Ari Aster

“Well, I chose this film, Closely Watched Trains, for this program I'm doing at Lincoln Center for Beau Is Afraid. This and Beau have in common that they are about a man who really needs to come.”

“Daisies, one of one of the many, many incredible Czech films that came out in the '60s. Amazing ending. It makes you sick.”

“There's an argument to be made that Cure by Kiyoshi Kurosawa is the greatest movie ever made.”

“Well, Mr. Klein by Joseph Losey is really brilliant. One of the great Holocaust films, and I think the film that gets closest to Kafka just as a nightmare of persecution. It's really like untoppable.”

“My friend Dan, recommended this to me after his friend recommended it to him, La Poison by Sacha Guitry, which has the best, opening credit sequence of all time. It's, it's a Sacha Guitry going up to all of his, going up to every member of the cast and, and, the crew and introducing them and telling them what, not only how much he loves them, but why he loves them, and, it's great. It's really special.”

“The New World. I can't find the words, but this movie is like immense to me and, like I never use the word transcendent, but, but it, but watching this film was a transcendent experience.”

“Secret Sunshine by Lee Chang-dong, who is I think one of the great filmmakers working now. I think Burning might be my favorite film of the last like decade, and this film is, so special and strange. I did not know how to take it when I first watched it. It's, about a woman who just like cannot stop suffering, and she moves to her dead husband's hometown with her son, and very early on her son is abducted and then killed. I'm not, I don't think I'm giving anything away because it happens so early on into the film, and there's a scene near the middle of the film, it might be a little bit later than that, when she goes to visit, her son's abductor in, in prison, and that is where the film becomes something so fascinating and so strange, that it's really never left me.”

“Woman in the Dunes by Hiroshi Teshigahara. I revisited this during, lockdown, in 2020 and it, it, it really struck me as the perfect, quarantine movie, and just one of the great films about men and women. He stopped making films, to, to become like a florist.”

“Not enough people talk about Che, which is a masterpiece and I think Steven Soderbergh's best film. I don't know why it didn't get, more attention because it really is like, I mean, just it's, I, I don't know how he made it, and I think it's why he kind of, you know, retired, is I think it was so disappointing how little attention the film got, but, and I get it. If, if I made Che and nobody paid attention, I would just say fuck you and stop.”

“Speaking of, unconventional biopics that don't fall into the typical traps, Mishima by Paul Schrader. It's, I mean, it's almost definitely the, the best film he ever made. Just, I mean, what he's doing with artifice here, what he's doing with structure, it's really, brilliant, and when I first saw it, it was like shocking.”

“Bigger Than Life, one of James Mason's best performances. It's very funny, it's very crazy. A great kind of like, alarmist pharmaceutical melodrama, where, by, by the end he's, he's, he's convinced that he's Abraham and he's gonna kill his son. It's great.”

“Brand Upon the Brain! By Guy Maddin. When I was in film school, I, was just like ripping him off non-stop. His whole thing is that he makes these films that feel like, these, these lost films from like the silent era or like early sound days. This film I saw, in theaters. It had this, this roadshow, release, where they, they, they took it around the country, I think, with, this gang of Foley artists and a live orchestra and different people narrating, and I saw it at the American Cinematheque, the Egyptian Theatre in LA, with Udo Kier narrating, and it was maybe the best experience I've ever had in a movie theater. I'm not gonna take it because I already own it, but I'm gonna hold it up for you.”

“Walkabout. Walkabout has the best opening, like the sequence, like it's, prologue, I don't know what it is. It's like this, or it's like an overture that leads to, like, you know, a father attempting to murder his children. And so like that, that, that is something I go back to over and over again.”

“Michael Haneke was very, very important to me growing up, especially The Piano Teacher and Caché, but his first films, they just call it the Trilogy here, but I think he called it in one interview the Emotional Glaciation Trilogy, and I think he regretted saying that, so that's probably why it doesn't say it here. Haneke is always talking about Bresson being his favorite filmmaker and like the only, the only filmmaker he really cares about, and, you really see that in these films, which are very Bressonian. Like they're kind of like, you know, the actors are basically functioning as models. The Seventh Continent is one of the most perfect films ever made and very upsetting. Benny's Video is a great film about Nazi youth, and 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance, is it is, you know, a great kind of like trial run for what he ended up doing with Code Unknown.”

“The films of Karel Zeman are amazing, and there's an animated sequence in Beau Is Afraid, that nods to, Invention for Destruction, which is, like, you know, astonishing.”

“The Koker Trilogy is incredible. The second film here, And Life Goes On, is really, like beyond the beyond, just so beautiful and touching, and like what I mean, you know, he's, he just takes children very seriously, especially in Where Is the Friend's House? But also And Life Goes On. And Through the Olive Trees is a great movie about the social politics of like being on a movie set.”

