In Louder Than Bombs, Isabelle Reed (Isabelle Huppert) was a world-renowned war photographer who risked her life in pursuit of an endless string of perfect shots. She didn’t always come out of the war zone unscathed, but she always came out. It’s ironic, then, that despite surviving countless dangers around the globe, she wound up the lone fatality of a single-vehicle car crash in a cozy New York suburb. Three years later, a retrospective of her work is being organized, and her widowed husband Gene (Gabriel Byrne) has been tapped to display his wife’s photographs; he enlists the help of his grown son Jonah (Jesse Eisenberg).

Complicating matters is a New York Times piece set to be written in advance of the showing by Isabelle’s former colleague, war reporter Richard Weissman (David Strathairn). The piece will reveal that Isabelle’s car accident was no accident at all, but rather a suicide, something Gene is fully aware of. Not only would Gene prefer to keep a more positive memory of his wife at the forefront of the celebration in her honor, he would rather his younger son, the teenaged Conrad (Devin Druid), not know the truth about his mother’s death.

Louder Than Bombs, the first English-speaking film from Norwegian director and co-writer Joachim Trier, sets itself up to be a significant melodrama. All of the pieces are there and ready to be played.

There is Gene, the widower and father of two who, thanks to the retrospective being organized in his wife’s memory, must do more than face life’s small daily reminders of a love lost—he must immerse himself in the life she lived. He must look at every photograph she took and know that he’s seeing her life, a life she spent far away from her family, through her eyes. This takes its toll on Gene, which in turn takes its toll on how he handles his relationship with Hannah (Amy Ryan), his coworker and lover.

Next is Jonah, who is a lot like the old man and not just because they’re both teachers. When Jonah is faced with an event of overwhelming emotional magnitude, he also makes poor choices. In this instance, his wife Amy (Megan Ketch) has just given birth to their first child, but when the frazzled new dad scours the hospital halls for a vending machine, he runs into an old girlfriend. Their hug lasts almost as long as the lies he tells.

Conrad, whose life is challenging enough as a teenager without a mother, has all but disconnected himself emotionally from his father, opting to live in a world of loud music and online gaming. He’s awkward and introverted and everything one would expect from a 14-year-old in his situation, but he’s also undaunted in his secret love for his classmate crush, the cheerleader Melanie (Ruby Jerins).

Even Richard, the war correspondent, brings more to the story than just the byline on the revelatory posthumous profile of the revered photographer, wife, and mother.

Again, all of the melodramatic pieces are there, but much to his credit, Trier never plays those pieces the way most would expect them to be played. Instead, the filmmaker lets his characters progress through subtle developments that require the viewer to stay keenly attuned to the little things they say and do, rather than waiting for the next bombastic outburst to occur. A lot of that character progression is negative, but it’s genuine, and it’s fueled by the fatal flaws the trio shares—a wicked combination of denial, deceit, and dreadful communication. Watching them fool themselves and others isn’t like watching people spiral out of control and perish in a fiery crash. It’s more like watching people slowly dissolve. Only Conrad, despite (or perhaps because of) his youth, offers a glimmer of hope with his unflappable crush on Melanie and his refusal to be anything but the person he is. Husbands, fathers, and sons make poor choices that carry with them the potential for irrevocable consequences, and yet just like in real life, they can’t stop making those choices; it’s in their nature.

And what about Isabelle? She appears in flashback and in dreams, but she is more mystery than matriarch. Yes, she was a loving mother and wife, as well as a successful war photographer, but beyond that (and beyond the suggestion of depression), little else is known about her. This is a terrific move by Trier, because it maintains a sense of wonder about who this woman was and why she meant what she meant to the men in her life. To explain more would have done a disservice to the character. In the role, Huppert is mesmerizing, and Trier knows how to capture the best of her, including a long, lingering, dialogue-free close-up of Huppert as she stares down the camera, leaving you wondering what she is thinking about and hoping you’ll have the chance to learn.

The rest of the cast is excellent, anchored by an amazing performance by relative newcomer Druid as Conrad Reed. Byrne and Eisenberg may have (combined) decades more experience than Druid, but they need him to be great more than he needs them to be great, and he delivers.

Louder Than Bombs is a wrenching tale about the criticality of communication and the collateral damage of deceit in the wake of significant loss. The film has barely a false note in it, hardly a moment when a character says or does something that demands to be challenged, and only the ending left me disappointed as ringing somewhat hollow. Still, despite the questionable destination of the tale, the journey is completely worth it.

There’s an inherent paradox when it comes to family: despite spending more time with your parents/siblings than anyone else, you’ll never get to truly know who these people are. Joachim Trier’s Louder than Bombs, his follow-up to the devastating masterpiece Oslo August 31, explores the collisions between the individual, subjective experiences of family members, along with the barriers of communication that can spring up between the people closest to you. The film starts approximately three years after the death of Isabelle Reed (Isabelle Huppert), a war photographer who took her own life by crashing her car. Isabelle’s husband Gene (Gabriel Byrne) and eldest son Jonah (Jesse Eisenberg) know the truth surrounding her death, but her 15-year-old son Conrad (Devin Druid) still thinks it was an accident. Now, with Isabelle’s former colleague (David Strathairn) planning to reveal the truth about her death in a piece he’s planning for the New York Times, Gene tries to tell the truth to Conrad while attempting to repair the relationship between his two sons.

