Oscar Sunday with Filmmaker Joachim Trier (‘Sentimental Value’)

To celebrate Oscar Sunday, we return to our talk with writer-director Joachim Trier! We begin with guiding words from writer Philip Roth (7:20), how Trier arrived at his intimate new film Sentimental Value https://www.neonrated.com/film/sentimental-value (8:40), and why he was drawn to father-daughter dynamics (his own, and others) in making this new project (10:00). Then, we talk about Joachim’s early observations growing up in Norway (25:00), why he prefers to be present with performers on set, rather than watching from a far-off monitor (32:00), and how he parlayed skating into his early work as a filmmaker (35:00). On the back-half, Trier reflects on meeting longtime collaborator, screenwriter and director Eskil Vogt (37:00), the essayistic qualities of his sophomore film, Oslo, August 31st (40:00), and how that style fully solidified in Louder Than Bombs and The Worst Person in the World (42:00). To close, we revisit a recurring monologue in Sentimental Value (48:00), his last day on set with actor Renate Reinsve (50:00), and how director Martin Scorsese has inspired Trier to continue ‘stirring the sauce’ (56:00). Original air date: November 30, 2025 Subscribe to our new YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@talkeasypod. As always, our email: [email protected]. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:15Sam Fragoso?

  This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam Forgo, so welcome to the show.

• 0:33Sam Fragoso?

  Today, in honor of Oscar Sunday, my conversation with writer-director Joachim Trier. We sat last fall around his latest film, Sentimental Value, when it opened in theaters. Since then, the film has earned nine Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best International Feature Film. If you haven't seen it, the movie centers on a Norwegian filmmaker, played by Stellan Skarsgård, who attempts to reconnect with his two estranged daughters after the death of their mother, his ex-wife. Although the attempt is a little selfishly motivated, Borg, who's the director that Skarsgård plays, hasn't made a new film in decades and has a promising script he's ready to direct. And so, he offers the lead role of the film

• 1:18Sam Fragoso?

  to his daughter, Nora, played by Renata Rinesve. She also came on our show last fall. Renata plays Nora, a working actor in Oslo, and when she rejects her father's offer, Borg cast an American movie star, played by Elle Fanning, to take her part. Trier, too, comes from a pretty prodigious filmmaking family. His grandfather was a celebrated director, his mother made documentaries, and his father worked as a sound designer. He grew up, in a way, like a Norwegian Spike Jonze, a skater-turned-filmmaker who channeled the kinetic energy of the former into the latter. And through six features with his longtime co-writer Eskil Vogt, beginning with Reprise in 2006,

• 2:01Sam Fragoso?

  he's built a body of work, often featuring young people trying to connect and make sense of their past. And so today, we have a very meta-conversation about making movies. The years between The Worst Person in the World and This New Picture, his evolving relationship to work-life balance, and his longtime collaboration with actor Renata Rinesve.

• 2:24Sam Fragoso?

  Speaking of, if you have not listened to our episode with Renata, it was a really fantastic piece. I think it came out at the end of November last year. It was kind of a two-part series with Joachim and her. I think both of them work back to back as kind of like an A-side, B-side. So if you have now seen the film since we released those episodes, I hope you checked that episode out. As always, you can reach me at [email protected]. That's [email protected]. One thing I want to do before we get into the episode, next month, April, will be, and this is unbelievable to say and kind of amazing to say,

• 3:06Sam Fragoso?

  the show will turn 10. I created the show back in April of 2016, and we're going to do a lot around the decade of making this show and what that means and how we see the program in the future. But in the immediate, I want to hear from listeners of this show, and in particular, I want to hear about specific episodes that you've loved over the last 10 years. It can be as far back as Don Cheadle, who was our first guest in 2016, or as recent as one we just did with Patti Smith or Gwyneth Paltrow. Whoever it is, or whatever it is, reach out to me at [email protected]. And we're putting together a special project around this.

• 3:46Sam Fragoso?

  So I hope to hear from you. And as always, [email protected]. Thank you for all the kind words. There was a very lovely profile in The Guardian that appeared this weekend. I've heard from a lot of listeners about it. And if you want to check that out, that's over at The Guardian. I think it's in the weekend edition of the paper. We will be back next Sunday with a brand new episode with the governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro. Until then, I hope you enjoy your Oscar Sunday. And here is my conversation with writer-director Joachim Trier. Enjoy.

• 4:40Sam Fragoso?

  Yookim Trier, welcome back to the show.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  Thank you. It's been a while.

• 4:44Sam Fragoso?

  It's been apparently eight years since we did this podcast. You're episode 79, according to the archives.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  My goodness, and you're so young. You must have been, what, 12 at this time?

• 4:56Sam Fragoso?

  I think I just turned 13. Yeah.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  Exactly, but you were still very articulate.

• 5:00Sam Fragoso?

  And I'm just now 21, just started drinking. It's a big day for me.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  How is drinking?

• 5:07Sam Fragoso?

  It's good. I did it for the first time last night. How have you been?

• 5:10Speaker 01

  I've been good, my friend. It's interesting because I think, growing up in the 80s, there was this thing about being a bit hardcore and not selling out. And to give us both a compliment at the top of this, I think we both have just done our thing since last time, and we are still allowed to do it, which I think is a nice sign that the world is accepting us.

• 5:30Sam Fragoso?

  I think both of us in our very different fields, but both trying to tell stories, we kind of have been doing it, and it now seems like, especially for you, I think maybe a little more so than our show, people are catching up to what you've been doing for a long time.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  It seems that people are still going to the movie theaters to watch my stuff, which is an honor these days. Not all films are getting seen, and more people are seeing them than the early ones, which is a wonderful thing. I'm very grateful for that. But I mean, your last guest, if I looked at Spotify correctly, was Salman Rushdie. So I think you're doing pretty good, my friend. I remember in our earlier conversations, and I'll be a bit meta. I'm a bit on the road at the moment. I've been releasing the film in France and in Norway and a few other countries, and now it's coming out in America. And so I've done a couple of interviews. Some have been great, and some you don't really connect so much. Your thing is that I feel that you're really good at connecting to people. That's a real gift.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  But there's a theme there because what I'm interested in is human connection at the moment. It's what I'm interested in making movies about. I'm making a family story in sentimental value. Those people are not really connecting, but my subject matter is how this connectedness works. Therefore, I'm curious about connection.

• 6:46Sam Fragoso?

  When you and Askel, when the two of you are In a room, spending your days like sharing music, talking about films, talking about your lives. Was connection the thing that you two kept circling in writing this film?

• 6:57Speaker 01

  What was happening at the time was that we had just come off the run of Worst Person in the World, which I must say went beyond our expectations. That film was delayed several times because of COVID. We were making it with masks on our faces and suddenly we were spat out. Main competition can, the first moment where we were all allowed to be in a cinema together again. And I haven't really even test screened it like I usually do to a lot of people. I had to do like groups of five times 10 to get like a real audience to talk to them about my edits. So suddenly I was there in the theater, showing it to people for the first time. And it went down pretty well and it traveled and all these things happened, you know? And, and we were very grateful, but we were also a bit overwhelmed.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  So when Eskel and I got back into the writing room after a while, how should I put it? We were not panicking, but we were having this feeling like we'll let everyone down now. So let's be hardcore and figure out what we want to talk about.

