Weyes Blood names her four favourite movies
The sonic artistry of Natalie Mering, also known as Weyes Blood, contains a cinematic quality that few other artists have been able to channel. From her panoramic soundscapes to her beautiful cover artwork, listening to her music is like diving head first into her world.
This all-encompassing nature of her artistry is perhaps inspired by her own love of cinema – in ‘Movies’, the ethereal sixth track on her fourth studio record, Titanic Rising, she declares: “I love the movies, I wanna be in my own movie… I wanna be the star of mine”. Taking on the role of director and star, she has cultivated visuals, live performance, and music videos around an increasingly specific and recognisable Weyes Blood aesthetic.
Mering’s love of cinema runs deep, and her favourite films veer into some niche territory. In an interview with every cinephile’s favourite social media app, Letterboxd, Mering revealed her top four films, all released between 1971 and 1981. Though, before she begins listing them off, she stipulates that they’re her four favourites “at the moment”.
Her first pick, and the most light-hearted film on the list, is Taking Off by Miloš Forman. She describes the charming 1971 comedy as “ just such a weird, like, slice of life”.
She explains: “You can tell that they’re not real actors, they’re just kind of being documented auditioning.”
Her next choice is a cult favourite, Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession, which she states is “one of those movies you’ll be talking about for 25 years after you see it, no matter what. Everybody has to talk about it.” Unexpectedly, Mering also makes the argument for the film to be turned into a coffee table book, stating, “Just the dialogue is incredible and I think after seeing it as many times as I have I still don’t know exactly what it’s about.” Mering notes that she is often gifted editions of Possession, laughing before naming her next choice.
The third film to make the list is Paul Schrader’s 1979 neo-noir crime film Hardcore. Schrader began developing the film around the same time he wrote Taxi Driver for Martin Scorsese, but Mering notes her affinity with Schrader over Scorsese: “I love Martin Scorsese but Paul Schrader was raised Calvinist, so there’s this weird resonance with the puritanical nature of his themes and his films.”
Finally, Mering reveals her favourite film of all time, a 1979 Soviet film called Siberiade. The four-part epic spans four and a half hours and has been her favourite film for a decade now. She explains, “It’s, like, a Soviet film so, I don’t know, it’s a little controversial that I love it so much… it kind of goes over the span of three or four generations in Siberia, starting when it was a rural village and going until when it’s basically drilled for oil, but it says so much in that six hours.”
She concludes, “There’s like so many different feelings of industrialisation and progress. Just what happens in a small town in Siberia over the course of four generations happens to all of us kind of in the course of our lifetime.”
With such a unique sound and focus on visuals, it’s fitting that Weyes Blood has a deep love for cinema, though her choices are far darker than her dreamy sound would suggest. Check out the list of Weyes Blood’s favourite films below.
Weyes Blood’s favourite movies:
- Taking Off (1971, Miloš Forman)
- Possession (1981, Andrzej Żuławski)
- Hardcore (1979, Paul Schrader)
- Siberiade (1979, Andrei Konchalovsky)
