Denis Villeneuve names the movie that “floored” him
It’s difficult not to be floored by the filmmaking of Denis Villeneuve. Since making his directorial debut in 1998 with August 32nd on Earth, Villeneuve has proven his ability to hone a cinematic atmosphere like no other. From the towering spiders of Enemy to the backlit aliens of Arrival, he’s earned his place as one of the most striking visual storytellers of his generation.
The French-Canadian filmmaker has one of the slickest styles in contemporary cinema, his expansive landscapes and gorgeously intentional cinematography working to reinvent the idea of the blockbuster. He’s floored audiences with giant neon projections and the epic worldbuilding of Dune; Villeneuve has won over sci-fi fans and cinephiles alike, but which films have managed to floor the director himself?
Picking out some of his favourite films during a conversation with Letterboxd, Villeneuve named Stanley Kubrick classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, Francis Ford Coppola epic Apocalypse Now, the first Blade Runner film and Steven Spielberg sci-fi Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But the film he declared “absolutely floored” him was Ingmar Bergman’s excursion into the avant-garde, Persona.
Released in 1966, Persona starred Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann. The latter played a famed actor who has stopped talking, while Andersson plays the nurse who hopes to figure out why. Though the two characters are distinctly different, the two women seem to merge as the film progresses.
The “psychological exploration of this relationship between two women,” as Villeneuve describes it, pushes into the depths of the human psyche and discusses topics such as abortion and homosexuality. Half a century has passed since it was first released, but Persona has only accrued acclaim and discussion, coming to be considered among the greatest films of all time.
Villeneuve is amongst those who consider it to be so. The filmmaker first discovered the movie and its director when he was in his 20s, describing the experience as “like an earthquake in my life”. As a result, he simply had to include a Bergman creation on his favourites list. His love for the film is unwavering decades later, as he deems it, “to this day, one of my favourite films of all time.”
A film that provoked thought and controversy, it has become a staple influence for those filmmakers looking to think outside the box, so it’s no surprise that Villeneuve cites it as a favourite. Though his own filmography is yet to reach the same levels of avant-garde, he has proven his own capabilities to floor with filmmaking.
