The movie of “supreme, swirling inspiration” that shaped Ari Aster’s career
When Ari Aster released his debut feature, Hereditary, he soon became a part of a new phenomenon that many film fans dubbed ‘elevated horror’. It’s a controversial term that inherently misunderstands the decades worth of horror films with something interesting to say, but regardless, Aster soon became the face of this era of ‘smart scary movies’.
This was only emphasised by the release of his second feature, Midsommar, a folk horror-inspired tale of grief, trauma, and cult indoctrination featuring Florence Pugh in an unforgettable role. It was well-received, like Hereditary, but his next film, Beau Is Afraid, a surreal horror comedy, polarised critics. Not wanting to pigeonhole himself into the genre, Aster has now taken his first step out of the horror genre with a neo-western, Eddington, revealing the filmmaker’s appreciation for cinema that evidently extends far beyond horror.
In fact, one of the main influences that floated around Aster’s mind while making the movie was the Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini, whose work deals with dreams, human relationships, obsession, and childhood. While Aster and Fellini’s films might not bear striking resemblances, it’s the way that Fellini’s use of form was so fluid and unchained to convention that has deeply inspired Aster. Specifically, the auteur’s 1963 film 8½ has played a massive part in informing Aster’s appreciation for cinema, with the director even picking the movie as one of the greatest films ever made for Sight and Sound’s poll.
Explaining his choice, Aster said, “A work of total formal authority and absolute freedom. Fellini’s camera – always dancing deliriously, always restless to top itself – was never more fluid or agile or attentive, his blocking of actors never more acrobatic. A work of supreme, swirling inspiration.”
8 ½ is a gorgeous meditation on memory and creation, with Marcello Mastroianni starring as a director who is struggling to complete a project. Deeply inspired by Fellini’s own experiences as a filmmaker, the movie inserts reflective scenes of the character’s childhood, as well as hypnotic and surreal sequences that have proved highly influential.
At the Cannes Film Festival, Aster further explained his love for Fellini during a press conference, revealing the filmmaker’s influence over Eddington. “I love Fellini. I was thinking about Fellini a lot on my last film. I get the humour, the way he populates his films with eccentrics and characters and no matter how many people are in a frame, none of them are wasted. He loves people, he loves faces.”
He continued, “Working with the camera and blocking, I’d go back to 8½ all the time, for the dance between the camera and the people. It’s so free. He’s one of the filmmakers I go to a lot as sort of a liberating influence, that you can do anything. He’s so idiosyncratic and personal and funny, and his films are alive. That’s what I look for. Is this a living thing?”
So, while you might not look at an Aster film and immediately think of Fellini, his influence is deeply woven into the very fabric of the Hereditary director’s approach to filmmaking, which similarly attempts to get to the core of the human experience, despite the inherent surrealism and strangeness of it all.
