This episode of the podcast focuses on three films, Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell, Joachim Trier’s Louder Than Bombs, and Patricia Rozema’s Mouthpiece, united by their focus on dead mothers and formally expressive explorations of grief, memory, and subjectivity.
Curious about Joachim Trier’s craft?
The Deep Focus: Oslo, August 31st is a two-week program where we explore his openings, endings, and key choices — then apply those insights to Sentimental Value.
Content warning: This episode discusses suicide
This episode features Editor-in-Chief Alex Heeney, Executive Editor Orla Smith, Associate Editor Brett Pardy, and Editor-at-Large Mary Angela Rowe.
The seeds of this episode date back to when Alex interviewed Joachim Trier at Cannes 2015 right after Louder Than Bombs premiered. She told him the film reminded her of Stories We Tell, and he noted he loved the film. Since then, we’ve thought a lot of about both films in conversation with Mouthpiece.
For our depressing Mother’s Day extravaganza, we compare and contrast Stories We Tell, Louder Than Bombs, and Mouthpiece. We look at how each film deals with grief, memory, and subjectivity.
Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley, 2012) is one of the films we dicsus on the podcast
Sarah Polley’s film is more creative nonfiction than documentary. It’s a film about uncovering and unpacking her family’s history that is itself designed to draw our attention to the art of storytelling on film. Reenactments that feel like home videos can be mistaken for fact. Interviews with multiple people in the family reveal often conflicting perspectives. Polley lets us see herself in the frame with a camera or in direct dialogue with her subjects, as a reminder that not only is she choosing the questions and directing the conversations, but also curating the footage and how it’s presented. Many people tell their stories in this film; Polley gets the final say in the cutting room.
Louder Than Bombs (Joachim Trier, 2015) is one of the films we discuss on the podcast
Joachim Trier‘s Louder Than Bombs delves into the inner lives of three characters in the Reed family: the sensitive patriarch Gene (Gabriel Byrne) and his two sons — new father Jonah (Jesse Eisenberg) and socially awkward teenager Conrad (Devin Druid) — who are dealing (or not) with the death of family matriarch Isabelle (Isabelle Huppert). The film switches perspectives between the three men as we try to understand what they’re going through.
Though connected by grief, the men feel disconnected from one another, rarely even sharing the same frame. Yet they’re brought back together in their family home for the first time since her death three years ago. It’s thanks to a new retrospective of Isabelle’s war photography. The New York Times is publishing a writeup on Isabelle that will reveal new information about how Isabelle died — something Conrad, who was twelve at the time, doesn’t know.
Mouthpiece (Patricia Rozema, 2018) is the third film we discuss on the podcast
Amy Nostbakken and Norah Sadava (also the film’s writers) simultaneously play two sides of the same woman, Cassandra. The film follows her as she prepares for her mother’s (Maev Beaty) funeral and grapples with the contradictions of her mother’s second-wave feminism and her own experiences of life under patriarchy. Director Patricia Rozema collaborated with Nostbakken and Sadava to adapt their play to the screen.
Show notes and recommended reading
- Read our special edition on Louder Than Bombs. This includes a review of the film and interviews with director Joachim Trier and cinematographer Jakob Ihre.
- Read all of our in-depth coverage (and podcasts) on director Joachim Trier’s work
- Listen to our podcast episode on Mouthpiece. Brett left before we discussed Mouthpiece, but he was on this episode.
- Listen to our podcast episode on Joachim Trier’s Oslo, August 31st in conversation with Another Round
- Read Alex’s interview with Mouthpiece director Patricia Rozema and actors Amy Nostbakken and Norah Sadava, who all co-wrote the film
- For more on Mouthpiece and other great recent Canadian films, preview or purchase our ebook, The 2019 Canadian Cinema Yearbook
- Pre-order our newest ebook on Kelly Reichardt
