{"id":96594,"date":"2016-04-06T14:53:03","date_gmt":"2016-04-06T18:53:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=96594"},"modified":"2016-04-07T10:48:34","modified_gmt":"2016-04-07T14:48:34","slug":"louder-than-bombs-an-interview-with-joachim-trier-and-jesse-eisenberg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/06\/louder-than-bombs-an-interview-with-joachim-trier-and-jesse-eisenberg\/","title":{"rendered":"Louder than Bombs: An Interview with Joachim Trier and Jesse Eisenberg"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Isabelle Huppert and Gabriel Byrne in a still from Louder than Bombs<\/i>.<\/p><\/div>\n

Readers of the <\/em>Review know that the Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier is one of our favorite young directors. (See Issue 203<\/a> for a discussion of his first two features<\/a>, <\/em>Reprise and <\/em>Oslo, August 31st.) His new English-language debut, <\/em>Louder than Bombs, stars Isabelle Huppert, Gabriel Byrne, and Jesse Eisenberg. Last week we caught up with Trier and Eisenberg for a conversation that ranged from Knut Hamsun to <\/em>The Karate Kid to David Foster Wallace. We also talked about the making of <\/em>Louder than Bombs.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Joachim, what\u2019s the question you\u2019re most sick of answering? Is it, Why did you set your new movie in America?<\/p>\n

TRIER<\/p>\n

Yes, that question has come up a lot. It started at Cannes, where there was a notion that certain auteurs\u2014Sorrentino, Yorgos Lanthimos, myself, several others\u2014had done something wrong by making films in English. Almost as if that were a kind of sellout. As if cinema weren\u2019t a language that transcends the spoken word, or national belonging. I want to say, Let\u2019s be old school and try to think more authentically about what a movie could be. It could be many things, in particular an expression of tone or mood or place, regardless of the director\u2019s nationality. Like, there I am shooting in upstate New York, with my Swedish cameraman, and we\u2019re framing a window with pine trees outside, and we feel at home, even though we\u2019re in Nyack. These things are ultimately so complex that the whole idea of a movie\u2019s \u201cnational identity\u201d has become very confusing for me.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Did you ask the actors for help with the dialogue?<\/p>\n

TRIER<\/p>\n

I always do that, even in Norway. And I am fortunate to work with actors like Anders Danielsen Lie and Jesse Eisenberg who are smart about these things, and are not sentimentalists. They\u2019re interested in how to use language to work against<\/em> the emotion. Sometimes a whole scene will be about avoidance, about holding back, about what is not said. For example, the scene where Jesse\u2019s character speaks to his old girlfriend and the subject of his mother keeps coming up\u2014but indirectly.<\/p>\n

EISENBERG<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an enigmatic quality to the character I play. His mother has killed herself, but he\u2019s not reacting to his grief in a way that\u2019s immediately obvious. And yet his reaction is emotionally correct. An actor will always take that kind of emotional logic and run with it, will make the character as eccentric as they can, because it\u2019s rare to find a script, like this one, that allows an actor to behave ambivalently or to live out ambiguity. My character abandons his wife and child in a way that\u2019s seems innocuous at first but then seems increasingly immoral. When I read the script, I couldn\u2019t get his moral compass. It seemed vague. But then, when you\u2019re acting it, it seems exactly right\u2014this is<\/em> what somebody would do in this particular situation.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

I love watching your character hang up on his wife\u2014once by pressing his laptop closed with one finger, the other time physically backing away from his iPhone.<\/p>\n

TRIER<\/p>\n

[To EISENBERG] I feel you act in two traditions. We\u2019ve never talked about this, but on the one hand\u2014it seems to me\u2014you are naturalistically inclined. You go for truth, and you\u2019re very good at that. At the same time, you always smuggle in something very specific, like closing the computer with your finger.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

