The movie Ryan Coogler called the “single biggest influence” on his career
In a week that Ryan Coogler picked up a Bafta for ‘Best Screenplay’ thanks to his jaw-dropping genre mash-up movie Sinners, there’s a reasonable argument to make that he might well be the most exciting director working in film today.
Is there anyone who can rival him in terms of sheer excitement at what he might do next? Possibly Paul Thomas Anderson, who is competing with Coogler thanks to One Battle After Another. Certainly Christopher Nolan, who we’ll see more of when The Odyssey arrives in July. But Coogler is operating on a different level than the vast majority of filmmakers at the moment, and that makes the announcement that he will be writing and directing a reboot of The X-Files very interesting indeed.
Coogler is evidently a student of film; his influences are varied and cultured and understandable, and the marks of the men and women he admires can be seen all the way back to his stunning debut, 2013’s Fruitvale Station, which is a ridiculously accomplished piece of directing for a first timer. If you haven’t seen it, you should, as Coogler and his long-time friend Michael B Jordan tell the desperate tale of a young man struggling to make money for a life with his young daughter, who is slain at a train station by police officers despite being unarmed.
One of the things that is so impressive about the film is how you arrive in the middle of the world being shown on screen and immediately empathise and care about the individuals involved; the poverty and the struggle are shown with complete authenticity and without patronising the people who live like that every day. Alongside 2017’s superb window into the life of the lower working class in the US, The Florida Project, it is incredibly affecting and anger-inducing.
Another film that has a similar feel is one that has been mentioned by the likes of Edward Norton as one of his three favourite films of all time, and it’s a movie that Coogler admits is in the back of his mind during every project he takes on. That is the 2009 French drama A Prophet, the gritty story of an immigrant French teenager sentenced to years behind bars for attacking police, who makes his way up through the prison hierarchy to become a feared face in the Corsican mafia.
Directed by Emilia Perez’s Jacques Audiard, it picked up an Oscar nomination for ‘Best Foreign Film’, and like Coogler’s early movies, authenticity was key for the filmmakers, who hired real convicts to play extras in the film and to advise on certain scenes.
Coogler told the BFI: “It’s my favourite film. To this day it’s the most important movie for me as a filmmaker. I find everything in it is operating at a high level. It’s got some personal things that speak to me. Incarceration had a big effect on my life. For 30 years my dad worked in a jail. I’d go visit him, and I worked there from age 21 to 26, after I graduated and to the point I made Fruitvale.”
At one point, it looked like Hollywood would attempt to make its own version of A Prophet, with Sam Raimi signed on to direct, but thankfully that didn’t happen, and instead, the original has gone on to be one of the most acclaimed movies this century, with other directors like Judd Apatow putting it in his top ten list of favourite films ever.
Coogler added, “Every time I make a movie, A Prophet is probably the single biggest influence. I make sure everybody who is working on the film has seen it.”
Aside from his X-Files agreement, Coogler is busy working on Marvel’s Black Panther 3, which will again star Jordan alongside Denzel Washington. Sinners will also be front and centre at the Oscars, where it will compete as the movie with the most nominations in history.
