With only three feature films under his belt, Norwegian helmer Joachim Trier is quickly establishing himself as a world class filmmaker with his thoughtful, mature and emotionally resonating cinema. 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 at great length about working with his amazing ensemble cast. ScreenAnarchy: This is your first English language film. What were some of the challenges you faced? Joachim Trier: 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 a country like Germany, we had a real advantage to listen to the language and learn it that way.
But I would say it was different because Eskil and I were a little more insecure. 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. 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 to 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. And I mean it as a compliment. For me, the word literary has two sides to it. I am a film fan. It sounds maybe weird but Eskil and I often say, 'it would be more filmic, ifβ¦' 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.
If you look back to the French naturalists in the s, 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. For example there are a lot of those chapters that is more like a diary and you see a scene from two perspectives. 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.