• 7:55Sam Fragoso?

  You've done this now for six films and you would think, okay, the two of you know what you're doing. But I was reminded of this quote from Philip Roth, who said, each time I begin a book, I don't know how to do it. There are no rules laid down for that book. There's no story, there's no rules for these people. And so each time you attack a book or it attacks you, you're looking for the voice in which to tell it.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I actually I'm familiar with that quote and it's taken great comfort in the fact that really one of my favorite writers in the world, Philip Roth, even he, with one of the most prolific, varied, intellectually poignant, emotionally exploring careers in modern writing history, felt that way between books. Isn't that marvelous?

• 8:35Sam Fragoso?

  It's amazing.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:36Sam Fragoso?

  If, if he's going to panic, then the two of you are going to panic.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  Exactly, or rather, at least it's comforting to know that some people have come out of that hole and made something that has value. So tell me, the two of you in the hole, what does that look like? It looks like this, very, very specifically, it looks like showing up in the morning at nine o'clock. Who gets there first? Eskil. It's his office. He writes his own stuff without me as well. He's a much better writer. He directs as well? He directs as well, absolutely. A wonderful director. And I have the luxury of having him co-write with me for the films that I direct. So he's there first, I come in, and for this new film Sentimental Value, I have had two kids, two young girls, since Worst Person in the World.

• 9:20Speaker 01

  So I then go, I've delivered the kids to kindergarten, as we say in Norway, childcare, which the Norwegian government so generously guarantees all our citizens. And I go from there and run. Sometimes I'm five, 10 minutes late. I used to be very on point, but now, as a dad, it's more confusing. And I get in there, and we have a lot of coffee, and we try not to procrastinate so much that we don't use the morning energy for something productive. So when you two land on something, tell me what that first looked like. So in this case, with Sentimental Value, we had this small idea, like what about talking about sisters, siblings? How come people are so different, even though they grow up on the same roof?

• 10:03Speaker 01

  How come that you trigger your parents differently? You're born first or second or third, or like the order of things. And your parents have grown and changed. So it's not the same experience. It's like walking into a river. It's never the same water kind of feeling. So that was one point. And then, I guess, my point of mentioning that I have kids, Eskil also has kids, like suddenly we're in the middle of life. And we are coming up with this family story where we can't only look from the sisters that are in their 30s on to the difficult relationship to a difficult father. We also, as fathers ourselves, I guess, on some level, have to take him serious. And at this point, we don't know quite what the story is. We know we have some scenes, we are starting to develop characters.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  But we do have Renata Rijnsvej, for sure, as one of the first aspects of. Faith or belief that there will be another film. And because we wanted to work with her again. So knowing that the older sister Nora has these and these issues, these things, to explore someone who's rather a bit the opposite, but yet the same as Julie in The Worst Person in the World. Nora is a very accomplished stage actor. She is very good at what she does, but she has no clue of how to create a sense of home or family or connection outside of her work. And then we realized, my God, her father is the same. And they are so similar, and yet they don't know how to talk. That's an interesting conflict.

• 11:25Sam Fragoso?

  So the father is a famous filmmaker, who has a retrospective in the beginning of the film, but also a pretty estranged relationship to his kids. And then sort of hatches a plot to cast his daughter in his new film, both because it will help with the funding of that film, and second, so that he could spend any kind of real time with her. You told the DGA recently, there's the movie you make, and then the film you discover that you're making two weeks into shooting.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:56Sam Fragoso?

  So tell me about the A and the B there.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  So the A is all your thematic ideas, the writing, all that stuff. B is the realization of getting all these wonderful people involved and having them, particularly the actress and cinematographer, production designer, costume, all these people, are giving their personal treatment and input and showing you stuff that's better than you could imagine. But then you also have rainy days when you need sun. You have restrictions of economy, and you have a difficult location owner suddenly changes their mind. You have to change locations the night before you shoot it. And like, stuff happens.

• 12:34Sam Fragoso?

  Did that happen on this one?

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, we had a couple of tough things there. And I think basically that the dialectic of all these compromises and all that wonderful creative input from others creates the film. And my job as director, I think, is to steer and try to create the best out of that.

• 12:52Sam Fragoso?

  When do you think the film locked in for you?

• 12:55Speaker 01

  It did already in the writing room because I gotta have faith. My job in the writing room is both Eskel and I work on the story and the characters, but it's also deciding ultimately that this is what I want to spend three years doing. And Eskel and I have never had a conflict. When he sees that thing happen, when he also gets it, it's we're very in sync like that.

• 13:14Sam Fragoso?

  Well, what do you what do you mean by it? What do you think that is?

• 13:16Speaker 01

  That is something that we haven't resolved, but that we're aiming for. It's some sort of hidden aspect of thematic treatment. I can now sit and tell you that sentimental value is about reconciliation and it's about parent-child dynamics and all this stuff. And I can describe it almost in a secondary nature because I've made the film and I've it's made an audience. But as you're making it, you're focusing on all the pieces and you don't quite know how it'll all stick together.

• 13:45Sam Fragoso?

  And on set, is your faith in the project, does it remain throughout? Or do you have those moments where you go, I cannot believe that we put all this time into this and it's not working the way I I want it to?

• 13:57Speaker 01

  You gotta keep your eye on the ball, on the details.

• 13:59Sam Fragoso?

  So tell me that's how do you do that? Especially, like you said in the beginning, people really loved the last movie and it does add an added layer of expectation.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  I think that's kind of the talent is to go at it every day with focus on each scene so that you don't fall into this remote perspective where you look at it all from above or from afar, which is just terrible because then all the evil voices in your head about all your failures and what will be, you know, like anyone who's made anything creative, I'm sure could actually, if they're forced to it, make the best parody of themselves because it's what they're scared of ending up. You know what I mean? I'm sure I could do a terribly cruel parody of myself.

• 14:40Sam Fragoso?

  What would that look like?

• 14:41Speaker 01

  With me? No, I think it would be an exaggeration of certain themes of.

• 14:47Sam Fragoso?

  A lot of Todd Rundgren songs?

• 14:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, like Todd Rundgren to such extent. Well, you know, that wouldn't be a parody because he's wonderful. So let's keep it to me. I don't want to make fun of Todd Rundgren. I love I love his music. So I think it's about like exaggerational interest in mortality and time passing and the melancholic.

• 15:07Sam Fragoso?

  So like, maybe it's a film entirely set at a graveyard.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  Exactly. That could be a parody or. Something where it breaks rather than to create something where people are interpreting it and bringing something. I try always to keep an interpretative space for the audience. But hey, man, let's be honest, there are some naysayers out there who already felt that I'm sure every film I've done is a parody of itself. So this is life, you know, you do your best.

• 15:30Sam Fragoso?

  You know, when we spoke about a decade ago, it was on the heels of your two American films. And I was listening back to the tape and it was before Worst Person. You weren't pleased with the reception to those movies.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was particularly one. It wasn't two. It was Louder Than Bombs.

