonder how you sit with it on the other side, following these premieres and in the midst of this campaign.
I was more nervous making this film than anything I’ve done. The reason it was risky was because I was trying to talk about something that’s so unanimous, like the universally specific, I think is the term in English. Things that deal with parents and children and transferred grief and lack of ability to put things into words that you feel in close relationships — those things are unavoidable in any human life. How to talk about that without becoming general? That’s what I was really nervous about. I guess I’ve come off through my earlier films maybe of being more of a generational pop culture guy. I’ve always yearned for earnestness, but in this one it’s kind of like, “Yeah, I’m making a film where I don’t quite know whether it’s the hip crowd that necessarily will attach to it.”
The irony is we have seen teenagers and retired people come to me and talk about it. But that felt risky because, oh, “He could just be making a boring chamber drama. People sitting around the house talking about sad things.” That was my nightmare. That’s what I want to avoid. I’m sure there’s some cool naysayers that feel that it’s too emotional or something. I’ve heard those voices out there too.
How do you hear it?
I don’t read reviews to a large extent. I get them sifted to me because if I do take it all in, then you just start focusing on the negative ones. I think our Rotten Tomatoes score is pretty good, so I’m happy. But there was one intellectual newspaper in Norway that really went after me and wanted to take me down. That became part of a conversation. People in Norway started asking me about it without me having read it: “How do you feel about that article in this important newspaper?” What can I say? The guy wrote his first film review — he does reviews of books — and he hates me. The stuff of “Oh, it’s cheesy, it’s not this or that, there’s a sense of selling out in making a more vulnerable, soft film” — then I thought, “Hey, that’s OK.” In American terms, the women’s films, the melodramas, were where you were allowed to explore a lot of psychological complexity. The idea of the domestic being a place for great drama, to me, is true.
Again, what you’re describing is a tradition in American filmmaking that has fallen away somewhat.
Like 30 percent of my mind when I do interviews is, I feel I owe a young generation of people that want to make movies — and also audience members — to stand for something about certain values, of not following trends. Try to allow yourself to represent stories that are risky to you because you’re figuring them out as you make them because it creates electricity.
You’re also describing getting older as a filmmaker, right? Starting a family yourself since your last movie, it’s going to dovetail with the work that you make.
Yeah, let’s get into that. Between every film, I have a crisis. It’s inevitable: I’m like, “Shit, do I still have something to tell? Where do we go from here?” This is the first time I directed since I had children. I have two kids. I guess it comes from more of a modernist point of view, but also punk, all the stuff I grew up with in counter-culture that you shouldn’t make polite art to please your parents. That’s been at the heart of at least post-war 20th century culture that I grew up on. But then you look back at your own kids and you’re like, “Well, I have to feel the same towards them. I shouldn’t make something to please them, but God damn it, I wanted to be truthful.”
I’m cautious of certain types of vanity that I’m trying to get rid of. I know that can sound even pretentious, but it drives you to a place. I’m not trying to make polite films that are pedagogical to little children. They will watch them when they grow up. But the idea that they can watch the film and see, “Okay, that’s what my dad grappled with, those questions.” That would be beautiful to me. I didn’t sell that out to sweeten it or make it tougher, or cooler or more avoidant.
To go back in time a little bit: I spoke with Ryan Coogler recently and he mentioned you served as an advisor in his Sundance Lab back in the early 2010s. That lab also featured now-major filmmakers like Chloé Zhao, Marielle Heller and David Lowery. I’m very curious about that experience — especially since, if my math is right, you’d only made two films at that point and were not as well-known in the U.S.
I felt like a kid myself. I’d just done Oslo, August 31st and the wonderful [Sundance labs founder] Michelle Satter invited me. She’d seen my movies. I accepted, of course — was very honored. They chose me even though I said, “Jesus, I’ve only made two films. Am I senior enough to be invited?” But I think that she invited me to have a couple of advisors who weren’t so senior and experienced. So they invited me to show Oslo, August 31st to them.
Ryan was there developing Fruitvale Station. He and I really bonded. He was growing up in the Bay Area. Because of skateboarding, I had quite a mixed group of friends, so with a sense of authority, I could talk about what it is to be a junkie in Oslo and to live a double life. He said, “Is this where junkies are, in Norway?” (Laughs.) We were laughing a little bit about where I come from. We had this deep conversation. And so he then invited me then to be an editing consultant on Fruitvale Station. I zoomed with him and the editor and had some earnest conversations, and I was very proud to see what happened to that film. To see him and Michael B. Jordan just really moved me then.
Did it feel strange to be in an advisory capacity?
Completely. I still feel that when people ask me to be a consultant once in a while. And we do a lot of help in editing or screenplay support for young people.
Efforts to connect with or reach young filmmakers
Pushing yourself in terms of craft on Sentimental Value?
Trying with this one to have a lot of big group-dynamic scenes, where everyone’s acting has to be on point, it’s a funny thing — sometimes people think the directing thing is proven only through where you put the camera and where you cut. But it’s also very much about tone. Tone shifts, getting different actors from different traditions to act on the same level, and coordinating that and creating a vibe when they stimulate each other without knowing all that. It’s very different to make a main-character movie than this kind of ensemble.
I’ll probably be in complete panic again. Like always. What’s the Serena Williams quote? “Pressure is a privilege.” I like that. I have to like that. I feel people care and expect something from me now, and that’s good, isn’t it? It’s better than to be left in silence as an artist. I don’t take that lightly. What will change is yet to be seen, to be quite frank. I know that I will try to be as hardcore as ever and just shield myself from those voices inside my head that think about the optics of what I should do and stuff like that. I have a lot of ideas, but I haven’t landed it yet.
It feels natural to do it in Norway, the place I’ve lived in and know. I don’t have the inclination now to do something very abstract like a sci-fi or a big period piece from a different culture. I don’t think I have that in me. I like details. Also, I think it’s fun to go to the national archive and the national theater [in Norway] and look at buildings that I’ve admired from the outside and figure out what they are on the inside. We’ll see. Maybe it’s healthy for me at some point to shoot something in different cities, but people in L.A. don’t make films about L.A. either, do they? I also see how a lot of the big studios and stuff are eager to try different things, and all that, but I’m really concerned. I really want theatrical. That’s very important. It’s concerning.
I would call it encouragement. People have asked me about it, yeah. Right before Christmas, I suddenly had this idea that my Christmas wish was for Ted Sarandos to wake up during Christmas like Scrooge and be haunted by cinematic ghosts like Charlie Chaplin or Robert Bresson, that we could convince him to go for full theatrical and he would come back in the New Year, buy Warner and say, “It’s all going theatrical because it’s the beautiful thing that we should support forever. All children in the world who go to the movies want to go back and they want it for the rest of their lives.”
It’s a great art form –it’s always dangerous to say for all classes, but all kinds of people can usually afford going to the movies. Not all art is accessible in that way. There are so many arguments for why movie theaters should be sustained in small towns around everywhere, too. I’m not saying that Netflix is making bad movies. I’m saying, “Dude, show them in the theaters. Let them have a theatrical run.”
Career retrospective–any reflections
