Joachim Trier once again is drawn by the quirks, faults, and excellences that drive people towards and away from each other. Sentimental Value is very much about the need to express oneself and tell one’s story, often through art, or discover oneself through it. 

Renate Reinsve shines in a role both subtle yet demanding though never reminds you it’s such. Meanwhile, Stellan Skarsgard finds himself in one of the most powerful roles of his career. He gives a richness to his role, the distant father who in most films would be painted as a humiliation, but rather Trier and co-writer Eskil Vogt make Skarsgard’s character’s journey just as valid as that of his daughters, never trying to make the audience judge whether any of these characters are “better” or “worse” than one another.

Elle Fanning’s character enters this world with fascination, and her character is filled with empathy while avoiding predictable tropes the role could’ve easily fallen into. The film often lets us inhabit a space with these characters in long scenes of reflective — and introspective — dialogue, though sometimes the story takes time to pick up between acts. Once the final act comes, though, it pieces together everything the film had to say about individuals’ need to be spoken and heard through emotional intimacy — with art often being the only way — in a big and resonant manner.

This accessible and matter-of-fact historical drama is engaging and makes good use of its runtime and central cast. Rami Malek inhabits the role of Douglas Kelley quite well, a psychiatrist brought to assess the mental state of Nazi prisoners convicted of war crimes leading up to the Nuremberg trial. Russell Crowe gives one of his strongest performances in recent years as Hermann Goring, one of the most evil and infamous figures of the Nazi party responsible for carrying out many of the Reich’s atrocities, including Hitler’s plan to conquer Europe and murder millions of innocent Jews and others the party deemed inferior. Crowe’s performance emulates a manipulative coldness that’s hard to read, as the film examines how such ego would respond to losing such immense power, and Malek’s character attempts to find the man’s weaknesses. Michael Shannon gives an excellent performance as Justice Robert H. Jackson, who leads the charge in the trial and remains the film’s most passionate and likable character, though Richard E. Grant does effortlessly steal the screen later on, too. Leo Woodall is solid, but his and Colin Hanks’ characters are slightly underwritten.

The film’s main distracting element is the color-grading that’s oddly dull and dry, even for a film of such hefty subject material. The movie does do a great job, however, of showing the importance of the Nuremberg trials in a broader historical context, and ensuring that such evil would never be enabled again. It also powerfully connects the rise of Nazi ideology to history that followed, including McCarthyism and other far-right movements in America. It’s an interesting watch, if not one of the most resonant recent films about WWII or the Holocaust and their aftermath, led by an all-star cast.