A couple weeks ago, while discussing method acting and Marlon Brando with The New York Times, Kristen Stewart said that performance is “inherently vulnerable and therefore quite embarrassing and unmasculine.” Some critics and audience members can be similarly put off by movies that are centered around vulnerable performances. It is easier to deride something as sappy or manipulative than to reckon with what it may want you to feel.
Sentimental Value is just such a performance-centered movie. It concerns itself with the things that go unsaid. Too often, we shy away from having tough conversations or processing our own feelings out of fear. And even if we do work up the courage to confront others or ourselves, we may find that we don’t have the tools to do so in a way that is helpful. We react in anger when we can’t take it anymore, and we only end up causing more harm.
At the center of Sentimental Value is a family. Film director Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård) attempts to rekindle his relationship with his two estranged daughters Nora (Renate Reinsve) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) after the passing of their mother and his ex-wife. Gustav offers Nora, a stage actress, the lead role in his first film after over a decade. When Nora declines, Gustav instead casts an American star, Rachel (Elle Fanning) in the role. The personal nature of the film’s script causes the family to reckon with their history and the emotional wounds they haven’t dealt with.
What is so compelling about Gustav is that he is actually quite expressive and in touch with his feelings, but only through his art. He has created great films over his career, but at the expense of being there for his children physically or emotionally. He is incapable of being there for his children in the ways that would make a difference for them – for example, he has only been to one of Nora’s plays and he left during intermission. He essentially feels no guilt for the ways he has treated his daughters, as he sees great art as requiring sacrifice. When he does desire to express something to his daughters, he uses the only medium he knows: making a film. But that isn’t what his daughters need.
Meanwhile, both Nora and Agnes also struggle to express themselves to their father or others in positive ways. Part of this is rooted in their family history: a stove in the house allowed them to listen to their parents’ arguments in the other room, a practice that Nora frequently participated in. Absorbing all of that negative expression has made it difficult for Nora to confront her father or herself. But this has led to a life where she feels adrift and unable to cope with her trauma. She has stuffed it down, but it keeps seeping through.
The house’s stove isn’t its only notable characteristic. It also has a little gap in the back fence that the girls frequently use, and a fundamental flaw in the form of a crack that keeps growing over time. These features serve as metaphors but the house is also a literal space that the family shares and uses. The house has been passed down through Gustav’s family for generations, making it a key character in the family’s trauma. And it is this house that Gustav plans to use as a shooting location for his film.
Rachel visits the house and speaks with Gustav regularly, trying to get a sense for what he intends to accomplish with her character. But she struggles to get into the character’s headspace. She is someone who has used acting as an exercise to feel difficult emotions, and shows herself to be very perceptive about Gustav and the project in general. So she serves as a bit of a positive representation of how to engage the world with a healthy relationship towards your feelings.
Dramas with big sweeping emotions are out of fashion. Sincerity isn’t cool. So Sentimental Value’s title has a double meaning – it is a film that is exploring the value of sentiment. It has enough self-awareness to wink at the audience at times – a monologue in Gustav’s script that becomes key to the plot is criticized as “a little overwritten”. But there is indeed value to be found in interpersonal dramas like Sentimental Value that reveal something about ourselves and the world around us. Resisting deep and painful emotions is natural. But the hard work of processing what we are feeling and communicating it with others is worth it – even if it’s embarrassing, vulnerable, and unmasculine. I think Kristen Stewart will like Sentimental Value.
