Joachim Trier's Louder than Bombs is a beautifully written gem of a film

Louder than Bombs (2015) - Trier

I can't stress enough that watching Joachim Trier's films is like reading really good books. That he might be the most literary (not in a superficial sense) film director working today. With each new films, Trier and his writing partner Eskil Vogt, show what mature, gifted writers they are. Their English language debut, Louder than Bombs, is a finely tuned chamber piece about grief and family dynamics. It is a great American film that brings out nuanced, beautifully drawn, rich characters just under two hours running time and would give Jonathan Franzen a run for his money. The title comes from the Smiths' album which was the US only released compilation, taken from Elizabeth Smart's prose poem By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. It's an apt title to illustrate the state of internal grief felt by the characters. The film's so beautifully written and acted, I can't find one false note.

The Reed family is grieving the death of the family matriarch, a strong willed war photographer, Isabelle (Isabelle Huppert). Her husband Gene (Gabriel Byrne) is a gentle high school teacher who had been always supportive of Isabelle and took care of their two sons while she's away in the war zones. Josh the elder son (Jesse Eisenberg), who just became a father himself, has his mother's traits - smart, driven, but has an air of a boy who grew up too fast. Then there is Conrad the younger son (Devin Druid), an unresponsive, always plugged in high schooler. Even though she's gone for two years, Isabelle is always present through numerous flashbacks, dreams and even has her own narrations. Things get a little complicated when Isabelle's colleague and former lover Richard (David Strathairn) is about to publish his article on her in New York Times and mention her suicide, a fact Gene never told Conrad about. As Josh comes home to take charge of Isabelle's photos in her untouched studio, it slowly becomes clear that the visit is an excuse for him to get away from his nagging wife and the new born. The three men have to deal with their grief in their own way.

As Trier and vogt explored before in Reprise, Bombs deals with the consequences of being a talented, driven person. Many fail to balance work and relationship. For Isabelle, her work was like an addiction, no matter how much she kidded herself with the notion of family life. Not that she was an uncaring mother, but she was unhappy, feeling that she wasn't needed every time she came home and at the same time felt guilty for being selfish. Gene, who gave up his acting career to take care of their sons, never found his place in the world and doesn't really know how to connect with his growing/grownup sons who worshiped their mom and in turn resented him. Although Josh would never admit to anyone, he regrets having to grow up too fast and made rash decisions undoubtedly because of his mom's death. Conrad daydreams and makes up scenarios how his mom really died and lives in his head most of the time.

Acting is superb throughout: Byrne exudes warmth and patience in an anti-patriarchal character that is rarely seen in American films. Added to his arrogant, intelligent kid he always plays, Eisenberg brings vulnerability in a basically a not showy supporting role. But it's Druid who is truly phenomenal as a weird kid who is much more mature than he seems. And of course, Huppert, again, makes her presence felt, even with limited screen time, playing enigmatic, complicated woman.

Despite its heavy subject matter Bombs contains many humorous moments involving Conrad's crush on one of the school's popular girls while Josh matter of factly discouraging him that it would never work out ('been there done that' defeatist nerd talk) and Gene trying to connect with Conrad through a role playing video game with resulting in hilarity. And just like in his two previous films, Trier uses fast moving montage sequences that signify meaningful moments in characters' lives (over Conrad's confessional essay) that are truly beautiful and touching. Dense yet lively, touching but not corny, mature and intelligent without being showy, Louder than Bombs is a rare gift of a movie. So good!

Joachim Trier Talks about Louder Than Bombs and His Dream Cast

With only three feature films under his belt, Norwegian helmer Joachim Trier is quickly establishing himself as a world class filmmaker with his thoughtful, wise and emotionally resonating films. With his English language debut, Louder than Bombs, about a family dealing with the death of a matriach, releasing state side this weekend, I had a chance to catch up with him. Fiercely intelligent and extremely generous, Trier talked great length about working with his amazing ensemble cast.