• 15:46Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, that one. In the tape, I could hear you were hurt by it.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  And the irony now is that the same paper that gave it the worst review, which I thought was The Guardian at the time, not only did the same reviewer give five out of five stars to Worst Person in the World, but also now another journalist in that same paper has done a revival piece on Louder Than Bombs. So it's because it's also a family story, not so thematically removed from sentimental value, even though they're quite different in other ways. I think that time will ultimately judge your work.

• 16:20Sam Fragoso?

  Does reading reviews help you make movies?

• 16:22Speaker 01

  I don't read reviews.

• 16:23Sam Fragoso?

  But you know about, someone's told you about it.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, you get confronted. You meet your, you know, someone in your family and they're like, oh, that was a terrible one. How are you feeling? And then, or you have, I have people around me who say, well, it's going pretty well, relax. And then once in a while I'll read something. But I don't, I already know the parody of myself. I already find it hard to create something and I already have all my doubts. So I, it just, I don't know. I already know I could have done better.

• 16:50Sam Fragoso?

  Coming back to this new one, in a recent interview, you said in making it that you were trying to exorcise something. What do you think that is or was now that you've made the film?

• 17:01Speaker 01

  That's a good question. I think I've grappled a lot in my life with what in the American vernacular is called the work-life balance. I've been very driven. It's another American world, isn't it? I think in my culture, if you're saying you're ambitious in Norway or have a drive, it's a negative connotation because it means that you're Alboing your way forward. So it's a very Protestant culture in Norway. It shouldn't shouldn't work too hard, shouldn't try too hard, you know. So I grew up with a bit of that shame around that. At the same time, I always really, really, really wanted to make movies since I was a kid. I really loved doing it. It was just something that if I had a hard time on some level in my childhood, I think I just did something. I break danced,

• 17:44Speaker 01

  I skated, or I shot something with a camera. So it's always been a coping mechanism since I was very young.

• 17:50Sam Fragoso?

  I mean, for context, you were a great break dancer. When you skated, you were the national champion two times over. You went to school in London, made shorts that were celebrated and played all over the world. So this feels like you're very different from the upbringing or from the culture that you were raised in. Did that make you uncomfortable that your instincts were so different than the people around you?

• 18:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I always found my gang, my band. I always found that group of people who loved what I loved, and that was the blessing of my life. And I still feel that when I'm doing films and when I'm with a bunch of actors trying to sort out a scene, I feel very connected to the world and myself through that work. So that's the blessing part of it. But going back to your question of what have I exercised or what have become good at as an adult, which I'm very happy about, is that I am now able to have a life outside of that also that's maybe more functioning. It's not like I was a complete wreck. And I've had wonderful relationships. I've never had drug abuse or alcoholism. So I'm very,

• 18:52Speaker 01

  I'm lucky like that. But I'm also someone who has really devoted myself 120% to stuff sometimes. And it's made it hard for me to have different levels in my life of things to do or places to be. So, so I think that's something that this film, Sentimental Valley, is about. In a way, the two sisters represent two different versions of a life. And in a way, they're negotiating this. What is a good life?

• 19:16Sam Fragoso?

  How do you see the two versions of the characters?

• 19:18Speaker 01

  I think that Nora, the older sister, has a slight contempt for the younger sister because the younger sister lives a conventional life as a mom and a wife. And she has a job, but it's not super ambitious. She's an academic. That's interesting history. Whereas Nora, the older sister, is someone who is a great success as a stage actor and very, very driven. We've seen in the beginning of the film that she has stage fright on top of it all. But when she gets on stage and goes over the threshold, she's really amazing.

• 19:48Sam Fragoso?

  In terms of work-life balance, the father character, who we talked about earlier, Gustav Borg, has put his films before his family since.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  Forever, yeah.

• 19:58Sam Fragoso?

  And it struck me, watching your movie, how infrequently men make art about work-life balance. And when they do, it's often about how genius, male genius, comes at a cost. And the cost is usually family, wives, women they're dating, et cetera. Why do you think that is?

• 20:20Speaker 01

  Well, in this case, we have both a man and a woman who has the same issues, the oldest daughter and the father. And there are two generations as well, where she talks about psychodynamic perspectives on her life. Maybe that is also avoiding, but the father has no social language to discuss or talk about that difficulty of being that lonely man who somehow hasn't been able to be present in the way that he now has wished. And I don't think he feels like such a genius when we come into the film. He hasn't made a film for 15 years and I think he feels clumsy and kind of low. But his persona is of such a nature that is kind of charisma. And, you know, it's a wonderful Stellan Skarsgård playing this man.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  And that's also why we cast him, because he's so funny and larger than life and wonderful, such a great actor. But the interesting thing is to peel off the layers and get to the vulnerability of it. So your general questions about men and genius, yeah, no, I've seen a lot of those stories too. But I'm hoping that I'm offering something with some complexity.

• 21:23Sam Fragoso?

  I think so, and it's interesting to see the daughter clearly reflected in her father and vice versa. And the interplay of that, do you remember when your mother stopped directing movies?

• 21:33Speaker 01

  Yes, I remember it. And I remember that my mom. Was sad about that. At the same time, I know that she was very happy going on to becoming someone who worked in news for the Norwegian BBC.

• 21:46Sam Fragoso?

  What age was that when that happened?

• 21:48Speaker 01

  It was during the eighties and early nineties, I believe.

• 21:52Sam Fragoso?

  Okay, so you're like a teenager.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:53Sam Fragoso?

  When she left it behind, you said somewhere like, oh, she felt like it was too much time. It was too hard to do both.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  It's very complex why that happened to my mom, where she stopped doing films. I mean, it's also, it's not quite like she stopped something and began something else. Remember, she was also doing great documentary work. She did a wonderful film about women's liberation in Zimbabwe, in Harare, where she spent a lot of time. And so she was already doing kind of documentaries that were political or oriented about subject matters of a social nature. And so to move into news journalism, become a news producer.

• 22:31Sam Fragoso?

  It's a natural pivot.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  I think so. But I also know that she did some fiction work and that she found it hard to be a woman in that world. I think it's the social setting of being a female director. I think it's her leanings towards journalism and an opportunity for work. And it's also about having three kids and, you know, making a living.

• 22:51Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, that's a lot stacked against many women of that era who are making movies.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 22:56Sam Fragoso?

  All right, when we come back, why don't we dive into a little bit of your origin story, which I believe begins in Oslo. That's coming up next with writer-director Joachim Trier.

• 23:19Sam Fragoso?

  There are a lot of podcasts out there and plenty of ways to do an interview, but my preference has always been to do these in person. There's nothing better than sitting across a table and being face to face with someone, which is why I try to meet guests where they are, both metaphorically and geographically. And to do that, I have to do a lot of traveling. So I pack up my gear, get on a plane, and head to Philadelphia to talk to Terry Gross, or New York City for Viola Davis, or Santa Barbara for Gwyneth Paltrow. And so I'm in these cities away from my home and I'm always sitting there thinking, someone should enjoy my place, right? Imagine you're traveling and instead of worrying about your idle apartment or home, at least that's what I do, you can make some extra money by hosting your place on Airbnb.

