Sentimental Value

We, too, watch our parents grow up.
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Lots of spoilers below!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Part of what makes this film so captivating to me is how we see intergenerational trauma shaping people's everyday lives. In the wake of his mother's tragic death, Gustav internalizes the logic that relationships are tumultuous and unstable. His primary caregiver abandoned him, and we see that as a result, he fails to build strong relationships with others in his life, including his children. Instead, he uses film and art as a proxy for making quality time with his children, yet it is still a space where he does not have to face the true textures of emotional reciprocity. Although we do see that Agnes has a more loving relationship with Gustav, perhaps because she worked as an actress in one of his films, Nora, who did not have that experience, seems to maintain a level of antagonism toward her father. But even then, Agnes's row with Gustav suggests that the quality time she spent with him on the set as a child was not enough to make up for the years of abandonment. 

The effects of that abandonment in Nora's life appear very explicitly in the sort of anxiety she exhibits right before going on stage, as well as how she struggles at maintaining relationships in her own life. The scene where she asks to be slapped across the face before going on stage perhaps implies that she has been used to pain, that she feels it is her normal baseline for moving through the world, and that, to fulfill her desires, she needs to feel neglected to some degree. I also think the scene where Erik is in bed with her and says he wishes to marry her when he gets older, which makes her feel incredibly emotional and prompts her to leave the house, is also very important. It suggests that the genuine love and desire she felt from her nephew were perhaps not feelings she had in her childhood, and because it was an emotional state she was unaccustomed to, she followed the script she knew best from her father -- to abandon the moment. In other words, the fact that she retreats in the face of real, sincere attachment because it is emotionally unfamiliar could be traced to the relationship she had with her father and the intergenerational effects that her grandmother's death carries.

Then, there’s the house. I think it certainly forms the crux of what makes this film unique. It is on the verge of breaking down -- there are cracks in the walls, there are memories of violence sitting inside of the rooms, and the house has it's own sort of personified character that mimics Nora's inner world. Nora's school project at the beginning indicates that she also thought about the house intensely. She asked questions like "what does it feel like when it is empty inside?" and "what does the house see when I leave through the crack in the fence?". Both of those remarks trace her inner world as a child -- it was full of life when her father and mother were there, and after her father's sudden departure, she is left to wonder who she is without such an essential figure in her corner. How is a kid supposed to know what to do when they feel emptiness inside of themselves? What could it be filled with? That fundamental gap within her seems to shape much of how she builds relationships with others. Put more succinctly, I think the house-as-metaphor provokes an ontological question: it reveals how Nora structures herself and her inner world.
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As someone who has recently experienced a death in the family, this movie poked at a few wounds. A question I often find myself asking, as well as a question that many others who have felt grief may ask as well, is "if they were still alive, what would they say/think about the version of me I am today?" I wonder if Gustav has a similar attitude to his mother -- does he think to himself, if his mom could see him, what would she say about him? If that question is more universal than I think it is, then I think his films and his labor are done in the name of trying to make his mother proud. If that is true, then his desire to write this film and his decision to cast his daughter in it suddenly make sense. It is an attempt to reconcile the grief he feels of losing a loved one, and a move to live his life in such a way that would make that loved one proud.