SENTIMENTAL VALUE: No One There. Makes You Scared of Love …

No one there. That’s the trauma in Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value. You can’t feel safe loving someone if there’s no one there as a child—no one who makes you know you have a secure home in their heart. Losing a mom or a dad when you’re little makes you run from love. Live in despair. Walled off. Scared to death that loss is all you’ll find. Just watch Gustav and Nora. And there’s no sentimental value in that. Nothing to hold onto. It’s like you’re on a sinking ship, just as the house felt like it was sinking and collapsing when Nora was growing up. She needed a home. But her dad left, just as he had been abandoned. That’s how a father’s trauma becomes his daughter’s.  

No One There: Gustav’s Trauma Becomes Nora’s 

Sudden loss. Abandonment. Love disappearing. Wondering. Are you unlovable? Believing it’s shameful to need anything. All of this makes you run. Go numb. Reject before you’re rejected. Panic if your feelings open up. Run. Run. Run. Tell yourself. Never let love get too close. Only long for someone at a distance. Keep your angry walls up. Be in control. Never be left again.

Gustav Borg and his daughter Nora. They’re the same. We see their faces merge in Sentimental Value. Because their traumas merged early in Nora’s life. The fighting voices of her parents. Her father’s unhappiness. Saying that he felt trapped with them, just like Nora so often feels suffocated. Never safe. Especially if she wants love. Or comes anywhere close to her dad.  

Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgard) was only seven when his mom killed herself. He never faced his trauma. Ran from it. That happens when you have no one. No one to talk to. How could he know his mom carried such despair? That she couldn’t be happy. And it wasn’t because of him.  But children feel it’s their fault. That they aren’t enough. That love leaves just when you need it... That’s the house’s flaw. Yes, Father said the house had a flaw. And this was it: Love isn’t safe.

Trauma passes on. From one to another in a family. Gustav’s mom was tortured by the Nazi’s for being a part of the resistance. She never recovered. That had nothing to do with Gustav. But it’s terrible for a child to feel he isn’t enough for his mom to want to stay alive. And, you know what?

That’s how Gustav made Nora (Renate Reinsve) feel. Except he wasn’t dead. He’s very much alive. But out of reach. Yes. He left. Didn’t contact her for years until he suddenly appeared when her mom died. How would that make a child feel? Even more unimportant. Panicked. Out of control.

No One There: Why Feelings Create Panic

So, Nora runs too.  That is, until she’s safely ensconced in a character. Having not her own feelings exactly. Putting her feelings somewhere else. Like her father did his. Into her. But Nora doesn’t put her feelings somewhere that can harm a child. No. Nora takes her feelings, knows they are hers (sort of), but doesn’t own them. Not completely. Feeling her feelings is overwhelming. They create panic. A panic that makes her feel suffocated. Unable to go onstage. Try to rip off her costume and convince Jakob (Anders Danielsen Lie) to have sex with her. When he refuses to, to make him slap her. ANYTHING. To stop feeling what she’s feeling. That terror of being herself.

The song says it: “all the trouble I’ve seen…” That’s why Nora can’t feel. She has a panic attack before she goes on stage to play Ophelia, who also lost her father, went mad, and killed herself. Nora isn’t dead, except for what she does to her feelings. Yet, she did try to kill herself. Once.

Only when she’s finally on stage, in character. A character that isn’t her (well, who is and isn’t.) Only then can Nora let the power of her feelings be known. Especially in facing Ophelia. Because Ophelia reminds her too much of her own troubles ... father loss; father hurt. Rage. Feelings that are too much. Feelings she tries to numb, has tried to forget, her whole life. What she loves about acting is diving into feelings by assuming the role of someone else. Agnes says, “So you don’t want to be yourself?” It’s true. Being herself has too much remembering, in Sentimental Value.

If you’ve been traumatized by having no home for your feelings, you can’t be in your own skin. You could jump out of it unless you do things to stay numb. Far away from the longing for love.

No One There: Not Believing in Love 

When you’ve learned love can leave you, you don’t believe in it. If there’s No One There, love isn’t safe. That’s Nora with Jakob. He’s sort of “safe” because he’s married. She can’t have him, so she doesn’t risk wanting him. Instead, she makes him feel she doesn’t want him. Not the other way around. She tells him she’s 80% fucked up, can’t be intimate. He wants a real kiss. She won’t give it to him. She says, “We’re done.” It’s easier to say ‘we’re done’ than to have someone say it to you. Then you have no control ... like when she wanted her dad. Only 20% of her is there. (The 20% that takes the little she can get.) That is, until Jakob isn’t married anymore. Then he rejects her when she shows her desire. Coldly. Abruptly.  No explanation. Just like her dad.

That’s why it’s better to stay numb, she tells herself. Don’t answer the phone. Don’t open up to love. And when her dad doesn’t show up for her premiere, that proves it. Yes. Love isn’t safe. The longing got the best of her. Now, it won’t. She can’t go onstage. She has to shut it down. She can’t keep finding out. Over and over. That, for her, in Sentimental Value, there’s No One There.

