Rutger Hauer names his five favourite films
Rutger Hauer’s performances in The Hitcher, Blade Runner and Hobo With a Shotgun have elevated him into one of the most highly respected Dutch actors in Hollywood’s history.
Perhaps Hauer’s most iconic contribution to the rich tapestry of cinematic history came in the climactic scene of Blade Runner when he improvised one of the film’s most memorable monologues, “tears in rain”. Only an actor as effortlessly talented as Hauer could have come up with something as powerfully poetic as the now famous line on the fly.
Weighing in on his favourite films of all time, Hauer noted Josh Fox’s GasLand, which explored the pollution of drinking water in the United States. Hauer said: “I just admire this guy and this documentary, and I’ve always been a major fan of good documentaries. It couldn’t have been done with a shittier camera, and I love that about the shitty cameras.”
A year after GasLand’s release in 2010, another documentary was released that particularly captivated Hauer’s attention. Of Position Among the Stars and its director Leonard Retel Helmrich, Hauer said: “This is a Dutch-Indonesian director who has made a portrait of one family over the course of 12 years in Indonesia. I talked to him for a few hours on the last day, before he won the award in Sundance, about what he was doing and how he was doing it. It’s an awesome documentary. It’s just a portrait of a small family, with a universal theme coming out of it at the end.”
Elsewhere, going way back and into the world of fictional film, Hauer is in great admiration of Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima Mon Amour. Hauer said that Resnais’ beautiful film “hit him hard”. He added, “The first cuts are so deep, you know, when your hard disc is still pretty empty, and these first films hit you so hard. It really woke up my eyes for something else. It was so poetic and so cool and just really enjoyable.”
Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire is another cinema classic that holds a special place in Hauer’s heart. The film tells of invisible angels who listen to the thoughts of Berlin’s society and comfort its most distressed. Discussing the film’s cast and its director, Hauer said, “I loved his writing, it was so strong and so sharp, and when the film came out, I just loved it. Everything about it was marvellous. Bruno Ganz was so brilliant.”
Rutger Hauer’s five favourite films:
- GasLand (Josh Fox, 2010)
- Position Among the Stars (Leonard Retel Helmrich, 2011)
- Hiroshima Mon Amour (Alain Resnais, 1959)
- Wings of Desire (Wim Wenders, 1987)
- Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
Rounding off his list, Hauer paid homage to a true titan of the industry, Francis Ford Coppola and his inimitable Apocalypse Now, a film he believes was “ahead of its time”. He said, “So many things happened on it. And I didn’t even see the longer version. I think there’s a version that’s like three or four hours long. It’s such a mixed feeling of painful darkness – it’s not surprising with Heart of Darkness, to quote that – and of course, Brando, he was always my big love/hate hero in acting.”