• 24:03Sam Fragoso?

  And then when you return, you could put that money toward a nice dinner, or some renovations, or even another vacation. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com/host. Growing up in Oslo in the 70s and 80s, in a family that made films, I mean, your mom made work, your grandfather made work, your father, I think, did a lot of work in sound.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 24:38Sam Fragoso?

  Did your fascination with memory and permanence, did it coincide with your love of recording snippets of your family on the Super 8 millimeter camera?

• 24:48Speaker 01

  I think so. Looking back, it must have, to quote Kierkegaard, "You can only understand life backwards, but you have to live it forwards," and along those lines. And I remember, since you asked, that I was a child already at the age of three, four, five, that was very interested in the idea of memory. And I learned to use a tape recorder to record sounds, and I filmed Super 8 at the same time. So it's a little bit, what came first? I know that I was geared towards that, and I see now that I was interested in reporting. I remember, I was a kid who actually, once when my parents were arguing, I recorded them secretly on a tape recorder, because one day, I would use that for something, I thought.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  And the tape was lost, and it was all forgotten, but I can tell you about it still. I mean, I cared about recording and keeping things, and I also, at the time... You know, as a child, my mother was young, so there was a lot of the older people. My great grandparents were around and my grandfather in Denmark passed away and they passed away. And there was all this like, where did they go and all that stuff? And I was brought up in a atheist home. So of course, as a kid, you ask what happens to those who aren't here anymore and all that stuff. And that, at the same time, as you're learning to grab on to things with a still camera, with a super eight camera, early video cameras and tape recorder, suddenly all that comes into play.

• 26:14Sam Fragoso?

  What was on the tape?

• 26:15Speaker 01

  The argument, I can't remember. It was just probably as stupid as if I'm having an argument with my wife now, where you look at each other and you say, why are we arguing about a dishwashing thing?

• 26:27Sam Fragoso?

  Because it's never really about the dishwasher.

• 26:29Speaker 01

  It's always about something else. And that's, that's something that you could use when telling stories in cinema. How do you talk about what they don't talk about while they're talking about it? But what I'm interested in, in this film, Sentimental Value, is transference. All the stuff that we transfer to our kids or our parents and even our grandparents affect us with, without it ever being spoken or articulated. That space of the non-spoken in close relationships interests me a lot. And I think ultimately, that's what the film is about, is that that space of the non-spoken, of the father's world, for example, those places he did not meet or see his daughter,

• 27:10Speaker 01

  has a possibility for some sense of a meeting in the creative work that he does. And I think that therefore, there is a connection between trauma and the sublime.

• 27:24Sam Fragoso?

  Let's say more on that.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  So there is a connection between the inexplicable, unrepresentable trauma, the things that hurt you in that area of your identity or your relationships or your history.

• 27:36Sam Fragoso?

  I mean, in your case, your grandfather, who I mentioned earlier, was in World War II. And he came back, as you said, traumatized and made work as a survival mechanism.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  I think so. I think playing jazz and making movies made him able to live and exist and have a place to be. And I've talked to a lot of people who are creative. And someone who articulates this very well is a friend of mine, Carl Ove Knauskad, who wrote the wonderful My Struggle series of novels, for example, and he says, To write is a place to be. And he doesn't talk about the intention or the result. He talks about the process. And I think that is interesting to me. So that's the trauma and the sublime. It sounds like big words, but my point, I guess, is that there is a relationship between the unspokenness of an emotional pain or difficulty or grief or woundedness.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  But there's also a possibility of saying something that can have a sense of beauty or purpose in another language, which is not spoken either. So there's an area in our life and our identity that we're continually dealing with that has possibilities for many things. We're always thinking that words will solve everything and maybe they don't.

• 28:50Sam Fragoso?

  But do you think writing is also a place to hide?

• 28:53Speaker 01

  As any form of communication, it could be a meeting or it could be an avoidance. Don't you feel like some people you meet, they talk a lot and you feel that they share and other people that talk a lot, you feel that they're avoiding? And it's not about the talking in itself. It's about what is being conveyed and what's what's happening for real. You know, what is really going on? And I think it, of course it is. And I think in this film, in Sentimental Value, you see how this clumsy and difficult father has probably avoided a lot of things because he seems like he has a purpose on set where people value him.

• 29:26Sam Fragoso?

  I heard that in auditions, when you try to cast people, you sometimes ask actors to name one cultural artifact that they love and describe what it means to them. Can you show me something that would be your cultural artifact? Can you describe it?

• 29:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, of course. It's this was a specific task I gave the boys that I tried to cast for a priest. They're a bunch of friends and I needed to see that they could convey enthusiasm.

• 29:53Sam Fragoso?

  You're smiling as I brought this up.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, no, no, it's sweet. I haven't thought about it for a long time. So from my childhood, I think a big break away from great music that I still love, like The Beatles and Stevie Wonder and Brazilian jazz and jazz music, all the stuff from my parents' music. When I heard Planet Rock by Afrika Bambaataa, which was bought in a record store in Copenhagen that I was in during the summer holiday and they had Pull the record stores than we did in Oslo where I spent most of my year. Something happened. The 808 drum machine, the way that it had synth sounds I hadn't heard before. The way that it seemed cut up and messy and hard and yet beautiful and you could move to it. And it had a groove, even though it was kind of cold.

• 30:37Speaker 01

  And then getting into that hip hop of the early eighties, which was really like electronic hip hop, you know? That was something that meant that changed me.

• 30:45Sam Fragoso?

  Your obsession with music comes across, I think, in each of the projects. And I was wondering, music aside, how do you think being a skater affected your filmmaking? For con, as you were national champ two times over, something like that?

• 30:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I was. That was my life. And you broke your arm and it healed and you got up again. So you learned to-

• 31:05Sam Fragoso?

  I remember when we healed quickly.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had a really, really bad ski injury about six, seven years ago and it healed. But it took a year to learn to walk again and everything, but it did after five operation stuff. So my point is just, it's an optimistic story. It's that you can heal. It's okay. Don't worry. You're a very young man. Don't worry about it. So back to skating. How did it affect me?

• 31:26Sam Fragoso?

  It always comes back to healing with you.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  Now it does. I don't think, when we spoke about Oslo, August 31st, that was a real tragic story. That wasn't about healing.

• 31:34Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, you weren't, I don't think you were healed yet.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  Maybe not. Do you feel that in your interviews with people? Is that your talent, Sam? Is that that you feel the vibe of people? I'm a little bit shocked about your observations of me not being super happy, talking about Louder Than Bombs and being hurt by that. That you remember and that you felt that? That's interesting.

• 31:56Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, I felt it because you were pained.

• 31:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:59Sam Fragoso?

  And I remembered it because it was meaningful to you.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  But that's in psychodynamic terms, what they call transference. That's what we're talking about. And that comes into also how a director works with actors.

• 32:12Sam Fragoso?

  Tell me about that.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  I sit next to the camera and I believe that if I look with my own eyes and not through a monitor in the back of the room.

• 32:18Sam Fragoso?

  All the, all the actors in a recent New Yorker profile that came out said, he does not look at the monitor. And he's interested in what you do not say.