This is your first English language film. What were some of the challenges you faced?

I went to film school in London (National Film and TV School) and because we grew up in Norway watching American movies with subtitles and with American voices, rather than overdubbed dialog in country like Germany, we had a real advantage to listen to the language and learn it that way. I spent in 7 years in England and I have a lot of friends in America, spent a lot of time in New York, so as Eskil (Eskil Vogt, co-writer).

But I would say it was different because Eskil and I were little more insecure. We were worried that we weren’t getting the right wording or phrasing. So we stayed open with people, like consultants and actors - we asked them to help us to correct things and they helped us change little things. At the end of the day, most of the people found that the dialog was good. The thing is dialog is more dynamic than it is just about words, and because I’m not precious about dialog, If the actors wanted to change words here and there, like they do even Norway, it's was fine with me.

But what was more challenging almost was the idea of getting the attitudes and culture right since we fitted this story into present day America. We ended up doing a High School life movie. I know that life from John Hughes movies. But we went High Schools for real and did some anthropological research so we get authenticity. I really hope we nailed it. We really spent time on it.

I think it was great.

The thing is, whenever I watch your film, I feel like I’m reading a really good book. And I mean it as a compliment. I’m definitely not saying that your films aren’t cinematic, but it’s so well written and characters so beautifully drawn. I know that you don’t want your films to be pigeonholed but I’d say you make the most literary films even more so than Woody Allen does.

For me, the word literary has two sides to it. I am a film fan. And because the film history is so young, one could strive to think ‘what is purely cinematic?’ ‘what’s so unique about this art form?’ These are the essence of how we start out the process. It sounds maybe weird but Eskil and I often say, 'it would be more filmic, if…' and then we try to find a way to do something that has to do with form, or visuality or what we call gestalt - you know, something is shown not told.

But the interesting thing about the inspiration in literature is not the story for us, it’s the freedom of the novel as a form. So the novel as a literary form as I’m sure you are aware, is not that old either. If you look back to the French naturalists in the 1860s, the idea that there have been so many stages since then, of the novel being interpreted- the poetic, the formalist, the naturalist… there are so many. So the idea of form at the essence of storytelling is what I’m often intrigued by. For example there are a lot of those chapters that is more like a diary and you see a scene from two perspectives. To me that is filmic, but it’s going off of just straight storytelling, like the best novels often do. It’s the potential of storytelling in novels I am interested in.

Another example is the visual potential in films of Terrence Malick or…Barry Lindon or in Good Fellas for instance, where a lot of narration is done, so you get a lot of the plot out of the way so images can be more filmic. you know what I mean? You can actually say that often times plot enslaves the image to tell a plot, which is not necessarily always so filmic. That’s actually something that literature also struggles with. The idea of plot is that it has to function.

My films are not plot driven. They are character, emotionally, thematically driven. So I’m having the same challenge as a lot of people in literature to find ways to let more tactile and philosophical moments mean something and emotionally engaging. This is quite complex and I don’t know If my answers are even clear. I hope it makes sense.

It does make sense.

It’s something that I ponder upon. But when you say literary cinema, I choose to take it as compliment because the same was said about filmmakers like Alain Renais or Truffaut, the people that I have been inspired by.

The film has an amazing cast. I know that we don’t have too much time but can you tell me a little about working with these actors? You have Isabelle Huppert, one of the greatest actress of our time, Gabriel Byrne whom I always thought a great actor who never gets a good role, then of course, Jesse Eisenberg and young newcomer Devin Druid…

Oh please! I’d love to talk about each of them if the time allows!

Isabelle got in touch with me after Oslo, August 31st. She liked it and she wanted to meet me and we started talking and…I think she is one of the greatest actor of all cinematic history. I think she’s one of the top people…she IS cinema history: working with her I feel one step closer to understanding why. She is a big risk taker. She is one of the bravest actress I’ve ever met. And she never goes safe. She always tries new things - you will get variations on a scene continually, which is… yeah she never goes for the safe choice or sloppy choice. She’s incredibly bold and brave.

