Surprised ...Not: Sentimental Value Is Another Soporific Story of Scandinavians With the Sads

March 2026

 

My first exposure to European films...

 

Was when some Jesuits...

Who were cooling their heels in my tiny Kansas town for a couple of years..

Got their hands on a copy of Ingmar Bergman’s Through a Glass Darkly...

 

And thought it would be a good idea...

To show it to a few of us middle schoolers..

 

I can still remember thinking...

 

Wow... that movie was really slow...

 

Now there quite a bit more I probably should have thought about that film at the time...

And why those Jesuits chose to show it to us...

But that’s topic for another time...

 

Yet my memory of how Through a Glass Darkly...

Differed from the American films I was used to seeing...

Has stayed with me to this day...

 

Now America is the home of fast food, fast fashion, and fast cars...

So we have the attention span of a gnat...

 

So we are used to quick service...

 

And films that move along briskly...

 

At least most of the time...

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But European movies...

Much like the bureaucrats in Brussels...

Move at a pace that often rivals glaciers ...

 

So... it takes a lot of patience to watch them...

 

Because they are sooo slow...

And filled with long silences...

 

Shots that seem to last forever...

And scenes where not much seems to happen...

 

Which makes it hard to sit through them...

 

So watching Sentimental Value...

Made me feel like I was watching paint dry...

 

So it was a chore...

 

And, frankly, not worth the effort...

 

Because this Norwegian film about an aging director... 

Trying to reconnect with his daughters...

Which seems to want to make a point about generational trauma...

 

Was long... and ponderous...

Dripping with melancholy...

And full of depressed characters...

 

Which does seem to be a Scandinavian specialty...

 

And only Stellan Skarsgard was worth watching...

 

In part because Joachim Trier was smart... he didn’t give him much to say...

Because Skarsgard has had a stroke and says he now has trouble remembering his lines...

 

But Skarsgard didn’t need to say anything...

Because his eyes told you all you need to know at any one moment...

 

Sentimental Value also has Elle Fanning...

Who is usually fun to watch...

But she is playing a cheerful American actress...

Who is woefully out of place in a movie filled with very sad Norwegians...

 

So it was jarring whenever she appeared on screen...

 

And reinforced the culture shock Americans feel...

When they are served up a large dose of Scandinavian culture

 

In a film that isn’t about Vikings...

 

So even though this movie has generated a lot of buzz...

And lots of Oscar nominations...

 

I would only recommend it as a sleep aid...

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