27/2/2026 11:21p.m.
this week, i watched sentimental value (2025, dir. joachim trier, 🐈🐈🐈🐈½meows) and hamnet (2025, dir. chloé zhao, 🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈/meows) on back-to-back nights (DO NOT try this if you want to stay sane. i lost count of the number of tears i shed over the past two days). anyway, i can't stop thinking about how strangely similar they feel to each other. about the "sentimental value" of things, not just objects, but places, family heirlooms, wounds passed down like inheritance, and even art itself, whether it's a theatrical play unfolding within the story or a film reflecting on its own making.
what fascinated me most is how both films portray a physical space as something deeply sentimental. the fractures and conflicts all begin in one place. and that space then gets passed down from one generation to the next. in sentimental value, the house feels less like a backdrop and more like a character. it observes. it absorbs. it remembers. at times it even feels like the narrator of the story.
when there is tension, the house feels tense. when everyone leaves, it feels abandoned. it is like a container that stores the emotional fragment of everyday life, layer after layer, year after year. that is what transforms a simple structure into something sentimental.
in hamnet, space means something a little different. it feels closer to tradition and heritage. agnes refuses to give birth inside william’s house because that space does not hold meaning for her. instead she wants to give birth in the forest. the forest is her sentimental place. it carries a spiritual belief that has been passed down through generations, that the women in her family come from the forest. so that house feels unfamiliar and unsettling to her. it does not carry the same emotional or spiritual value. for agnes, safety is not about a shelter. but it is about the connection to the land.
maybe that is what ties these films together for me. sentimental value is never really about the object or the structure itself. it is about what we attach to it. over time, a house or a forest becomes more than a place. once a space holds that kind of meaning, it is almost impossible to see it as just a space ever again.
