Louder Than Bombs (2016)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Admirable film.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

This film tells the story of a father and his two teenage sons, who core cope with the untimely death of their wife / mother due to a traffic accident. Their grief is further complicated by a breakdown on communication.I tried very hard to understand the story, but honestly I didn't understand a thing. "Louder Than Bombs" tries to tell a story of a dysfunctional family, but it ends up being an aimless drivel. I have no idea what the story is trying to convey. It jumps between the past and present inexplicably, and there is little continuity and connection between the past and present. And what's the fascination with decomposition of bodies? Those scenes are just plain gross. Perhaps the scenes are there to be provocative, but they simply alienate viewers from the film. Furthermore, it is not interesting to see teenagers sulk all the time. I regret having wasted my time watching this indecipherable collage of scenes.

Louder Than Bombs is a very earnest film that ultimately succeeds because its heart is in the right place. All the actors are very convincing in their portrayal as a close family that is devastated when the mother Isabelle (Isabelle Huppert) dies. Previously, she had suffered emotional conflict from being a very successful war photographer and having to combine that with motherhood and home life. As her damaged younger son Conrad, actor Devin Druid utterly steals the movie from his more experienced co-stars including Gabriel Byrne as his Dad and Jesse Eisenberg as his much older brother, Jonah. Druid conveys a keen intelligence but also depression, isolation, and trying to work out his problems on his own. A really demanding role and he succeeds beautifully. Gabriel Byrne has a fairly easy role as a very caring father who doesn't know how to handle Conrad's behaviour. Eisenberg's role is not as defined as Druid's -- Jonah's wife has just had a baby, Jonah has an affair, he tries to catalogue his mother's photographs but to me it didn't amount to much. Contrary to the film's title, there isn't a lot in the movie about Isabelle's work in war torn countries. I guess the movie is more about grief - about how the three men aren't coping at first, and how they eventually learn to cope. Special mention to a a smaller but lovely role from Ruby Jerins, playing Conrad's love interest Melanie. Jerins had a strong part as the nurse's troubled daughter in the TV series Nurse Jackie, and here she plays the quintessential flawed teenager very well.

Most coming-of-age films lean on the romantic comedy or melodrama for shape and structure, usually with a linear storyline that leads to a metaphorical awakening or some other resolution. As you might expect from a Norwegian director, Louder than Bombs (2015) avoids this well-trodden approach by telling a multi-layered fractured tale that looks more like a thriller than a teen-drama. Adolescents who clam-up tightly to exclude the world while they catch up with its emotional challenges are common stories. The one in this film is like a bomb about to explode and his story forms the narrative spine along which several sub-plots radiate in all directions.Conrad is an introspective young war-gamer who has closed off to the world since his famous war photographer mother Isabelle was killed three years ago. He keeps to himself at school and defiantly ignores his well-meaning ex-TV star father. A photo exhibition is planned to commemorate Isabelle's work and a former colleague plans an article that will reveal the secret truth of Isabelle's suicide. Conrad has been shielded from this truth, as well as from the affairs of his father and brother. Over-protection has increasingly isolated him until he tries to connect with a girl in class. It's a complex non-liner plot line with several flashbacks that shift across narrative lines to create the visual effect of a perfect storm of fractured people. Isabelle's war images and her memory keep appearing but the battle we are seeing is raging in the minds of those she left behind who struggle to move on with their lives.The film has an unsettling asymmetrical style about it. You find it in the withholding of truths, in the gender inversion of a war zone mother and a TV soapies father, and in hair-trigger Conrad lashing out in all directions. While the acting is often melodramatic, the filming is edgy with sharp editing cuts and sudden discordant images that feel out of context (like tumbling aerial schoolgirls). It has an uneven but reflective pace that disorients the viewer and leaves them uncertain how the story can hold together. But through the foggy mess of their lives appears hope for better times. More art-house than spoon-fed, the film feels refreshingly free of clichés and leaves you thinking about the impact of distant memories on daily lives.

After watching this film my first reaction was that the story isn't about the family (father, sons, wife) and their emotional needs but about what the mothers photographs fails to convey and emanate to the viewer.In this movie it is easy to empathize and sympathize with the family's tragic loss of their mother, the solitude and loneliness felt by the youngest son Conrad, the fathers need for companionship and to communicate with someone his own age and the frustration he feels because Conrad seems to have rejected him, and the oldest son Jonah having to juggle the death of his mother and being a new father and far away from his wife and newborn. Life and death are at conflict here! These are moving talking people; we see them as living beings. BUT in the mothers photography we are only given still images of people who are suffering and unable to communicate with the viewer outside of the viewers imagination. Still images cannot have the same effect as moving talking living beings.The mothers photography showing the dispossessed and their pained faces and suffering bodies becomes art. Pleasure can be found in art! But in real life pain accompanies pleasure. A two dimensional photo of people in distant locals cannot be louder than bombs. Only the living and daily life can be louder than bombs.This film is so finely crafted, scripted, acted, that endless discussion can be made from it.