Joachim Trier’s 2025 feature film Sentimental Value came out this week to great critical acclaim. Much like his previous film The Worst Person in the World, I found myself incredibly moved by Trier, and star Renate Reinsve’s, deft, incisive, and layered delivery.
For every person who sees Sentimental Value there will be an equal number of takeaways. For some it will be about the bonds of family, the power of art, or the importance of place and space. Or I wish I could live in that house.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about words. How they fail us. How they can dissolve and/or deteriorate relationships. How their absence means just as much as their presence sometimes. And ultimately how they can define relationships.
A particular scene in Sentimental Value elucidated this so clearly, when Nora (Reinsve) and Rachel (Elle Fanning) discuss the script their father Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård ) has written.
Rachel: Why didn’t you want to do the role?
Nora: I can’t work with him.
Rachel: Why?
Nora: We can’t really talk.
For whatever reason, the chasm that had grown between father and daughter could not be breached by a sit-down conversation. Only through a script.
Because words are everything. They heal. They can communicate truth in a way that no hug can. The climax, and deeply moving scene where sisters Nora and Agnes read Gustav’s script and discover that it was more or less written for, and about, Nora, crushes the pair. “How could he have known?” Agnes asks. “It’s like he was there.” Words can do that.
So here we are, stuck in-between the dueling, but true, realities that words can mean nothing. or everything.
Gleam & Resonate 