• 32:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, no, but I think that's the magic of movies is that the camera sees the behavioral detailing and the emotional state of people in a very intimate way, possibly, if that's what you're interested in. Films could be about other things, but that's what I'm very interested in. So I gotta sit next to the camera and try to get away from my restlessness, which I then do because it's such a big deal to make a movie. So I'm more present than almost any other moment in my life, except for maybe when I'm with my kids. It's so important. It's so dear. And I believe that if you look and sit with them, the camera will feel the same thing. The audience will potentially feel that thing going on. So

• 33:07Speaker 01

  the only way to judge it and to support them and to stimulate the performance going different interesting places, not that they always need that. Great actors like these can figure out a lot without me getting in the way, but at least I'm there to monitor, what have we got? What can I use?

• 33:24Sam Fragoso?

  So the goal is for your gaze to sync up with the gaze of the camera, to get as close to it as possible, what your vision, what you see in that moment, things that make them special.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:36Sam Fragoso?

  To line that up as closely as possible with whatever is captured and refracted through these cameras.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I have all that kind of understanding that things can be manipulated and structured and form is such an important aspect to create emotional, but the raw material of these emotional events that the actors create in themselves because they're good, the discoveries, the unexpectedness, the messiness, that stuff I need to be attentive to because that's the most interesting material. And it's wonderfully liberating. I mean, again, it's a big meal to be a director. You get lots of different things. It's fascinating because yes, I have the anxiety we talked about in the, oh, it's gonna be good. You're writing, you feel that you got nothing. You gotta build it from scratch every time. But actually, shooting

• 34:23Speaker 01

  is really enjoyable because you are present beat by beat, shot by shot, moment by moment.

• 34:30Sam Fragoso?

  That approach also seems to be combating this restlessness in you.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 34:35Sam Fragoso?

  It's a way of focusing. And your wife said recently in regards to you being a skater, she said, being a skater, you're moving around in the city and finding places where you can do your tricks. So it's an incredible way of getting to know a city. That kind of relationship to place has played a major role in how he treats Oslo as a character, as something that almost has a skin.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a beautiful statement by my wife, Hella. I think she's on to something, huh? Because I, as a skater. No, but it's interesting. I mean, she.

• 35:08Sam Fragoso?

  God, this woman, this wife, I should, I guess I should marry her. She seems really smart.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  She's fantastic. I, I think that.

• 35:15Sam Fragoso?

  You seem almost surprised.

• 35:16Speaker 01

  No, no, it's just so, when you read it like that in English, it's, and you know, she says amazing, beautiful things to me every day, so I'm not surprised by that. But you know, like when you're close to someone, and the most romantic thing is when they observe something in you that you haven't really discussed in detail. It's not like I've told her, hey, listen, I was a skater and this is why I'm, you know, like this is something that she's observed. So anyway, to get to her point about the skin, that was an interesting metaphor. I, I find that I got to know a handrail and a staircase and a piece of asphalt and some, a bank up towards the wall so you could try to ride that wall with your skateboard. Like those details, your wheels are small on a skateboard and they're hard. And if the surface doesn't have the right transitions, you can't really use, you know,

• 36:01Speaker 01

  you can see the most beautiful staircase, you want to jump down and do a 360 flip. But there's some weird bricks in front of it that makes it impossible to ollie unless you pop your ollie like, you know, three feet before the staircase and then it gets too long. And all this stuff you notice as a skater immediately. So you know the material. And I think for movies, texture and tactility and all that stuff matters too.

• 36:25Sam Fragoso?

  Speaking of tactility, when you're 19 years old, on a Norwegian quiz show, pulling cables, is this where you meet your co-writer and lifelong best friend?

• 36:35Speaker 01

  Eskil.

• 36:36Sam Fragoso?

  And what happens?

• 36:37Speaker 01

  So what happens is it's called all or nothing or something like that. You might have had it in the US as well. You come there to the game show with a subject. So you know Greek mythology or you know Walt Disney. You know, if I had been the, I would go there and talk about Stanley Kubrick or something.

• 36:53Sam Fragoso?

  The films of Paul Thomas Anderson.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  Oh, I would love that. So we were sitting in a green room with grown men wearing Mickey Mouse ties crying because they got kicked out of the game show on the last question or something, right? And Eskil is behind another. The camera, I'm behind one, it's live TV. And there's suddenly this break before we go on live. And I noticed, yeah, this is the new guy. And he has Doc Martens and black jeans and, you know, long, beautiful curly hair and he looked kind of cool. He looked more grungy. I was a skater. And then we start talking. It turns out we're both film geeks. We love movies. We even, you know, oh, wow, you saw that Takashi Kitano Japanese gangster movie Sonatine at the festival last year? But there were only four of us in the room. Jesus, really? That was you?

• 37:38Speaker 01

  You know, so we became friends like that.

• 37:40Sam Fragoso?

  And when do you figure out that the two of you are meant to write together?

• 37:44Speaker 01

  That's panic. That's me doing a short film. I'd worked all summer to make enough money to buy some roles of sixteen. Back in the day, if you did a film then, this was like the mid nineties. You, you had to like shoot on sixteen, you know, as a real film. And I got some friends to get, I borrowed a camera. I got a DP that had done some films and been an assistant and so forth. But, but I needed like some structure to the whole thing. And I remember Esco and I sitting down and he helped me create kind of a mixture between a storyboard and a screenplay. And then when I went to National Film School a few years later and I couldn't connect with any of the people writing there, I went home for Christmas and I said, I have two weeks. You want to help me make a short film script? And I'll try to get the school to have that script being made as my next film. And we did that.

• 38:27Sam Fragoso?

  So as we talk about the six films the two of you have made, what do you think he brings to the equation? And what do you think you bring to the equation? Because you both must have something that the others not totally doing themselves.

• 38:40Speaker 01

  Many things. Esco is extremely, he's, how do you say, like in a computer you have RAM power? Like the capacity to hold a lot of things at once.

• 38:48Sam Fragoso?

  Encyclopedia, maybe?

• 38:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it's not even about wisdom and knowledge. He has that too. He's very encyclopedic. But he can hold live information there and then to a tremendous extent in his brain.

• 39:00Sam Fragoso?

  The story of it all.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  The ideas of the detailing and the word and that line of dialogue and that structural implication. If we change this and that. And he has a real ability for that. And he's also funny and creative and, and we open up to each other. I think the clue is at the beginning, it was clear that he was a better. Writer than me, and I'm somehow dyslexic. I do wrong spelling, but I can kind of write something if I got a spell check a lot and I have low self-esteem and, you know, I'm a restless guy. And Eskel is like, okay, he could do an academic dissertation. That's perfect. You know, like, he's really a good writer. But beyond that, I think we really connect over our fascination for movies and that we trust each other.

• 39:39Sam Fragoso?

  All right, we're gonna take one more break. And when we come back, we'll talk about everything that that trust produced between the two of you, which I believe are these six films. We'll be right back with Yo Kame Trier.

• 40:04Sam Fragoso?

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• 41:33Sam Fragoso?

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• 41:48Sam Fragoso?

