Louder Than Bombs

Screen grief usually comes in two flavors: full-frontal-assault emotional (wrenching of hands, rending of garments) and uncomfortably numb (stoic thousand-yard stares, lone tears silently trailing down cheeks). Filmgoers will sense theyre getting the slow-and-low version in Joachim Triers tale of mourning right after the lights go up on a posthumous highlight reel of a deceased conflict photographer (Isabelle Huppert). Her husband, Gene (Gabriel Byrne), nods solemnly at the tribute, set to play in front of a prestigious exhibit devoted to his late wifes work. Then her journalistic colleague (David Strathairn) tells the widower that hes doing a piece for the New York Times, and plans on revealing that the car accident that took her life well, it may not have been so accidental.

Many folks might scream, curse, throw a punch or upend a table. Gene merely blinks and then asks, calmly, Are you sure thats a good idea? Louder than bombs, indeed.

Hes much more worried about how their two sons will handle the news, especially Conrad (Devin Druid), a teenager deeply devoted to Warcraft-type video games and uncommunicative sulking. And while the older son, Jonah (Jesse Eisenberg), already suspected that Moms passing was possibly self-inflicted, hes not doing so well either new fatherhood and running in to an old flame has shaken him a bit. (Sure, he can invent Facebook and get Batman and Superman to tussle, but commitment and adult responsibilities lets not ask the impossible here, people.) None of these three seem to have properly processed their loss over all these years. The movie may take its title from a Smiths album, but had it chosen R.E.Ms Everybody Hurts, no points would have been docked.

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The former national skateboarding champion of Norway no, really Trier has emerged as one of the most interesting filmmakers to come out the modern Scandi-cine scene, specializing in vibrant, fresh-air odes to beginnings (2006s Reprise) and endings (2011s painful portrait of a suicide Oslo, August 31st). Working on his first English-language movie with longtime collaborator Eskil Vogt, the director brings his signature storytelling flourishes into the mix, notably in a scene involving Conrads free-form diary entries a montage-driven rush that invokes his mother, death, family, his computer inventory, and a giddy relationship with language as a salve.

Given a flashback, a dream sequence or a voiceover reading in which he can go impressionistic, Trier hits paydirt; its the more straightforward business of making these characters feel alive or maintaining narrative momentum that seems to stifle him a bit here. Hes namechecked Ordinary People as an inspiration in interviews, and you can sense the actors aiming for that movies notion of denial as a detente between shutting down or emotionally breaking down. But while the lack of histrionics (with one notable classroom exception) is preferable to gross sentimentality, the chill here never satisfying freezes over or thaws, and the way peripheral plots strands are left to atrophy, especially Eisenbergs half-baked predicament, does his fine cast no favors. Louder Than Bombs mutes the melodrama for so long that it accidentally smothers the actual drama as well. Less fuse, more detonation might have worked wonders.