So by \u201ctwo traditions,\u201d do you mean naturalistic and comedic?<\/p>\n

TRIER<\/p>\n

Naturalistic and, so to speak, idea based. With Isabelle Huppert, for example, you have an actor who is very intuitive. She comes very well prepared, but then she lets herself loose. Jesse is the first actor I\u2019ve worked with to whom I can say\u2014as if he were a waiter dealing with twelve customers at once, remembering what each one had ordered\u2014I think you should discover this, then discover that, then discover this other thing. And Jesse will say, Got it. [To EISENBERG] You have this very pointed specificity, which means you\u2019re intellectually tracking the scene as well as being truthful. You don\u2019t often see that combination. Of course comedy\u2014timing, beat, structure\u2014is the essence, I find, of the American, rapid-fire dialogue tradition that you\u2019ve mastered.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Do you not have that tradition in Norway?<\/p>\n

TRIER<\/p>\n

No. In Norway we speak four times as slowly as you do.<\/p>\n

EISENBERG<\/p>\n

But you<\/em> talk fast.<\/p>\n

TRIER<\/p>\n

This is exactly what I\u2019m saying\u2014I belong here.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

You\u2019re the Aaron Sorkin of Oslo. What you say about Isabelle and Jesse makes me want to ask about one specific scene. The photographer played by Isabelle is discussing a dream she had with her husband, played by Gabriel Byrne. And there\u2019s this close-up where he\u2019s talking and she just \u2026 drifts away. It\u2019s an incredible moment. How did you direct that?<\/p>\n

TRIER<\/p>\n

Isabelle is talking about a dream of a sexual experience in a war zone. She dreams that she was raped, but in her dream her husband was watching and smoking a cigarette. And Gabriel Byrne asks, What is this really about? What are you really trying to tell me? And they have this slight argument, and as always there\u2019s a certain sexual tension, and Gabriel\u2019s playing it a little bit funny and annoyed, and she\u2019s playing it as if she\u2019s teasing him. And it works.<\/p>\n

We do one more shot at the end\u2014the shot you\u2019re talking about. Isabelle says, Let me try something. And suddenly she lets this very deep melancholia swell. Meanwhile, Gabriel goes off on a comedic bit. He asks her, How did I smoke? And he does, like, five different ways of smoking. And you see the discrepancy of communication. They both ad libbed. She started crying, almost, but held back. And he starts doing his joke. You see a couple struggling and failing to meet each other, to connect. That\u2019s what I call a jazz take, where I ask the actors to improvise. But the theme, the subtext of that scene is already at play in the writing. As long as you\u2019re thematically primed, as we were, because we did rehearsals\u2014we met, we talked\u2014then you can let go, and you will still come back to something that could be of relevance.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

The movie starts with a sort of prologue, with Jesse and his wife and child in the maternity ward, then there\u2019s a Charlie Rose<\/em> clip, which turns out to be a clip within a documentary\u2014a clip within a clip. And then, very quickly, the scene changes again. What pattern are you trying to establish?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

TRIER<\/p>\n

In the beginning you want to do two things. You want to focus the audience so they can interpret the events that are about to happen. Like in a book, you establish the themes. The opening of the film now is Jesse\u2019s finger and a baby hand clutching it. The vulnerability of a child dealing with a parent. That\u2019s the essence of the film.<\/p>\n

At the same time, you need narrative. You need to get the different characters up and running. What\u2019s the drama? Jesse goes straight out of that room and meets his ex-girlfriend. He\u2019s unresolved about his place in life, about becoming a father. And that\u2019s it, we can leave him for a while and start building the story of the mother as an icon. Then we see the father in great worry about his younger son. Had we been more clearly expositional, we would\u2019ve placed our cards on the table. But because we\u2019re making a mosaic, we\u2019re asking for a bit of patience. Some people love that, some people hate it.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s something static about this family, something frozen. I\u2019m trying to capture awkwardness, and that\u2019s not easy to dramatize. So the mother\u2019s documentary, for example, is rapid\u2014you have the Charlie Rose<\/em> interview, the war zone, it\u2019s dynamic. I\u2019m trying to create something like a musical motif\u2014this is the song for her, this is the song for him\u2014but formally, in how we shoot the scenes. Jesse is confused. We see him walking the labyrinth of the hospital. The father is slow, contemplative, processing from the outside, looking into a world he\u2019s not really engaging in. The little brother slowly takes over the story, and the pace of his thoughts starts driving the film after a while. This film is really about the exterior and the interior lives of these people\u2014and the interior unfolds at a different pace. But it requires patience from the audience. The beginning was difficult. We struggled a lot in the editing room. We had to cut a tremendous scene of a big fire, a burning barn, all this shit \u2026<\/p>\n