Only Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) believes in love. She chose a husband, Even (Andreas Stoltenberg Granerud), who couldn’t be more there. There are reasons for that. Nora asks, “How did it happen? You turned out fine, and I became fucked up? Why didn’t our childhood ruin you?” Agnes says, “It hasn’t always been easy for me.” “But you managed to make a family. A home.” “Yeah,” says Agnes, “there’s one major difference in how we grew up. I had you. I know you think you’re incapable of caring, but you were there for me. When mom was down, you washed my hair, combed it, and got me to school. I felt safe.” Nora doesn’t. These lines are the truth for her:

“I almost don’t dare to close my eyes. I’m afraid that if I open them, he won’t be here anymore.”

No One There: Longing But at a Distance  

Nora’s hypervigilant. Keeps her eyes open. Because. There was no one there. Not even her mom. Her little nephew sees. Nora doesn’t want to be alone. But. She keeps a “safe” distance. Watchful. 

Yet, Nora can’t really pretend. Especially when her dad shows up again and wants her to be in his film. A film he wrote for her. That is too close to home. A home she never had. A home she needs. Like the lines in her father’s film, written for Nora, written because of his mom, written for both of them: Nora’s character sobs, “I can’t do it anymore, I can’t do it alone. I need a home.”

Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning) can’t take on Nora’s role. It’s not her part to play. She doesn’t get Nora’s feelings. The shame about need. The awful feelings of weakness. Gustav does. But letting someone know you need them is “danger.” Especially if it’s the dad who left you. So, you long for him at a distance. Watch him with Agnes. With Rachel. It’s supposed to be you. And, it would be if you could only say, “yes.” You sometimes get close. Stand smoking together. You’re the same.

Yes. You both keep a safe distance. Out of that shame. Gustav knows shame. Knows it so deeply it’s etched into every fiber of desire. Both saying, No. Don’t go there. Don’t open up. Don’t admit that you need something. Don’t. Ever again. Stay lonely. Watching others get what you want.

That’s Gustav. And, Nora. Tentative. Carefully trying to reach for each other. To touch each other.

Someone There: To Hear Your Feelings

What you need the most is someone there to hear your feelings, that same “someone” who hurt you long ago. We see how Gustav adores Nora. And she, him. He tries. Says to her and Agnes: “You two are the best things that ever happened to me.” Nora tries too. To be heard. Seen. Saying angrily, “Then why weren’t you there?” Gustav can only say (hurt): “Everyone’s mad at Dad.” He tells her, “It’s hard to love someone full of rage.” Of course, she’s full of rage. That’s what trauma does. But when he reacts defensively, she’s alone again. Sobbing on the floor. It’s not an act.

BUT. Maybe ... there cracks breaking through his armor? This time, he’s not running away. He’s staying. This time. Can he hear Nora? Agnes? After he tells Agnes he wants Erik (Øyvind Hesjedal Lovenin) in his film (because when Agnes was in his film as a child, it was his most beautiful memory), they fight. Agnes admits. “Yes, it was the best time of my life. I got to be with you. But then you left, and I didn’t see you for ages.” No. She doesn’t want her own little boy to be hurt.

Gustav doesn’t see that it wasn’t so fantastic for her. Agnes tried put aside her hurt to have a relationship with him. Without her feelings. For far too long. Now she finally feels them. She tells him, “I don’t see how you can be so there, and then someone else is the center of the universe ...”

Can they forge a way to each other? These 3? Mend their broken hearts? Yes. If someone is there to make them safe. Agnes reads Gustav’s manuscript for the rest of the day. Later, so does Nora.

His daughters hear him. Understand. In finding a way back to each other, they open their hearts.

Someone There: To Make You Safe 

Nora shuts everyone out when her dad doesn’t show up for her premiere. Shuts out the whole world.  Acting too. What good is acting if your director dad doesn’t care? She won’t return Agnes’s calls. Agnes who she’s let in more than anyone else. Closes the door to her. To Agnes’s family, little Erik, pieces of happiness. BUT. After Agnes reads the script. Researches their grandmother’s torture, she won’t let Nora worry her anymore. She goes to Nora’s apartment. Opens the shades. Tells her she read dad’s script. Brings it to Nora. Wants her to read it too. Agnes gets Nora to talk.  

“Did you tell Dad about my suicide attempt?” “No, of course not. (It’s in the film). But I thought the same thing. How does he know? It’s all mixed up with a lot of things about his mother. But in some scenes, it was like he was there when you went through it.” “Well, he wasn’t. You were.”

Yes, Agnes was there. And, now. Nora remembers. Knows. Someone was there. And, now.  She must ask herself: Is it true there’s No One There? It can sure seem like that when you’ve been left as a child. BUT. When you can learn. Know. That someone is there. You find Sentimental value in finally remembering the good things. Those memories and feelings you had to “forget.” That’s how you heal a broken heart. Can Gustav? His mother loss gave him major problems of the heart.

Yet. Maybe. Because broken hearts can heal. If someone is there. And, Nora and Agnes do show up for him. Their father almost dies. BUT. There’s Sentimental Value in all coming together in the end. Because, Nora finally knows the part is hers. She does the film for love. Nora finally says yes.