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• 42:32Sam Fragoso?

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• 43:05Sam Fragoso?

  With these movies, when you and Eskil write, you said that you approach the film in total like it's an album, and the scenes are individual songs. So when it comes to Oslo, August 31st, how would you describe the album?

• 43:19Speaker 01

  That's an album that's pretty focused on one sonic universe. It's a singular story of one man, and the idea of the album is more about set pieces.

• 43:30Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 43:30Speaker 01

  That I think if you're interested in plot, you use a lot of scenes to transport the plot. But if you're interested in more like character or moments, movements, as we are, then very often you try to push the story forward through having people engage with the individual scenes. So for example, in Oslo, August 31st, this- There's like the event of someone trying to drown themselves and he doesn't know how to. And then there's a contrast event of him being in group therapy and pretending everything is great. And then there's like a long conversation with a friend where he opens up, but we know more than he's saying. So we see that there's a conflict inside of him. And then he goes to a cafe and we know now that he might, he's considering killing himself.

• 44:12Speaker 01

  And he's listening to normal people talking in a cafe in an environment when they're talking about their everyday. And he's completely disconnected from it. He's almost longing for the boredom of the trivial normalcy that he's incapable of living in. So all of those pieces are bits. You think when you make the film ideally that people want to be interested in that bit, that scene, that moment. Rather than, for example, thinking that we need to play a series of dialogue scenes where there's like an entry, a turning point. And then an exit and then there's a new one. I do some of that too. We love dialogues and stuff, but there's more about trying to find these moments that like worst person in the world. Suddenly they run around and the time is frozen like, or they're saying louder than bombs.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  There's all these essays. A young boy of 16 is in love with a girl in his class and she reads aloud from a book. And suddenly her voice turns into a voiceover, a sequence of imagining how his mother really died. So that's almost a set piece like in an action movie.

• 45:11Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah. And both of those, the cafe sequence in Ozil, August 31st, and the essayistic imagining how the young boy lost his mother. There's an interplay that you're, that you're working with in a really fascinating way. But in both cases, it's two characters who do not have their own language. They actually need the language of other people to help them understand their own lives.

• 45:35Speaker 01

  Yes, but isn't that how it is? We need each other. We need the other. We need to listen. We can't do it alone. And speaking about dyslexia, one thing I know is that I love working with other people. And that's been the blessing of my life and my career is that I've been allowed to work with really, really great people that where I I lose that sense of separation from what we're doing because we're doing it together.

• 46:01Sam Fragoso?

  The emphasis you have on connection, that seems to be the thing that is on your mind the most, at least in this conversation today and in this new movie. Because when you're making Oslo, I think the thing that people keep asking you about is like in Oslo, Out of the Bombs, this one, there's a lot of conversation about suicidal ideation that comes up again and again. I have to say, having spoken to you now for, I think it's been 12 years of my life or something like that, you do not strike me as someone that that would come into play for.

• 46:34Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 46:35Sam Fragoso?

  And I know you lost a lot of friends in that punk rock scene, the heroin and all that, we've talked about that, but that is something you keep coming back to, it seems.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do.

• 46:44Sam Fragoso?

  Is there something you're trying to figure out or something you're trying to hold in these movies with that?

• 46:49Speaker 01

  I think there are different things for different films. Yes, I have that experience of having seen that happen. I think that it's also an existential thing, but it's not only that. I think it's it's a negotiation in one case about mortality. I think it could also be an existential questioning of the ultimate act of choosing yourself away from what you're offered. It could be the ultimate feeling of disconnectedness. And like in Oslo, August 31st, for example, I also think it's a story of of deep shame. And someone like Anders's character in that film, he's dealing with kind of a double shame.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  Not only is he not functioning and doesn't know how to figure his life out, but also in the context of the Norwegian cultural middle class, where you're being offered so many great solutions and everyone wants you well and you're privileged, yet you have this kind of spiritual sense that you don't know where to place yourself. And I think. In sentimental value, it's a very specific sense of post-war grief that has that implication on the family story without revealing too much to those who haven't seen it, but it's dealing with the ultimate act of separation and loneliness in a story about

• 48:10Speaker 01

  that exact theme, that we learn about how historical grief travels through generations. And I know in Norway, for example, how many, many families are terribly affected still by the Second World War. And when you were brought up, like in my generation, and you're the third generation after the war, you think, oh, that happened so long ago. And then you realize that your parents grew up in a time when everyone went a bit stiff upper lip, and let's move forward, and let's embrace the material values of the 50s and early 60s of building a new society, and let's not talk about the past and all that stuff, which is very complicated. So, so I think ultimately, like, this is a part of, of, of stories in

• 48:53Speaker 01

  different ways. Yeah, but there is a reoccurring theme. You're right.

• 48:56Sam Fragoso?

  The way you're describing it is probably the reason I fell in love with your work when I was a teenager. Your hyper-focus on time passing and that it is running out. You're talking about characters with suicidal ideation, but it's as much about that as it is, I think, about you at five years old on that bike, remembering, I want to remember this.

• 49:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, and clinging to life.

• 49:23Sam Fragoso?

  When you hold that memory, what does it look like?

• 49:26Speaker 01

  It's hyper-present. It's hyper-aware of the here and now-ness of it. The almost sensuous experience of being there and then, that I think we all possibly had as children, as you're discovering the self away from the others. There's a mixture of separation anxiety, but there's also a great joy. Of identity and autonomy that starts arriving, which is at the core of our sense of self. But that idea of separation also plays into the idea of separation from your parents.

• 50:02Sam Fragoso?

  Out of you.

• 50:03Speaker 01

  And the disappearance of them.

• 50:05Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 50:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, but also the sense of being and not being, which is, I mean, all art through the times has been about, you know, Eros and Tanatos is about the sense of mortality or the sense of the erotic or the joy of togetherness.

• 50:22Sam Fragoso?

  In this new film, there's a monologue that comes up a couple of times. And the first time is performed by Elle Fanning. And the second time, it's sort of experienced, I think, by.

• 50:35Speaker 01

  Red Hot Chili Peppers.

• 50:36Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, exactly. And I was thinking, I would like for us to hold it here, if you're open to it.

• 50:43Speaker 01

  You mean to read the text?

• 50:44Sam Fragoso?

  Uh huh.

• 50:46Speaker 01

  This is the monologue. You know, I don't believe in God at all. We came from a home where all that was irrelevant. We weren't baptized. My sister and I had a civil confirmation, just for the money. Then I had this kind of crisis. I was alone in the house again, lying in bed, crying. I know everyone lies in bed crying at some point, but someone said praying isn't really talking to God. It's acknowledging despair, to throw yourself on the ground because that's all you can do. Nothing like heartbreak, thinking, call me, please forgive me, please take me back. There I was, I'd ruined everything. I was alone and crying. And then, for the first time, I sat down on the floor and prayed. I don't know who I said it to, but I said it out loud.

• 51:31Speaker 01

  Help me, I can't do this. I can't do it alone. I want a home, I want a home. It means different things to different people, I think, in the film. I think this monologue is about the transcendence of the subject into understanding that you need the others.

