Kazuo Ishiguro names his 10 favourite arthouse films
The landscape of contemporary literature is always shifting in infinite ways, but one name that is always at the centre of public discourse is Kazuo Ishiguro. A recipient of the coveted Nobel Prize in Literature, Ishiguro’s literary investigations, such as The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, have become an integral part of popular culture. While his works might not be for everyone, it’s hard to deny Ishiguro’s influence on the current artistic climate.
In addition to writers such as Haruki Murakami and Cormac McCarthy, Ishiguro has often drawn inspiration from cinema and music. Having described himself as a “serious cinephile, the celebrated writer has a wide-ranging taste in films – from French New Wave auteurs like Jacques Demy to modern pioneers such as Guillermo del Toro. During a recent conversation with Criterion, Ishiguro opened up about his favourite arthouse masterpieces.
This year, Ishiguro picked up an Oscar nomination for writing the screenplay for Living – an adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru. The writer told Criterion: “I first saw Ikiru when I was a child growing up in England, and it had a profound influence on me. That’s not just because it was one of the very few Japanese movies I was able to see at that time, but because it said something really encouraging to me, something I held with me all through my student years and as I was becoming an adult.”
Ishiguro also included Dr. Strangelove in his list, naming it as his favourite Kubrick film. He admitted: “Kubrick made many masterpieces, but this is my favourite. I watched it on television when I was quite young. It’s a remarkable blend of things that shouldn’t go together; it’s miraculous that Kubrick created the darkest vision you could have of nuclear war and combined it with out-and-out comedy. Watching it, I can see that it tops Fail Safe, which was made almost at the same time. Kubrick’s film interprets the same story as a very bleak comedy.”
The novelist also expressed his admiration for del Toro: “I think Guillermo del Toro is one of the most remarkable artists in contemporary cinema. Everyone who sees Pan’s Labyrinth is overwhelmed by it. It’s a great movie about how human beings need fantasy. When life gets to be too much, we need to have a place to escape to. The film combines elements of fantasy, animation, and a war epic with themes of domestic trauma and a child’s point of view—and with every one of those things, the film excels.”
Check out the full list below.
Kazuo Ishiguro’s favourite arthouse films:
- Shanghai Express (Josef von Sternberg, 1932)
- It Happened One Night (Frank Capra, 1934)
- Dr. Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)
- The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1943)
- Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, 2006)
- The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Jacques Demy, 1964)
- The Lady Vanishes (Alfred Hitchcock, 1938)
- Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu, 1949)
- Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa, 1952)
- Le cercle rouge (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1970)
The writer also declared Yasujirō Ozu to be his “favourite filmmaker of all time”, selecting his 1953 masterpiece Late Spring as his preferred Ozu gem. Among Ozu’s most accomplished dramatic works, Late Spring stars Setsuko Hara as a devoted daughter who is happy living with her widowed father (Chishû Ryû) but has to succumb to the societal pressures associated with marriage.
Ishiguro revealed: “I had to choose something by Ozu, who is probably my favourite filmmaker of all time. The father-daughter relationship at the heart of Late Spring is something that Ozu returned to several times, and it’s a subject that surprisingly isn’t dealt with in cinema very much. The film is about the generosity that’s required for a parent to let go of a beloved child, which is something all parents have to do if they care about their children’s happiness.”