Trier and co-writer Eskil Vogt continue to show off their strength as filmmakers when it comes to experimenting with form to accurately portrayal the thought process. The film frequently swaps perspectives between Gene, Jonah and Conrad, while also hopping back and forth through time to when Isabelle was alive. Through this, it’s apparent that each man has a different idea of who Isabelle was, and the way these differing interpretations intersect is when Louder than Bombs hits a level of specificity that creates some great drama. But when Trier decides to break away and show the stories of each individual—Gene’s secret relationship with one of Conrad’s teachers (Amy Ryan), Jonah’s fear of becoming a father, and Conrad’s crush on a cheerleader that’s out of his league—it falls into clichés that wind up making the film get lost within itself. It’s disappointing because, when Trier’s methods do work, he creates some heart-wrenching and sublime moments (an extreme close-up of a character staring the camera down will haunt viewers for days). If Trier had more moments like these, Louder than Bombs could have been the masterpiece it so obviously wants to be.

When attending a festival, the town in which it is hosted comes alive to match the draw of the event. All across Berlin, the presence of Berlinale is felt: shop windows are decorated with film reels and retro cameras, subway stations play the scores from Hollywood classics, and local bars and coffee venues host movie themed events. Sometimes it’s nice to get a break from the rush of the fest, and retreating to such venues can provide a lot of culture that you might not find next to the red carpet and hot press lights.

I came to the festival because I love movies. Obviously, the films that screen at Berlinale come from some of the most promising and talented individuals in the industry. As I mentioned at the beginning of my coverage, up until this point the majority of my festival experience comes from a much smaller, more localized scene. I enjoy these sorts of fests just as much as I have am enjoying my experience here in Berlin, and the reason is because there is nothing like seeing the raw and innovative ways the “little guy” comes up with to bring their vision to the screen. Sunday night I took the Subway across town to a little bar called Prince Charles, at 85 F Prinzensrtasse by way of the U8. Prince Charles, in conjunction with the Berlin Film Group, hosted an open mic screening–advertised via Facebook–inviting anyone and everyone in town to come with a film they had created to play for the audience in attendance. The event was a bit of a “stick it to Berlinale,” which is an unfortunate attitude to take, but it proved to be very fun and well attended with some surprisingly well produced short films.

What proved to be more alluring than the films themselves were the networking opportunities. I am not sure how many of the readers here at Way Too Indie are interested purely in viewing indie films and how many are interested in making them, but if you are an ambitions filmmaker looking to make it, such an event is a possible dream come true. Amateur cinematographers, producers, screenwriters, and actors were all in attendance, and all with the same goal of finding someone to collaborate with. If you have the opportunity to attend a festival of any size, and are interested in networking, keep an eye out for bulletin boards and pamphlet tables around the festival venues for smaller events like the one at Prince Charles. You may find the opportunities and experiences there are on par–if not greater–than what you may find on the festival grounds.

Maladies

James Franco was involved with a total of three projects in this year’s programming for Berlinale, and Maladies was the second to screen at the festival. The film brings together a powerful cast to tell a story of mental illness in a time when such a thing was still very misunderstood. The press screening was surprisingly empty for a film with such a high number of fairly mainstream actors involved, which shows how difficult it can be to balance the films we choose to see at a festival. Often screenings overlap by just enough to make it impossible to get everything in, or a press conference runs long. Luckily, all films offer multiple screenings, and I hope for the sake of the rest of the press they will find a way to see this film.

Maladies tells the tale of James (James Franco) and his struggles with mental illness in 1963. James’ specific illness is never stated, though he hears voices and fixates on minute details. It is alluded that James–who used to star on a soap opera–lost his job due to his inability to cope with his affliction, and he now spends his time working on a novel; the subject of which is never stated. Living in the same house as James is his sister, Patricia–who also has a mental illness–and his friend Catherine. The film takes us inside the mind of James as we hear the voice he hears and see the hallucinations James sees. The voice inside James’ head serves the role of a quasi-narrator for the film, which I found to be a very unique use of its presence. As James slips in and out of his spells, he is at times a very lucid character and at other times very grounded. He fixates on his book, while also making statements on the creative process. In all, Maladies uses mental illness to tell a universal story of allowing distractions to keep us from accomplishing our life’s ambitions. For James, he continuously finds reasons to delay finishing his novel, and his commentary about his reasoning behind the delay (often absurd because of his illness) parallels his struggles with the life of anyone chasing a goal or dream.

As a period piece, Maladies does a great job of setting the scene of a seaside town just outside of New York in the early sixties. The set design is perfect, and the look of the image does a fine job of putting us in the mindset of the era. The film almost always maintains a very shallow depth of field, as though to make our minds feel the the same short-sightedness as the characters. There are several dreamlike qualities to the film, but never to the point that we lose touch with reality, and we are always grounded once more by the harsh realities that surrounds the story. The film keeps a steady pace, and the chemistry between the actors is beautiful and engaging.

Because the topic of mental illness can be so foreign and confusing for a lot of people, much of the press I spoke with afterwards did not feel as engaged as I did. James Franco does an incredible job in this film, and the look and tone of the picture do a lot to really help you level with the experience of the age. The message is one that I feel applies to everyone, regardless of where your focuses lie.

RATING: 8.4

Coming out of the first weekend, Berlinale is in full swing. I have found my footing in navigating both the festival and the city, and I am really finding the enjoyment of the event outside of the cinemas. The folks who wait in line for hours in the cold hoping to get an autograph from someone leaving a press conference show the true dedication of a fan and movie goer. Outside the theaters, individuals not involved with the festival flock to the scene just to be part of the excitement, and the lights strung around the festival grounds give life and glamor to the square once the sun goes down.

COMING UP: Tomorrow comes a film I am very excited for called Computer Chess, a comedy about computer programming in the early 80’s; a German drama about the struggles of loss; and the third festival film from James Franco, this time as director, called Interior: Leather Bar.