Joachim Trier directs Sentimental Value (2025). A story made not for the immediate exit, rather for the after-echo that spans the passage of one’s time, that which forms the disquiet space of being. Drawing the heart to the weighted breath that breaks the silence; the hearted dissonance that takes center stage. An allowance of existential tenderness for those home to the makings of despair.
This post is about the movie Sentimental Value. Starring Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas.
I Want A Home
A Reflection on What We Quietly Carry
House the plays of time, every act there is the story. Dead long after life, to each its own allegory. Silence stills, empty and light; sensitive, we’re both alike in that way. Nothing is more beautiful than shadows. What, then, is darkness to you? When it’s all you can do, it’s hard to explain, and the heart needs someone to care about.
That’s the question the film’s asking isn’t it?
It’s the things of sentimental value.
Wantings of a home
Contains mature themes and depictions that may be unsuitable for some viewers. Engage with discernment — viewer discretion advised.
Something More Personal
“She wondered if the house liked to be empty and light, or full and heavy. If the floor liked being trod on. If the walls are ticklish. If it ever felt pain. She thought yes it probably liked to be full.”
~ Narrator
It takes the breath, the here and now, no hiding of what’s within me. To take it in stride, to run, to hide, though it is a security. Compile it may, it tears at seams — the scenes and what they demand of me.
Ashore I wait to feel, an invitation that demands the spirit. You’re kindred in that way, in what moves; to think, to feel, to live it.
Feeling after all this time, I wake to something beneath it. A grieving expected, an act indebted, and you see what it is you make of me.
I worry, that much is true. What is there to find, swooned to lies, in the missing peace that stems from family?
Hiding from the truth that it is killing me.
Supposedly I know too much of myself; that much, only in part, is true.
Nothing Is More Beautiful Than Shadows
“I think she’s just lonely.”
~ Agnes
The house grew lighter and lighter.
What more is there for me to do? Amazed at what had been, I do look to the past fondly. Though I must not forgo; I let go. Run away.
For much is there to be spoken here; to tell the story that broke me. What are the things worth speaking on? Resistances to that which is less alive; in experiences, the lessers and lessers of life.
I tell what I see, I share what I have known. I see in you the best of my being, and no good is the art either. Feelings expressed in my securities.
Questions they oppose enrage me. Subtle frustrations in the ill-practice of decency. To be seen, not seen as I was, invites negotiations to sort — how is it the heart that escapes thee?
To what is the end to the best of us? As stunning to the heart that we must do.
Crawling to express that which has made us, making the expressions unto you.
I Had You
“It’s like her sadness is such an overwhelming part of her. It’s a beautiful theme. But I can’t tell if that’s just the cause of everything. Or is it just a symptom of something deeper?”
~ Rachel Kemp
Here exists the story.
Reasons that form you, then live on as your reasons — that you find as much as it finds you. Broken, unsentimental in its description.
How does one really gain a handle on that? The sadness is overwhelming, and in so a beautiful theme. I can’t tell if that’s the cause of everything, or is just a symptom of something deeper.
This I have confronted, though not in this way. It lives on in us, and as it does me. So that which is me, we must all face.
Unescaping this truth is killing me.
Though for me, I had you. And I felt safe. I love you.
In the end it’s the story we live. It’s the story we tell. How we come together to make something of it.
To The Believer
Someone said praying isn’t talking to God, it’s acknowledging despair. What is it then we know if otherwise?
No stranger was I to this; estranged, I had lost for years. Distorted by what I had known and done, culminating in what I then felt.
To no prevail, gnashing, it wandered me. My home, it was my shadow, cast upon any good thing.
I was alone as I cried and cried again, grieving knowing this of myself.
So I prayed. I said out loud: Help me; I can’t do this, I can’t do it alone.
I want no longer this pain; I want a home.
A person can wander long enough that wandering itself becomes a condition of the soul.
Though the heart will always know, and in feeling we may come to find and be.
Of Scripture
“…that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us..”
~ Acts 17:27
Credit: Script and select images used in this post are from Sentimental Value (© NEON). Included for reflective commentary and thematic analysis.
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