As a side bar, I love shooting with a 50mm lens and I was talking to my cinematographer Jakob Ihre one day and she goes, “Oh, you guys, Chabrol always loved shooting with 50mm…” And it dawned on us that she’s worked with some of the cinema’s greatest directors. She knows modern film history and that she really IS film history!

Then we have, Gabriel Byrne. I agree with you who is a great actor. He is so humble, yet so precise. He always said to me, “You know I’m not really an actor. I never went to school in that way and I just do it and, I don’t know…” He is very very humble but if you get him in front of the camera, He’s always interesting. And he is a thinking man. He could be silent and observing and you go, what’s he thinking? That’s a great gift for an actor. He also takes a carer's responsibility. He is a very natural father in this family because he is a very kind and gentle in real life.

One thing I loved about his character is that he is not a typical patriarchal father you see. You don’t see that in American films often.

You see, men can also be carers. It is very important and I’m glad you bringing it up because for this film, I think many men would stay away from this role. I think there is slight prejudice. Yes we can discuss the very important issue of letting women play many different roles. In real life women play many more roles in society. I am a feminist and I believe it that absolutely. Very important. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight, at the same time, for men to be allowed to play different roles as well. We are all struggling existentially with being restricted, continually, in having to live up to expectations which don’t make us feel that we are allowing ourselves to be more than we could, you know, or be what we can be.

Gene’s story is not about patriarchy, playing the role of the authoritarian father. It’s about playing the role many mothers have played, as the carer, the one that ultimately is the pivot of the family. And he is the only one for the children to be present at the same time being pushed away, because of this idealized mother is no longer around. So that’s very much Gabriel.

Let’s touch on some of the other actors as well.

Sure.

Jesse (Eisenberg) is remarkable. He comes from comedic tradition and he is very very funny. But he’s great with structure. He understands every beat of the scene and he is so well prepared. I don’t give notes between takes. I might try to insinuate emotions or directions or try to make this discovery in the actors. But with him, you can actually be very specific. You can say, “with that line, you can do this.” Like 5 or 6 points in a long take and he’s go, “got it.” He’s the only actor that I worked with whom you can give instructions like that. He's like a waiter taking an order around the table of twelve. (laughs)

He has a great capacity to remember these things and he likes to show off a little bit. He is a virtuoso in his way of doing things. But what I’m also happy about, is that regardless of his incredible skills, he is also allowing in this film to be emotional and…

Vulnerable.

That’s the word. I knew that that was very important for the role. It took a little bit of work for us to find the tone but I’m ultimately so happy that he opened up to doing more vulnerable work and I really appreciated working with him. He is a great guy.

Then there is this last role. We were nervous about finding a young kid who has to work with these great actors. Where are we going to find this 15 year old kid? And I was so happy that Laura Rosenthal, a great casting director brought Devin Druid to our attention. He is really really good. I can recommend him highly enough to other directors. I’m not just saying this as a director being nice. I’d love to work with him again. I’m so intrigued by how emotionally available he is. Because he is so young, I imagine people will think that it’s just luck. “Oh, he’s just spontaneous but he can’t be a great crafty actor because he's so young." His instincts for preparing and knowing how to use the knowledge that he’s given to make it playable is remarkable.

I’ll tell you, sometimes he’d be in an emotional zone and he discovered already in that young age what actors take years to discover- how to sustain that emotional state. You can shoot a scene with him like that all day. It can very hard and painful if it’s an emotional scene. People run dry quick. He was able to reengage with his own technique that I don’t really know how, in an emotional state that is sustainable for a long time. And at the end of the day he goes, "Oh I need to sleep now," (laughs) and comes back in and does something else. Devin is a very intuitive guy but there is more preparation in what he does.