EISENBERG<\/p>\n

You never actually filmed the burning barn, did you?<\/p>\n

TRIER<\/p>\n

We did film it. Here\u2019s the story. When I was eleven years old, I burned down my house the night before Christmas. This is true. It was a mistake, it was just a candle that fell over. It was just terrible. I felt very guilty about it. But it was okay. My parents are very nice people, they didn\u2019t give me a very hard time. Years later, the opening of Louder than Bombs<\/em> is supposed to be a little kid that lights a match in a field, and it starts burning closer to a barn. Inside the barn that starts burning, you hear screaming animals. The kid is shocked. He\u2019s dumbstruck. He doesn\u2019t know what to do. Jesse wakes up. Oh, was it a dream? Had it happened? Was it him as a child? And he looks over at his wife, who\u2019s pregnant. That\u2019s the opening of the film. In writing, marvelous. Financially, impossible. Anyway, the producers supported us\u2014and I know for a fact that one of the producers, to try to be nice, talked to the financiers about my childhood trauma to try to justify it.<\/p>\n

EISENBERG<\/p>\n

My God. You brought in your therapist as a consultant.<\/p>\n

TRIER<\/p>\n

Exactly, and everyone agreed\u2014it\u2019s expensive, but Joachim deserves to resolve this trauma. So what the fuck happens? Okay, what happens is the scene just sets the whole film on the wrong fucking track. This is the hardest thing about being a director. You make mistakes. You have these pyrotechnics and screaming animals and the most expensive scene in the world, but the close-up of what happened between Jesse Eisenberg\u2019s finger and the newborn baby\u2019s hand was ten times more powerful. Who\u2019d have known? That\u2019s making movies.<\/p>\n

EISENBERG<\/p>\n

Is it okay if I ask a question? Everybody keeps asking me about your perspective on the American family\u2014whether it\u2019s different from an American\u2019s perspective. I never know what to say.<\/p>\n

TRIER<\/p>\n

While we were writing the film, my cowriter, Eskil Vogt, said, Damn, Joachim, most of the stuff we know about Americans, we learned from The Simpsons<\/em>. There were moments of panic. Like, having grown up with the wonderful films of John Hughes, which I adore, I didn\u2019t know if there were still cheerleaders in America. Or was this just something from the eighties?<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

You give Jesse that line when he\u2019s watching the cheerleaders with his brother\u2014\u201cI can\u2019t believe this shit still exists.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

EISENBERG<\/p>\n

And I\u2019m glad you did, because it\u2019s absurd. Every time I go to a basketball game, all I can think is, How does this still exist? It seems like a relic. The cheerleaders come on to tantalize our sexuality and then the basketball starts? It\u2019s just the strangest thing. It seems like if it didn\u2019t exist and it all the sudden happened one night, we\u2019d all be horrified.<\/p>\n

TRIER<\/p>\n

To go back to the family question, look at Death of a Salesman<\/em>. Here is the patriarch living in the meritocratic America where he\u2019s failed. The real drama lies in the abandonment of the mother, who has taken charge of the house and the sons, and in the sons\u2019 different interpretations of the loss of their idealized father. Now, if you look at this film, here you see a mother who isn\u2019t stuck at home, thank God, but can go out and do a wonderful job as a war photographer. But it leaves the father in a vulnerable position, having to do what women have traditionally done. He gets a lot of this transferred anger for the two sons, who are not allowed to be angry with their dead, idealized mother. I\u2019m not trying to talk about gender, but about vulnerability when family structures change. Is that European? Is that American?<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Along those lines, I have a question for you, Jesse, but I\u2019m afraid it might sound weird. The moment you and Isabelle Huppert are brushing your teeth in the mirror and your character notices her scars\u2014is he \u2026 turned on? By his mom?<\/p>\n

