By Girindra Selleck
Joachim Trier’s English-language début, Louder Than Bombs, paints a portrait of a family on the edge of disarray after the death of its matriarch, Isabelle (played by Isabelle Huppert, ravishing as usual), a famous war photographer whose work appeared regularly on the front page of the New York Times.
We join the family after Isabelle’s death, but her character floats in and out of the narrative throughout the film. Trier, known for being formally impeccable, but at times intellectually overwrought, psychological thrillers such as Oslo, August 31st and Reprise, revives that style on Bombs, a film that at times feels like it could have benefited from an increased degree of emotional honesty.
The film’s narrative tension is tightly packed into the initial ambiguity regarding the circumstances of Isabelle’s death. As those circumstances begin to come to light — partially through a commemorative column written by one of Isabelle’s colleagues at the Times — the family learn that Isabelle’s death was more likely than not by suicide. We track the various characters as they attempt to cope with this information, each in her or his own way.
The attention of her widower, Gene (Gabriel Byrne), is consumed primarily by his efforts to attempt to curb the impending despair felt by his two sons, and little energy is left to process his own grief and shame about an affair he had been having with his youngest son’s teacher. That son, Conrad (Louie’s Devin Druid) — an awkward, hormonal teenager who, on top of everything else, is plagued by an all-consuming crush on one of the school cheerleaders — has the hardest time dealing with his mother’s passing.
His older brother, Jonah (played by Jesse Eisenberg, who delivers yet another iterative performance as a cynical, neurotic intellectual) has a much smoother time processing his emotions, but in the subtext of Trier’s script, we can’t help but notice a deep-rooted sadness that Jonah struggles to keep at bay by means of obsessive over-rationalization.
At the heart of the film seems to be a message about the importance and struggles of communication. But unfortunately, the film itself, along with its characters, doesn’t seem to be able to communicate effectively with the audience, let alone each other.
While this can be a common complaint for films about communication and relationships — particularly ones about relationships among family members — the representation of the characters’ interactions in Bombs manages to feel particularly scripted. (I found myself wondering, throughout the movie whether this would have played better on the stage rather than on screen.)
While the film succeeds in crafting a complex and at times enjoyable narrative, one comes away feeling somewhat disillusioned by the steely and overly complicated way in which the characters interact.
