Aubrey Plaza’s favourite Ingmar Bergman movies
The true enigma of dramatic comedy, Aubrey Plaza has carved out a very special personality for herself on screen ever since she burst onto the acting scene with a performance in Parks and Recreation as the ultra-deadpan and witty character April Ludgate, a role through which she showcases her one-of-a-kind ability.
Plaza has extended her talent elsewhere to a remarkable degree, too, say in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World as Julie Powers or as Lenny Busker in Legion. After starring in the second season of The White Lotus, Plaza further cemented her position as one of the best of her generation, and she earned Golden Globe and Primetime Emmy award nominations in the process.
While Plaza had indeed established herself as a truly unique performer in every way, she has also revealed herself to be something of a cinephile and once named her favourite movies of all time in a feature with Criterion. Her passion for John Cassavetes only seems to be matched by her love for the Swedish cinema icon Ingmar Bergman.
Of all Bergman’s works, two stick out at the forefront of Plaza’s mind: Fanny and Alexander and Scenes from a Marriage. The first is Bergman’s 1982 period drama that focuses on a pair of siblings and their family in Uppsala, Sweden, at the beginning of the 20th century. When their father dies, the siblings’ mother remarries a bishop who begins to abuse the brother.
“I watch Fanny and Alexander every year,” Plaza said of her first Bergman pick. “There’s obviously some dark stuff in it, but it’s a great comfort movie to me. Whenever I’m shooting a film, and I have to go live in some weird hotel in a far-off location for a month or two, I put Fanny and Alexander on while I’m unpacking and trying to settle in. I don’t speak fluent Swedish, but I have a decent command of it. I’ve picked up a lot of Swedish from watching Fanny so many times.”
Scenes from a Marriage is a television miniseries by Bergman that was released in 1973. The six-hour-long episodes were condensed into a theatrical version, which won the Golden Glove for ‘Best Foreign Language Film’. The work focuses on the breakdown of a divorce lawyer, played by Liv Ullman, and a psychology professor, portrayed by Erland Josephson, over the course of ten years.
“From an acting perspective, Scenes from a Marriage is particularly mind-blowing,” Plaza noted. “Most of it is simply conversations between two people who talk and argue, yet it’s so compelling. I can’t believe they tried to remake it. No shade on the people involved with that show—I just can’t imagine it.”