• 51:50Sam Fragoso?

  In the movie, it's an important piece. And how it plays is very special. But I think for the sake of our conversation, how does it play to you?

• 51:59Speaker 01

  I think for me, it's one of the climactic aspects of the film when we understand that the father is trying to see his daughter in an honest light. Which can not only be about seeing her as another, but he sees himself in her, which is his way of creation, is his way of being a director. So he offers her this part. And I think this is written from an honest place in Gustave, where he also realizes something deep about his daughter.

• 52:29Sam Fragoso?

  It's funny, because we're having a meta-conversation about a filmmaker in a film that you directed, but is not like you at all, but that you put a lot of yourself into, but isn't you, but has parts of you. And it's what makes the interplay so interesting.

• 52:45Speaker 01

  Thank you. My shy, forgive me, maybe neurotic nervousness about talking so detailed about it. It's just that I ultimately want people to forget me and see the film. And I want them to feel that we have put these things into play in a movie where they can bring themselves into it.

• 53:03Sam Fragoso?

  I agree.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  But I think that you're on to something about connectedness and disconnectedness. And this monologue is about that. I remember doing a lot of research for Oslo, August 31st, about what you in AA and NA call bottoming out. When people really reach that point of understanding that you cannot do it alone, when you connect to the need of the other. And whether you take that into a existential philosophical sense, being for the other, sartre, you know? Or whether it's just a simple thing that we've all felt at times of despair, that we are primed to be in groups or in connection. And the big, big, big complication is shame.

• 53:47Speaker 01

  And it's not getting diminished by social media. It's about isolation and loneliness. It's a huge theme. I know very few people who don't have that as a theme at some point in their life.

• 53:57Sam Fragoso?

  It seems to be the dominant theme in our day to day at this point.

• 54:01Speaker 01

  And what are those mechanisms and modes of language and modes of communication? And how do they feed back to us about our connection to the other? That's a big subject at the moment, I feel.

• 54:13Sam Fragoso?

  So to bring it back to this film, you know, when you shot Oslo, August 31st, I remember you telling me that Anders.

• 54:20Speaker 01

  Anders Donilson Lee.

• 54:21Sam Fragoso?

  Who's in this new film as well.

• 54:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:23Sam Fragoso?

  Was so distraught during the shoot that it was terrible for him. It was terrible for his girlfriend at the time. It was terrible for everyone in his life. And it took him months to recover afterward. I'm thinking now about this new movie. What was Renata's experience in making sentimental value when you get to the end of it? Can you play that day for us?

• 54:44Speaker 01

  I think you should ask her about taking on this role. But my observations were that, first of all, it's written for her. And we know each other very well. And there's both that personal idea that she would understand Nora without being Nora. She can do despair and drama, but she also has this levity. And in the character of Nora, that dynamic became very interesting. But I remember on the last day of shoot, I always, when actors leave set for the last day, I do a speech in front of everyone and thank them and say something about what it meant to me to work with them. Because I'm genuinely grateful. It's a wonderful thing to send them off with an applause from the team and some joy, you know?

• 55:24Speaker 01

  And the final day, I had both Inga Ibsdottelillos, who plays the younger sister. I had Stellan Skarsgård, who plays the dad, and the older sister, Renata Rensve, to thank off one after the other. And I remember to Renata, I said, thank you for being Nora or for caring Nora. And I said, how do I translate that? That you could handle being her, that you took that upon you as a task? Because she's really heavy to carry.

• 55:53Sam Fragoso?

  Grapple with.

• 55:54Speaker 01

  Grapple. Thank you for grappling with Nora or something would be the best translation I can come up with. So.

• 55:59Sam Fragoso?

  It sounds so much better in your language.

• 56:02Speaker 01

  No, but the point was just that she, she said, yeah, I'm so happy that I can let her go now. And I think we both teared up a bit there. It was very, very emotional. And but it was a valuable and wonderful thing to do that together, I think, for both of us. I'm curious what she tells you.

• 56:17Sam Fragoso?

  We're going to talk about it on Wednesday's episode. Before we go, I have two or three more things for us to bring it back to your wife. She said in The New Yorker that you were, quote, endlessly fascinated by other people's psychology. Quote, penetrating the top layer of big emotions and trying to understand why people are the way they are. That is a constant conversation at our home and with our friends. Why do you think that is?

• 56:44Speaker 01

  Aren't we all to some extent? I mean, it is intriguing. It is deeply interesting to ask all the fundamental. What's the meaning of it all? Why are we like this? And why are we? Why is psychology teaching us that life feels more like a Greek myth? That you have the gods against you and I don't believe in God. And hey, you know what? Maybe it's me. Maybe it's me destroying my own life or something. You know, all those discoveries we do as we grow up of those things. And how does that play into individual experiences? I'm always interested in the specific. I think everyone who's creating something is interested in the specific.

• 57:18Sam Fragoso?

  Well, and speaking of, you've said sentimental value is you going acoustic instead of electric.

• 57:23Speaker 01

  Did I say that? Jesus. You're so well researched. You're throwing up all these weird things I've said. Yeah.

• 57:31Speaker 01

  I think I know where that comes from. I think it comes from the idea that I wanted there to be less of a filter and more of a presence of intimacy between the camera and the actors. And the formal structure of the film therefore contrasts that a bit by making it quite elliptical and fragmented in the first half. So that the form puts a little bit of lime in the sauce, you know? So it doesn't all become this identification and intimacy all the time. It actually jumps out into objective mode sometimes. And we see pieces of the films of Gustav. We see an essay about the house. Like, we try to create a bigger thematic scope to the story around the characters so that we can go really, really close to them when we want to. So there's a dynamic to it, a contrast.

• 58:16Sam Fragoso?

  But the thing that the film keeps getting at, and the thing I think that we keep circling in this conversation, is the work-life balance conversation of it all. Where are you at on that?

• 58:26Speaker 01

  I'm really enjoying doing other things than making movies as well. And that's great. And I am prioritizing that very highly, both during the shoot, but also now that I am doing these. I came in there on airplane late last night and I'm leaving in not so many days. I'm doing these little trips so I can stay at home a lot. And I think that's a great joy. And also, at the moment, I'm interested in stories from life. So it's not as if I'm hindered in any way creatively by being in my own life.

• 58:57Sam Fragoso?

  Have you seen the new documentary about Martin Scorsese?

• 59:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just finished it a couple of days ago.

• 59:03Sam Fragoso?

  There's a moment in it that really stuck with me. And I feel like there's something in it that's in sentimental value as well, in a big way. But Scorsese, you know, he has a few kids. And one of the daughters that he had early, very clearly, as said in the documentary, has a very different relationship with her father than the youngest Francesca does. And she says something like, you know, my dad wasn't around a lot. And she said, "The only time I felt really seen by him," and this ties into sentimental value, "is when he asked me to be in his film." I think it was The Age of Innocence. And she goes on to explain that like, for the few days that she was on the set,

• 59:44Sam Fragoso?

  with the focused attention of a director trying to get something out of a performer, she felt seen, cared for, and she reveled in that glow of her father slash director. And I get the sense that as a third generation filmmaker, who now has two daughters of his own, that that has been on your mind.