“Winchester ’73, the first film that Anthony Mann made with James Stewart. Maybe an unconscious adaptation of The Forged Coupon by Tolstoy, where you follow a coupon from one character to another. This has Rock Hudson as a Native American tribal leader, which some characters in Eddington would not appreciate.”

“Parallax View, one of the three Pakula masterpieces from the ’70s. One of my favorite conspiracy thrillers. This has one of the best sequences ever, which is the brainwashing, subliminal-messaging video. Just incredible editing, and funny and scary, and a great ending.”

“Lacombe, Lucien, one of the great films by the great Louis Malle, about a young man who wants to join the Resistance against the Nazis. But when the Resistance doesn’t take him, he decides to become a Nazi. And, I mean, Nazis are back in the mainstream. So, yeah, it’s worth a watch.”

“Revanche. Austrian film with a French title, by Götz Spielmann. I don’t hear it being talked about nearly enough. It’s one of the most beautiful films. The composition… Every shot is just gorgeous. And it’s a great film about isolated people and coincidence. And it’s beautiful. I love it. I really love it.”

“Peckinpah is a filmmaker that’s always on my mind, but especially with Eddington, and Straw Dogs is a perfect film, one of the great films about, you know, just how awful it is to be a person living with other people. And it’s also one of the tightest films ever made. It begins in a fraught place and just… it’s a snare that just tightens and tightens and tightens until the climax, which is just one of the greatest in all of movies.”

“Ace in the Hole by Billy Wilder, the first truly reviled movie that he ever released. And it’s a really misanthropic comedy that is genuinely upsetting, genuinely funny. Honest in its anger in a way that a lot of films made in America in the ’50s weren’t allowed to be. And it lands its point without compromising. It’s a great film.”

“Here’s another reviled film, A Face in the Crowd. This is one of the great political satires, with one of the great villains, Lonesome Rhodes, played by Andy Griffith. If I could have cast Andy Griffith in Eddington, I would have. Also the way that he’s brought down in this movie is the same way that the Penguin is brought down in Batman Returns.”

“Wanda by Barbara Loden. I know this movie has received its due reappraisal, but not enough people talk about how funny it is. The character of Mr. Dennis, played by Michael Higgins, is… is right up there with Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet. “No junk.” He’s talking about pickles. It also has one of the great final freeze-frames, which involves a hot dog.”

“Do the Right Thing, Spike Lee, one of the most seminal texts on race in America. Playful, funny, inventive, sad, scary. It’s a huge film. And for anybody who attempts to talk about race in America, this is always there.”

“Graduation, one of the great films by the great Cristian Mungiu, about a middle-aged white guy living in a quasi-rural area who is trapped in a maze of crises of his own making.”

“Just going to mention The Grifters, because you cannot make a crime film without thinking about Jim Thompson. This is a great film. You guys also put out Coup de torchon, which is Tavernier’s adaptation of Pop. 1280. This is great.”

“You Can Count on Me, Kenneth Lonergan, one of the great small-town movies, one of the great films about siblings. Nobody writes dialogue, nobody writes people as well as he does. And that includes his plays. Margaret should end up in here as well.”

“The Wages of Fear, a great slow burn where the movie takes its time introducing you to its characters, setting up the environment, setting up the dynamics, so that when the action hits, it is very affecting and frightening and upsetting. Yeah, this is a masterpiece.”

“Lone Star by John Sayles. Great film about all these cultural identities having to cohabitate and live together, and about American history. It’s investigating American history. Just a really sensitive, smart American epic.”

“Last Picture Show by Peter Bogdanovich, based on the great book by Larry McMurtry. Really specifically observed and very funny. And it’s a film that I come back to a lot. I find it very comforting. It also has such a… like, a wonderful texture. Bogdanovich made some great films, but this to me is the greatest.”

“But that brings me to another Bogdanovich film, Targets. Once you’ve seen Eddington, you will understand where these are connected. Maybe the best film made under Roger Corman. Bogdanovich also acts in the movie, and it’s not his best performance. That would be The Sopranos.”

“Young Mr. Lincoln, My Darling Clementine, two of my favorite John Ford films, two of his most romantic films, films about the heroic myth of America, the dream of America. And it’s very sad that they’re… that they’re not true. Hopefully they will come to pass.”

“My Darling Clementine, two of my favorite John Ford films, two of his most romantic films, films about the heroic myth of America, the dream of America. And it’s very sad that they’re… that they’re not true. Hopefully they will come to pass.”

“No Country for Old Men, Coen brothers. Anybody making a contemporary western has to contend with this one. We all know it’s perfect. I have nothing to add.”