The “great comfort movie” Aubrey Plaza watches at least once every year
Everybody has that one film that they can return to again and again without fail to comfort them.
Maybe it’s the classic movie you come back to every year, maybe it’s one from your childhood that just never gets old, or maybe it’s a good blockbuster or chick flick that’s so predictable it could never cause you anxiety. But only someone like Aubrey Plaza would pick an Ingmar Bergman masterpiece as her de-stressor.
You know the auteur whose films are described in his own biography as “profoundly personal meditations into the myriad struggles facing the psyche and the soul”. Yes, that Bergman. Detailing her Top Ten for Criterion, she said, “I watch Fanny and Alexander every year. There’s obviously some dark stuff in it, but it’s a great comfort movie to me.”
The film tells the story of the eponymous Fanny and Alexander, two children born to a big, happy and creative family, whose lives are put into disarray upon the death of their father. Their mother, Emilie, quickly remarries a prominent Bishop, who turns out to be cold and abusive, especially to the young Alexander, who has a penchant for telling stories. Ostensibly Bergman’s last great film, it is widely considered one of his best, along with Persona and Wild Strawberries.
While the premise might sound like it could fit a similar mould to the emotionally complex but heartwarming movies like It’s a Wonderful Life or The Holdovers, as you can imagine, with a Bergman film, it does not. The “dark stuff” Plaza references include child abuse, a woman being held captive to a marriage due to the laws of the era, parental death, false imprisonment, spiking, immolation… the list goes on. How comforting!!
When I think of comfort, I think The Lord of the Rings or Julie & Julia. But then again, this is Aubrey Plaza we’re talking about. She is a true enigma both in her dramatic comedy and in her public persona. Likened to a real-life Wednesday Addams, her snarky, deadpan humour was first displayed in her breakout role as April Ludgate in Parks and Recreation.
So, of course, it wouldn’t be something typical that she puts on for comfort. In fact, she’s watched the Swedish film so many times that she’s picked up a fair amount of the language. This probably comes in handy given that another of her favourites is Bergman’s Scenes From A Marriage.
Plaza is uncompromising in her love of the director to the point she’s close to insulting the contemporary English language adaptation of the latter film. “I can’t believe they tried to remake it. No shade on the people involved with that show — I just can’t imagine it,” she explained.
The rest of her list is made up of equally eclectic but unsurprising choices from her, including two by John Cassavetes, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, and, of course, Federico Fellini’s 8½. It’s easy to tell she went to film school.