If you'd allow me, I’d love to mention few other people as well, because this is an ensemble.

By all means.

I never get enough time to talk about Amy Ryan, David Strathairn and Rachel Brosnahan. I wanted to make an ensemble film. Like Lumet or Coppola, all these great American directors did so many of these great ensemble films. But I never imagined I’d get people like this in smaller roles.

Amy Ryan is amazing. She’s one of the best actresses in the world. My editor (Olivier Bugge Coutté), whenever the rushes came in with the scene with her, he was like, "Who is she? Everything is good with her!"

David Strathairn is remarkable. I mean he is one of the greats.

Yes.

He is almost too cool. He is such a smart and generous guy. and there seems to be so much interesting and exciting stuff going on in his life so I don’t think he is chasing around all the available parts. He is very picky in choosing roles which I completely respect. So I felt honored that he actually came on set. I dig him. He’s like, oh I’ll drive to the set myself. He is very unpretentious. I love him.

Rachel Brosnahan, you know her from House of Cards. She is this new talent and what’s so great about her is she has natural grace in the way she appears in front of the camera. But there is no vanity with her. She came in and she does couple of scenes where she is exposing emotions where a lot of actresses would perhaps try to beautify it. But she creates beauty through just being real. She has a great instinct and knack for naturalism and I really respect that in her. In her generation of actresses, there are so many who is just choosing to be a pretty girl. She has that natural grace, she doesn’t need to, you know.

So Devin Druid and Rachel Brosnahan are the two young actors we will see more of in the near future?

Yeah I’d love that. It makes me happy to see that there are real great actors coming up in the next generation. It just makes me feel excited. That’s something that led me in the first place to make films in America, the actors.

There is a certain melancholy in your films. Even though there are many funny moments in LOUDER THAN BOMBS, There is certain sadness. I want to talk about the theme of death in your films.

Yeah. Louder than Bombs deals with, I guess, eroticism in death, a lot. We are also dealing with young mind, a 15-year old, who is going through adolescence and he is being infatuated with a girl for the first time, at the same time he is grieving his mother. So there is this sex and death thing going on. (laughs)

Also those eternal themes,I care about those things. To be personal for a second, I think I was quite concerned while I was very young. I was obsessed with memory and mortality. I was very worried about the short time we have on earth. I am an atheist, so I believe this is it. This time is all I got. I don’t believe in afterlife, at least not with this conscience. So that's a pretty tough premise. Much of our culture is in denial of that. At the same time, it gives us a purpose for action and to do things and can also be a trigger for creation even.

So my film reflects my existential curiosity. I don't want to be perceived as pretentious, I think it’s unanimous human quandary and I care about stories that deal with how we construct or accept ourselves through perception of memory and how we know that it’s not infinite and how that affects out relationships. In this film specifically - 3 years ago, a husband and two sons the mother of the family. That affects how each of them engage, with the women - the new women, new partners in their lives. What aftereffects does that have in the erotic and the ability to build a relationships. That's what we are asking in this film. And that has melancholic implications.

So what’s next for you?

I haven’t announced my next film yet because we are not one hundred percent sure yet. So I’m not talking about it so much at the moment. But what I can say on the record is that I am writing and hope to shoot it this fall in Norway. A quick one we’re working on- am working with Eskil at the moment: back in the room with my old friend. And we are coming up with some new things and we hope to get to make it and I think we will. So hopefully we will be talking soon again with something else. It’s in Norwegian this time but hopefully it will be in English again after that.

Louder than Bombs opens on Friday, April 8 at the Angelika Film Center and Lincoln Plaza Cinemas. National roll outs will follow.

Going Upstream

Night Moves (2013) - Reichardt

I like where Kelly Reichardt's headed with each of her films. I appreciate her intimate knowledge of the surroundings in her films. Night Moves is a moody character study with exceptionally written script and impeccable acting by three principals (Jesse Eisenberg, Dakota Fanning and Peter Sarsgaard). It concerns 3 eco-terrorists in Oregon, planning to blow up a dam. Because it's killing salmons. As one of the characters says that we don't need to check on our facebook or use our iphone every goddamn minute. We don't need another dam to generate electricity. But the politics of these peoples are peripheral.

