Ari Aster

“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 the many, many incredible Czech films that came out in the '60s. Amazing ending. 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 the closest to Kafka. Just as a nightmare of persecution, it's really, like, untoppable.”

“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 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 cannot stop suffering. There's a scene near the middle of the film once she goes to visit her son's abductor in prison. And that is where the film becomes something so fascinating and so strange.”

“Woman in the Dunes by Hiroshi Teshigahara. I revisited this during lockdown in 2020 and 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 become like a florist.”

“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 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 alarmist pharmaceutical melodrama where by the end he's convinced that he's Abraham and he's going to kill his son. It's great.”

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

“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, I don't know how he made it. And I think it's why he kind of retired is I think he was so disappointed how little attention the film got. And I get it. If I made Che and nobody paid attention, I would just say fuck you and stop.”

“Michael Haneke was very, very important to me growing up. His first films, they just call it the trilogy here, but I think he called it the emotional glaciation trilogy. You really see Bresson's influence in these films, which are very Bressonian. 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 the 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance is a great kind of trial run for what he ended up doing with Code Unk...”

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

“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.”

“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 Sacha Guitry going up to every member of the cast and the crew and introducing them and telling them not only how much he loves them, but why he loves them. And it's great. It's really special.”

“Brand upon the Brain! By Guy Maddin. When I was in film school, I was just like ripping him off nonstop. His whole thing is that he makes these films that feel like these lost films from the silent era or like early sound days. This film I saw in theaters with a gang of foley artists and a live orchestra and different people narrating, and I saw it with Udo Kier narrating, and it was maybe the best experience I've ever had in a movie theater.”

“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 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.”

“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.”

“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.”