Ruben Östlund names the 10 greatest movies of all time
There are few filmmakers working in modern cinema that have a better grasp of the contemporary zeitgeist than the Swedish director, screenwriter and satirist Ruben Östlund. The winner of two Palme d’Ors in the space of just five years, Östlund has become one of cinema’s leading voices, bridging the gap between arthouse filmmaking and popular cinema with his inviting comedic takes on the absurdity of modern life.
Learning his craft without a rich knowledge of film history, Östlund first came into the industry by producing skiing videos and openly discusses how a lot of his inspiration comes, not from such masters of cinema as Martin Scorsese and Stanley Kubrick, but from everyday people on YouTube. “I want to be as good as the clips on YouTube on describing a human being,” the director states in a TIFF interview, “I think the absolute best way of using moving images has happened together with the internet and YouTube”.
Inspired by several YouTube videos throughout a number of his projects, it is the innate humanity of such uploaded clips that Östlund wants to extract and inject into his own films. Such videos are not produced by big studios, they are made by individuals or small teams, capturing an honest, unfiltered view of human behaviour and everyday life that movies often find far harder to bottle.
Still, the director behind the art world satire The Square and the Oscar-nominated jab at the super-rich, Triangle of Sadness, keeps a keen eye on cinema history, naming the ten greatest movies of all time for BFI’s decennial Sight and Sound poll.
The most striking additions on his list come in the form of A Swedish Love Story and Songs from the Second Floor, two films directed by one of Sweden’s greatest-ever filmmakers, Roy Andersson. Sharing a similar sense of dry humour, it is clear that Östlund takes great inspiration from Andersson, often mimicking his cinematography with long, distant shots of static situations as seen in 2011s Play, among other movies.
Elsewhere, Östlund gives some appreciation for the Kubrick movie that is given far too little love, choosing 1975s Barry Lyndon over the likes of 1968s 2001: A Space Odyssey or 1980s The Shining. An intriguing character study of an Irish rogue turned imposter, it’s no wonder that Östlund is such a fan of Barry Lyndon, being the one Kubrick film that so closely toys with concepts of human identity and social manoeuvring.
Take a look at the full list of Ruben Östlund’s picks for the ten greatest movies of all time below.
Ruben Östlund names the 10 greatest movies:
- Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975)
- Code Unknown (Michael Haneke, 2000)
- Come and See (Elem Klimov, 1985)
- The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Luis Buñuel, 1972)
- Holy Motors (Léos Carax, 2012)
- One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Milos Forman, 1975)
- Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980)
- A Swedish Love Story (Roy Andersson, 1970)
- Songs from the Second Floor (Roy Andersson, 2000)
- A Woman Under the Influence (John Cassavetes, 1974)
It’s also worth noting Östlund’s fondness for European cinema, picking out classics from the likes of Michael Haneke, Elem Klimov, Luis Buñuel and Léos Carax. Whilst Haneke’s Code Unknown and Klimov’s Come and See are rather dark in subject matter, they penetrate the heart of a very mortal tale, with Buñuel’s Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and Carax’s Holy Motors finding absurdity in contemporary life.
