Louder Than Bombs

Louder Than Bombs (2015) is a Norwegian-American drama from director Joachim Trier — stream it online on iFILM. Three years after celebrated war photographer Isabelle Reed dies in a car crash, her husband Gene (Gabriel Byrne) is still managing what their teenage son Conrad (Devin Druid) knows about how it happened. The answer he's given isn't the whole truth.

When older son Jonah (Jesse Eisenberg) comes home ahead of a retrospective exhibition of Isabelle's work, the three men who have been living in separate orbits end up under one roof. Conrad retreats into his own private worlds. Jonah is pulled between this family and the new life he's building. Gene is caught between protecting a boy and the creeping realization that he and Isabelle had grown apart long before she died. Isabelle Huppert appears as Isabelle in fragments — each man's memory of her shaped differently.

Trier builds the film in layers rather than scenes, cutting between timelines and inner states until the silences carry as much weight as anything spoken. What makes it stick is how accurately it maps the loneliness of people who share the same grief but can't reach each other through it. Watch Louder Than Bombs online on iFILM.