Reichardt shows that she is very much capable of doing a superb thriller - tension she creates from these characters paranoia and the act of going upstream to blow up the dam is extremely well realized. Everyone they encounter, every car passing by makes them extremely cautious. After all, the job is not a rewarding one. Those days of becoming a hero or martyr for the cause is over. In this day and age, activism as we all know, is mostly theoretical and isolated to taking small actions. These random acts of violence are carried out discreetly and unceremoniously by only few committed individuals who truly believe that they can shake the system and wake people up. You can't talk about your accomplishments, you have to keep a low profile, probably for the rest of your life.

The fallout begins after the act. There is a camper missing after the dam break. Dena (Fanning) is guilt stricken and having anxiety related illness and keeps contacting Harmon (Sarsgaard), even though three of them agreed to not to talk with each other after the job. Harmon tells Josh (Eisenberg) to calm her down. Josh, having doubts about what they have done himself ('there are 21 other dams, blowing up one won't make any difference') gets even more paranoid about the prospect of Dena yapping to the authorities.

I know that Reichardt is a smart enough director not to blurt out an obvious message or anything. But the third act, the confrontation of Josh and Dena really didn't work for me. I also know that Reichardt's not into violence against women, but the whole sequence is pretty awkward. Even though the whole film is subtle, one would draw a conclusion that the film is about 'violence begets violence', instead of taking it as a fascinating character study. Yes it is unnecessary to have 23 golf courses in the middle of the desert community. We live in an excessive culture for sure. Knowing all these place and people who inhabit these parts of the world- Eugene, Bend, Lake of the Woods, Ashland, activist scene, communes, organic farming, I can tell you without any doubt that Reichardt has no disrespect for their political beliefs or way of living. But she is not the master of capturing the act of violence and murder. This is where her minimalistic approach hits the wall. Maybe I'm too critical of this one scene but I can't help noticing it, as it sticks out like a sore thumb.

Doppelgänger

The Double (2013) - Ayoade

Simon James (Jesse Eisenberg) is as plain as his namesake. For 7 years, he's been working as a low level data entry clerk at a firm. He is so unnoticeable, even people at work still don't recognize him and demand to see his ID every single time he enters the building. Simon is in love with Hannah (Mia Wasikowska), equally shy, lonely co-worker, but he is too introverted to even speak with her. Instead, he spies on her through a telescope at night, since they live in nondescript, highrise buildings across from each other and collects her discarded scribbles and drawings from her garbage. One day, a new employee, James Simon (Eisenberg again) arrives at the firm. He is a dead ringer for Simon: he even wears the same clothes. But he is polar opposite in every way- a suave, funny, extrovert everyone takes immediate liking to. Soon the double smooth talk Simon to cover for his ineptitude at work. No one will notice if we switch places from time to time, he says. Slowly, James takes over Simon's life, even Hannah.

Based on Dostoevsky's vision of bureaucratic nightmare combined with underdog love story , The Double, British funnyman Ayoade's film is an often hilarious dark comedy. The look of the film is a total retro 80s dystopian movies: big, ominous machines, air ducts, a creepy, creaky elevator, grey, muted colors and populated by pruny, white haired old people. Ayoade, a sort of renaissance man of the British comedy excels here with his absurd humor and classic, lo-fi effects - sound and production design instead of CGI. Eisenberg is perfect for lonely, nebbish frontman who goes mad and Wasikowska is adorable in her doily dress. Many of Ayoade cohorts from Submarine make appearances here too. Falling somewhere between Brazil and Hudsucker Proxy, Ayoade's The Double is a fresh air to turgid mainstream comedies.