If you haven’t seen Sentimental Value yet, consider this your warning. I’m going to walk through the movie from beginning to end, unpack what it’s really doing, and explain why its final act turns a great drama into a Best Picture–level achievement. Not only do I think it’s worthy of its nomination, I also believe that it should win the best picture slot… it is exceedingly better than every other movie nominated this year. It soars above the competition, its a glorious film, and perfect in its craft.
When Sentimental Value opens, it doesn’t announce itself as an “important” movie. There’s no big tragedy, no sweeping score, no dramatic hook. Instead, we’re dropped into the everyday lives of two sisters, Nora and Agnes, who are still quietly carrying the emotional fallout of their childhood.
Their father, Gustav, was once a respected filmmaker. Their mother died years earlier. After her death, Gustav emotionally checked out of their lives, burying himself in his work and leaving the girls to more or less raise themselves. The movie makes it clear early on: he wasn’t abusive, he wasn’t cruel — he was absent. And that kind of absence leaves scars that don’t show up neatly.
Nora has grown into a guarded, private adult who keeps people at arm’s length. Agnes is more outwardly functional, more forgiving, and more willing to believe that people can change. From the start, the film positions them as two different responses to the same trauma.
Then Gustav re-enters their lives.
Gustav’s “Apology,” in the Only Language He Knows
Gustav doesn’t come back with a heartfelt confession. He doesn’t sit his daughters down and say, “I failed you.” Instead, he arrives with a screenplay. He wants to make one last film, based on their childhood home and their family life. He frames it as a personal project, something intimate and meaningful. But almost immediately, we realize this is also his way of controlling the narrative.
This script is his version of events. In it, he is more attentive. More present. More loving. Not in an obvious, self-flattering way — but subtly. Enough that it feels “true” to him. For Nora, this is infuriating. To her, the script feels like revisionist history. It’s her father turning their pain into content. Agnes, on the other hand, sees it as a flawed but genuine attempt to reconnect.
It’s this disagreement that becomes the emotional backbone of the movie. Is Gustav trying to make amends? Or is he just trying to protect his legacy?
Old Wounds and New Frustrations
The middle section of Sentimental Value is deliberately unflashy. It’s mostly conversations, rehearsals, family dinners, and uncomfortable encounters. But this is where the movie does its real work.
We see Gustav struggle to collaborate. We see him dismiss criticism. We see him default to “director mode” when emotions get hard. At the same time, we learn more about the sisters’ childhood. Through scattered memories and arguments, we understand that Gustav wasn’t just busy — he actively chose his career over emotional involvement. He was physically present, but psychologically elsewhere.
One of the film’s smartest choices is that it never turns Gustav into a villain. He’s selfish. He’s emotionally stunted. He’s defensive. But he’s also sincere in his belief that he loved his family. That tension — between intent and impact — is what makes the story feel real.
Why Nora Refuses to Play Along
As production ramps up, Gustav asks Nora to play the lead in his film. This is Gustav’s life story, and the only person who can play the role of this lead is Nora. In some ways, this is the closest he gets to a direct apology. He wants her input. He wants her blessing. She refuses. Not out of spite, but out of self-protection. To Nora, participating means validating a version of the past that she doesn’t recognize. It means letting her father frame their story on his terms. So she steps away, even as Agnes continues to consider allowing her son to be involved.
This creates a quiet but painful rift between the sisters. Agnes starts to feel that Nora is being unfair. Nora feels abandoned all over again. By this point, the movie has carefully built a situation where no one is entirely wrong — and no one is fully right. Nuance… it’s all nuanced grays… there are zero black and whiting going on here.
As a result, Gustav hires American actress Rachel Kemp – whose involvement convinces Netflix to finance the project. The production grows troubled as Gustav resents working with Netflix and feels unable to recruit his old team after visiting a visibly frail Peter, his cinematographer. Rachel, unable to speak Norwegian, grows self-conscious about the fact that Gustav had to translate the script into English for her. Things are beginning to snowball, go wrong, and crash off the rails.
The most interesting nuance to me was watching as Gustav experiences failures as a director for the first time. He lost his lead. He abandoned his cinematographer for health issues. Nothing seemed to be coming together for this his supposedly pièce de résistance. Watching Gustav lose control of all these various spinning plates. This was the most relatable aspect of this film to me. He was indomitable, but not anymore… he was on the verge of creating a failure, and he knew it. His daughter had abandoned him. His lead had abandoned him. Nothing was going right at all.
The Sentimental Value Emotional Turn
Agnes, deciding she wants to understand her father better, goes to visit the National Archives of Norway. She reads her grandmother Karin’s statement to the post war government, regarding her torture. Until that moment, she had refused to discuss anything about this part of her life. Realizing that her grandmother had passed on her generational trauma on to her son, Gustav, Agnes decides she is going to actually read the script. And in an epiphany, Agnes realizes that while originally the plot was inspired by Karin, the actual emotional arc of the film was about Gustav’s regrets about his broken relationship with Nora. And it is the ending – and Karin’s suicide – that really struck Agnes and poleaxed her into convincing her sister to finally read the script.
The Ending That Should Win Sentimental Value the Best Oscar
Cut to watching Nora playing out the echos of her grandmother. We know from a previous conversation between Gustav and Rachel that the climactic scene is a moment in the home, where she stares off into the distance, and then walking into a room, closes the door, and hangs herself. Then we watch as Nora follows in her grandmother’s footsteps, says goodbye to her nephew Erik, then she heads into that same room… and the audience presumes she is following in her grandmother’s footsteps. But that is when the camera zooms out from Nora’s face, and we see that she is actually on a soundstage. Peter is back on as the cinematographer, Erik is back on the film, and we watch as Nora and her father share a look… a look of understanding with her father.
What makes this ending powerful is that it grows organically out of everything before it. The movie isn’t building toward forgiveness. It’s building toward perspective. Nora doesn’t “get over” her childhood.
Gustav doesn’t fix his mistakes. Agnes doesn’t become the emotional glue. Instead, they reach a place where they can hold multiple truths at once: Gustav loved his family. He failed them. He was broken by loss. He caused real harm. And he tried too late to make things right.
All of that is true. Generally, most movies pick one and then pounds that one note over and over again. Sentimental Value actually plays all the notes, and then accepts them all for the sound that they make. And from these sounds, we get a symphony. From this symphony we get all the texture and vibrancy necessary to make a best picture level film.
Why This Is a Best Picture–Level Film
Sentimental Value works because every element serves this ending. The slow pacing gives relationships time to breathe. The natural performances make conversations feel lived-in. The restrained direction avoids emotional manipulation. The script trusts silence. Nothing in this movie is wasted. By the time that phone call happens, you’ve seen decades of emotional history compressed into a few quiet words. That’s craft. That’s confidence. That’s cinema.
