The film that changed the way Paul Dano looked at movies: “This is my personal favourite”
American actor Paul Dano has always been somewhat of an underdog. Keeping himself relatively out of the spotlight and preferring to work in smaller, independent productions, Dano has not received the same celebrity status as many of his contemporaries.
However, it can be argued that Dano is one of the finest actors of his generation, never falling short of delivering an incredible performance, no matter the role. Starting his career as a teenager, he made waves when he starred in L.I.E as a 16-year-old boy who finds himself involved with a much older man, played by Brian Cox.
Dano rose to further prominence when he appeared in the Oscar-winning dark comedy Little Miss Sunshine alongside Alan Arkin, Toni Collette, Steve Carrell, Greg Kinnear and Abigail Breslin. The young actor charmed viewers with his portrayal of the purposefully mute Dwayne, who later breaks his vow of silence in an emotionally charged scene.
The following year, Dano could be found in a much darker, intense movie – Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood. Playing the dual role of Paul and Eli Sunday, many critics praised Dano for holding his own against acting legend Daniel Day-Lewis.
Since then, Dano has appeared in movies such as Ruby Sparks, Love and Mercy, Okja, The Batman and even directed his own feature, Wildlife. You only have to look at Dano’s filmography, which includes very few blockbuster hits, to see that he is passionate about the art of cinema.
For Dano, his love of the medium was cemented by his discovery of Yasujirō Ozu, the Japanese director known for movies such as Tokyo Story, Late Spring, Early Summer and An Autumn Afternoon. A master of slow cinema, Ozu is one of the most influential directors of all time, known for his exploration of family, time and marriage.
Talking to Criterion, Dano selected Early Summer as one of his favourite movies. The film explores the relationships between several generations of a Japanese family in the early 1950s. Describing his love for the film, Dano said, “Ozu changed the way I look at film. Proof that less is more. What blossoms from his unmoving camera is huge, heartbreaking, poetic, and truly singular. This is my personal favourite of his.”
In another interview with Criterion, Dano elucidated his love for Ozu. “I think being offered the quietness, which I do feel gave me something like a sense of permission, like, ‘Oh I could do that,’ because that is really reflective of how I experience the world. And I think the details, and sort of, the weight of the moment, especially in this day and age, so many things [are] getting faster and faster, where like, taking a moment with something – it soon becomes something else. And then, if you stay there, it may even become something else. And that was something I hadn’t really experienced with a single shot before.”
Dano also admires how Ozu often skipped the big details, such as abstaining from depicting the wedding in a film about marriage, stating, “In an American film the wedding would be a huge set piece sequence.”
Watch the full video of Dano discussing Ozu below.
