Ari Aster’s favourite Ingmar Bergman movies of all time
Hailed by the likes of Martin Scorsese as a promising filmmaker, Ari Aster has become a major part of the conversation concerning contemporary American cinema. Since his debut feature, Hereditary, Aster has embarked on increasingly ambitious projects that have generated a lot of discourse about both the horror genre and his unique creative vision.
After working on the visually opulent psychological horror Midsommar, Aster started developing a markedly different idea that taps into the vast frameworks of existential horror. Undoubtedly among the most polarising releases of the year, Beau is Afraid starred Joaquin Phoenix as a paranoid middle-aged man whose world starts collapsing around him. Almost paralysed by psychological issues, he begins a strange journey into the depths of his own troubled consciousness.
Many fans have pointed out the horror masterpieces that have informed Aster’s understanding of the genre, but one notable source of inspiration is Ingmar Bergman. In an interview with Criterion, the American director explained how Bergman’s unforgettable investigations of human identity and psychology impacted his work. For Aster, one of the key cinematic experiences of his life will always be Bergman’s Persona.
Aster said: “I love all of Bergman’s films, but his later period has had the biggest impact on me, starting with Persona. The film marked the advent of a new period for him; I know that he wrote it when he was in the hospital and thought he was going to die. It adopts a dream logic in a really forward-thinking way, and like Altman’s Three Women, is an example of a proto-Lynchian dream movie. I was thinking about that when we were making Hereditary, how it gradually adopts a nightmare logic.”
The filmmaker added: “Cries and Whispers strikes me as the most painful and beautiful film about death… and sisterhood. I screened it for the crew when we were making Hereditary, which is also a movie about suffering. Bergman was always wrestling with the big things — family dynamics, one’s relationship to God — but he did it in such an accessible way. His films are entertainments — they’re fun, and they’re beautiful. I feel like he has a reputation for being a forbidding director, but I find him to be as inviting as a filmmaker like that could possibly be.”
The themes that Aster cites while discussing Bergman’s later works can be found in all his films, especially Beau is Afraid. Even though, stylistically, his latest feature invokes the surreal psychological energy of directors like Federico Fellini, it operates within the grand philosophical frameworks that Bergman incorporated throughout his career.
Check out the list below.
Ari Aster’s favourite Ingmar Bergman movies:
- Persona (1966)
- Cries and Whispers (1972)
- Fanny and Alexander (1982)
