Sentimental Value: The profound sadness™

I have no aversion to slow European cinema. Sometimes, it has a point, or the slowness is part of the point it is making — like here, in Trier’s Sentimental Value. Indeed, I do see the value in each scene, each tableau, each back-and-forth.

I learned a lot about Norway, generational trauma, and the profound sadness™. I learned about how another world lives. I felt for them, I lived within them for a few hours — a gorgeous parasocial side effect of “talking films”.

However, the way people were talking about this film, I thought I was going to get hit by a truck. So when I got a kiss on the forehead, yes, I was confused.

This film is just like every other good Nordic film before it - well written, impeccably and subtly acted, a little heartbreaking, and a heaping dose of the profound sadness™. Suppression of emotions, no huge spikes in drama or huge crazy circumstances, just, you know, the profound sadness™. 

I think this is where I start to get tin hat and say that when traditionally European-looking people make these films, they are far better received as “profound” than any other nation or group of people when they attempt it. It sort of makes sense to the average outside viewer that the Nordic people have the profound sadness™, you know, the one at the heart of us all, and that stories about their profound sadness™ kind of match the way they talk, and then it feels very profound to watch them experience that sadness.

This profound sadness™ angle has lost its spark for me, because I see fewer and fewer groups of people able to get away with it without being called “self-indulgent” or “talking movies” or “inaccessible” — yet, the Nordics get away with it scot-free.

For now, I guess. Gorgeous film — just like every other.