EISENBERG<\/p>\n

Yes, he is. I think it speaks to what Joachim was just saying. The more the sons idealize their mom, the more they view their father as powerless. My character ends up conflating his idealization of his mother with his own sexual feelings, and his sexual dissatisfactions at college. His mother also happens to be this awesome woman who, by virtue of being played by this cool French actress, is very alluring, and by virtue of my meeting her the day we shot that scene, is increasingly alluring because I know nothing about her. Joachim wanted there to be some kind of unspoken Oedipal dynamic \u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

So you talked about that before the scene?<\/p>\n

TRIER<\/p>\n

With Jesse I could talk about things like that, because I think we\u2019re both psychoanalytically inclined. But of course it needs to be playable. There needs to be ambiguity. I\u2019ll give you another example. Is it Swift who said that sexuality and death are all that really concern the truly great mind? I don\u2019t know about the great mind, but they certainly concern this film. I mean, here you have the little brother sitting in the classroom, listening to the girl he\u2019s infatuated with as she reads out loud from a book by one E. I. Lonoff\u2014make of that what you will\u2026<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Lonoff from The Ghost Writer<\/em>?<\/p>\n

TRIER<\/p>\n

If you look at the cover of the book she\u2019s reading, you\u2019ll see it says E. I. Lonoff, as a tribute to Philip Roth. Now you\u2019re the only one who knows. But so, the kid\u2019s watching this girl read from their assignment, and he\u2019s going through puberty, he\u2019s infatuated, he starts thinking about his mother\u2019s death because of what she\u2019s reading, and the girl\u2019s voice becomes his inner monologue. I haven\u2019t seen anyone do that before. It\u2019s one of the things I\u2019m a little bit proud of in this film. Then he starts thinking about the moment when he and his mother played hide-and-seek when he was little, and he realizes that she must have seen him all along. And then he snaps back to reality. So, through the form of this flashback, you get the Oedipal confusion, the attraction to the girl, and the association to the mother\u2019s death without nailing it down. It sounds trite when I try to explain it. But I hope it\u2019s at play in the formal choices.<\/p>\n

When we made the film, I was thinking a lot about Adam Phillips\u2019s book Missing Out<\/em>. His idea is that we all continually live not only the life we live but also the life we imagine could<\/em> have happened, or might happen if things were somehow different\u2014and that this unlived life is an entity of its own that continually affects us. That notion is inspiring. I was constantly thinking of how to make scenes that could illustrate that, through showing, not telling, through form. I\u2019m not saying we\u2019ve managed it, but it\u2019s something I\u2019d love to have done.<\/p>\n

Lorin Stein is the editor of\u00a0<\/em>The Paris Review.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Readers of the Review know that the Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier is one of our favorite young directors. (See Issue 203 for a discussion of his first two features, Reprise and Oslo, August 31st.) His new English-language debut, Louder than Bombs, stars Isabelle Huppert, Gabriel Byrne, and Jesse Eisenberg. Last week we caught up with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[907],"tags":[639,19261,21836,13949,8892,14367,8226,13963,8705,21831,21833,21835,1132,21832,13755,7715,456,21830,81,124,6122,21834,99,492],"class_list":["post-96594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-work","tag-acting","tag-actors","tag-adam-phillips-issue-203","tag-cheerleaders","tag-childhood","tag-families","tag-family","tag-filmmaking","tag-films","tag-foreign-films","tag-gabriel-byrne","tag-improvisation","tag-interviews","tag-isabelle-huppert","tag-jesse-eisenberg","tag-joachim-trier","tag-lorin-stein","tag-louder-than-bombs","tag-movies","tag-new-york","tag-norway","tag-nyack","tag-philip-roth","tag-sigmund-freud"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLouder than Bombs: An Interview with Joachim Trier and Jesse Eisenberg<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Lorin Stein talks to the filmmaker and the actor about their latest project, Louder than Bombs.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/06\/louder-than-bombs-an-interview-with-joachim-trier-and-jesse-eisenberg\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Louder than Bombs: An Interview with Joachim Trier and Jesse Eisenberg by Lorin Stein\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"April 6, 2016 \u2013 Readers of the Review know that the Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier is one of our favorite young directors. 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