• 1:00:06Speaker 01

  Absolutely. It's taken me a long time to create a family and for many reasons, but, but obviously also to want to be present in myself in a way where I was able to be present as a father. And that's, you know, it's, it's hard to sit and talk in public like this because this is also public about trying to be a good father. But I'm very attentive to what you're bringing up in my life. And I think that there are some Occupational hazards to being a director, which are about your unconscious manipulations of your surroundings and your self-imposed importance through the fact that everyone needs you at work.

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  And how you portion and structure that becomes very important to be something outside of that job.

• 1:00:56Sam Fragoso?

  Uh.

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  And that's been an important thing in my life to try to work on and achieve. So I think you're right to be very personal here at the end. I, this film is personal for that reason, not because I'm telling a biographical story.

• 1:01:09Sam Fragoso?

  Right.

• 1:01:09Speaker 01

  But I'm thematically, as you're pointing at, I think you're making a good point. I'm thematically showing different variations on a theme of trying to find a place for the art and a place for the life outside of it in a family.

• 1:01:23Sam Fragoso?

  The home.

• 1:01:24Speaker 01

  The home, yeah.

• 1:01:25Sam Fragoso?

  What did you take from that documentary?

• 1:01:26Speaker 01

  So much. It gave shape and language to an admiration I've felt since I was very young for Martin Scorsese's work. I told him this when I met him once, and I was fortunate enough to meet him. And I said that you are the bridge to film history for all of us in a way. Because he's of his knowledge, his preservation of cinema, literally washing out for old movies so they don't disappear, but also conveying them through, in subtle ways, through his own cinema. But to me, watching that documentary, I felt that I saw someone who opened up and was vulnerable and honest in a very particular way about what it takes to have that creative life that he's had.

• 1:02:10Speaker 01

  And I think it was a generous documentary. I felt I had learned something. I had an insight.

• 1:02:16Sam Fragoso?

  My last question, on the subject of Martin Scorsese, to bring us back to the beginning of this episode. You and Esko, in that room, one of the films you do return to, I've heard, is Goodfellas.

• 1:02:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:28Sam Fragoso?

  And the two of you batted around and talked about the influence of that film and the impact it's had on both of you, but also it feels, I think, sort of aspirational.

• 1:02:38Sam Fragoso?

  Like, how do we make something that's even one tenth as good as that?

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:43Sam Fragoso?

  And so as we leave, I'm curious, what is it about movies now, at this age, Father of Two, that brings you back to that room at nine oh three in the morning?

• 1:02:54Speaker 01

  I think one thing I'm glad is that I was allowed to make films that felt honest to me at the time I made them. I never made films for anyone else than who I imagined to be a friend out there in the cinema darkness, someone that I spoke honestly with through a form that I grew up admiring. And that's it. Like, honesty sounds maybe cheesy, but to me, honesty just means that you have a musical, a thematic, a human connection to the movements of the camera, the gaze, what you look at, who you look at, how you look at, you know? There's something about that. And I think to end with a bit of praise for Martin Scorsese is the reason some of his films, like, for example, Goodfellas

• 1:03:38Speaker 01

  has been so important, I think, not only to me, but to my whole generation and future generation of filmmakers, is the freedom of it, the feeling that as a band, he's doing almost sonically, the vibe of it, the movements of it, the whole Coke sequence, you know, towards the end before Henry Hill gets arrested, that whole section, all the music that comes into it, all the movements, all the shots, all the, and Stir the Sauce, Stir the Pasta Sauce. When I saw One Battle After Another and a whole chase sequence of Leonardo DiCaprio, when he goes into the sensei and they chase around and it ends with a taser, I just leaned over to Escol, he was sitting next to me, and I adore that film. And I just said to him, Stir the Sauce. And he looked at me and he nodded and said,

• 1:04:21Speaker 01

  that's the sequence. God damn it. You know, like, I can see how Paul is doing that inspiration as well, that of being the film, like, you feel it's almost physical, the gaze, the movement, the whole vibe of it is like someone holding your guitar. You feel that they're not doing it for the grownups, they're not doing it right, they're doing it their way, their style. And that's what I love about movies. And I feel in my own strange Norwegian way, I've been allowed to do things in my style. And I look up to people like Paul Thomas Anderson, Martin Scorsese, that even in the, in a context of even more commercial pressure, manages to bring the form to that personal place.

• 1:04:58Sam Fragoso?

  It's like someone standing next to the camera.

• 1:05:01Speaker 01

  You feel these guys, they are the camera. We're looking at what they want us to look at.

• 1:05:05Sam Fragoso?

  That sounds like somebody I know. Last time we spoke, it was, I guess, eight years ago, we did this.

• 1:05:09Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:05:10Sam Fragoso?

  And may you continue stirring the pot because this film is really, really special.

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you.

• 1:05:16Sam Fragoso?

  Joachim Trier. Thank you very much.

• 1:05:19Speaker 01

  Thank you, Sam.

• 1:05:21Sam Fragoso?

  Wow. Is that okay?

• 1:05:23Speaker 01

  Thank you for a good talk, my friends.

• 1:05:50Sam Fragoso?

  And that's our show. I want to give a special thanks this week to Brooke Bloomberg and the team at Sunshine Sacks. I also want to thank Neon, Hyperobject, Adam McKay, and of course, our guest, Joakim Trier. You can watch Sentimental Value in select theaters and at home on VOD. More episodes with other great filmmakers, I recommend Ryan Coogler, Steven Soderbergh, and Errol Morris. You can follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok at Talk Easy Pod. If you want to purchase one of our mugs, they come in cream or navy. You can do so at talkeasypod.com/shop. Talk Easy is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is Janix Bravo.

• 1:06:31Sam Fragoso?

  Today's talk was edited by Finn Nalan, Bennett Manoukhi, and Corey Attad. It was mixed by Andrew Vastola. It was engineered by Nick Hines out of Hyperobject Industries in Los Angeles, California. Video by Red and Green Gaskell and Alex Leo Garcia. Music by Dylan Peck. Illustrations by Chris Shanoi. Photographs today are by Ethan Newmeyer with research assistance from Callie Serengus. Production assistance from Neil Mulaney. This episode was made in partnership with Lemonada Media and Higher Ground. And I'm Sam Fragoso. Thank you for listening to Talk Easy. I'll see you back here next Sunday with the governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro. Until then, stay safe and so long.

• 1:07:20Speaker 02

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• 1:08:41Speaker 03

  I'm Dan Heath. On What It's Like to Be, I interview people about their jobs. Here's a married couple that drives a long haul truck together.

• 1:08:49Speaker 04

  We backed up and they loaded fresh dead rats.

• 1:08:52Speaker 03

  I mean, how many rats would you guess were back there?

• 1:08:55Speaker 04

  There were 32,000 pounds of them.

• 1:08:57Speaker 03

  32,000 pounds of frozen dead rats.

• 1:09:01Speaker 04

  That's it.

• 1:09:03Speaker 03

  Find out what it's like to be a long haul trucker, a couples therapist, or an FBI agent, all on the podcast What It's Like to Be.