The Mike Leigh movie Ari Aster screened on the set of ‘Hereditary’
There are few films in contemporary horror to have had quite the impact as Ari Aster’s debut, Hereditary. When the film came out in 2018, it announced Aster as a major player in modern horror and became one of A24’s highest-grossing movies, taking the top spot until the release of Everything Everywhere All at Once in 2022.
Hereditary stars Toni Collette, Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro and Gabriel Byrne and tells of a family in the throes of grief following the death of their strange grandmother. As the film progresses, though, it becomes clear that the Graham family are being possessed by an evil demonic entity caused by their grandmother’s former occultist actions.
While Aster’s film is certainly a result of his personal genius as a writer and director, with horror returning to its former narrative and thematic glories, Aster is certainly not without his inspirations. In a feature with Rotten Tomatoes, the director named his favourite movies of all time and showed that he has far more influence on his creativity than the horror genre alone.
The truth is that Aster appears to love the works of legendary British filmmaker Mike Leigh, known for his emotive films that reveal the deepest vulnerabilities of his characters. In fact, Aster screened Leigh’s 2002 drama All or Nothing while the Hereditary filming took place.
The director noted, “[It] is another film I just adore. It’s one of his bleaker family dramas. It ends on a bittersweet note. It’s a very tender film, but it’s also deeply sorrowful. It struck me as a kind of a perfect movie to watch before we made Hereditary.” Indeed, there is often a bleakness to Leigh’s films that Aster found inspiration for his own extremely dark piece of horror cinema.
All or Nothing follows a group of working-class characters from a housing estate in London. Leigh taps into their everyday lives and explores the struggles, failures and occasional triumphs that they experience by allowing his actors to improvise and dive into the psyches of their characters.
Aster had simply stated that Leigh “might be my favourite living filmmaker” before noting the way that the English director makes his films. “He spends about six months with his actors basically finding the characters and improvising and building these relationships,” Aster said. “Then after that, he’ll go off and write a script based on the improvisations that took place over those six months.”
It’s easy to see the kind of preparation Leigh makes before taking on a film shoot in All or Nothing, which stars Timothy Spall and Lesley Manville in a truly authentic and moving narrative whereby the sets and locations feel truly lived in, all coming down to the fearless commitment of Leigh in weaving his truthful narratives.
“It results in some of the most vivid character work I’ve ever seen,” Aster admitted. “The relationships in his films are so rich, and you just feel so much history there. That’s because the history has really been built. It really exists.” All or Nothing is not the only film of Leigh that Aster admires, though. In fact, it’s not even his favourite of the filmmakers.
1993’s Naked is Aster’s true Leigh favourite, but when it came to setting the tone of Hereditary, Aster couldn’t find a better movie to screen onset than the director’s 2002 drama. Check out the trailer for All or Nothing below.
