Ari Aster on Midsommar, Cathartic Endings, the Director's Cut, and His Favorite Films

so please welcome Ari and Michael [Applause] welcome welcome Ari thank you thank you for being here I'm very excited to talk to you about this movie I've seen it twice now I'm actually curious before we start how many people have had the opportunity to see the film already Wow okay and not that I should be surprised with that but I remember we had a conversation last year when hereditary came out and it was I was on the eve of its release so it was it was people didn't really know too much about it outside of the Sundance screening and I had asked the same question and I think very few people to raise their hands and we really danced around it I think we probably still may do a little dancing I didn't like the film because of people listening on the podcast and all that but I did want to start at the end if possible so I think this might be a happy ending what do you and I'm curious what what your response is to that well it is I don't know it it's designed to be cathartic and it's designed to play as a happy ending you know it took a long time to to get to the right place with the score for that last sequence and and there's a 10-minute cue that accompanies the final scene of the film and we were really trying to hit the right tone which was I guess we we were going to fit like this lushness and this you know romance and this like you know symphonic quality and you know it was just very important that it felts just cathartic and I think we were going for this like feeling of awe as opposed to a feeling of like horror and the way that I have been talking about the film and I I'm at the end of a press tour right now and I'm just like I like absolutely hate myself and so I'm repeating myself and trying also to like avoid mistakes had been making are things I just regret but we won't hold you accountable for anything here okay thank you I have been describing the film and I I was doing this before we made the film as a fairytale and and you know in in many ways the movie is a contribution to the folk horror sub-genre and for many of the characters that's what this film is I mean for you know all of the American men and two British a I'm the two visiting British people this is a folk horror movie but for Danny for the main character it's a sort of perverse wish-fulfillment fantasy and and you know I I wrote this while I was going through a pretty bad breakup after a long-term relationship and I I wanted to make a film that you know that felt like as big as a breakup feels you know like from a distance if it's happening to someone you know or somebody else it's like the silly thing and they're gonna get over it and like you know just pick yourself up by by the bootstraps but when you're in it it can feel cataclysmic and so I wanted to make a breakup movie that felt as consequential as a breakup feels and so this is all kind of like a circuitous way of not answering your question but but it's designed I guess to not really have an answer and I I you know I if anything I would love for people to feel one way and then an hour later to feel differently that that's that was my experience of it I was very upset when I first saw it and I would I think I was I saw it on a pretty emotional day and then the second time I saw it I I felt a strange elation and it sat with me strangely and I did got me thinking about like the great endings in American films and it felt like this kind of false happy ending or a false unhappy ending is a very like peculiarly American thing like I was thinking about you know the great American films that have these sorts of MPO settings like this shining or after hours perhaps or a IO film that we've that we've talked about admiring yeah it's the the greatest thing ever I mean they'd leave you they leave you with this kind of feeling you feel kind of bereft at the end even if you think that it's resolved like the narratives are wrapping up but you actually come away feeling very kind of sick after yeah an AI is a is a really fascinating case for me at least because I remember I saw it when - that's one that when I came out and I was what I would have been 15 and I was on like you know an anti Spielberg kick which is a very like it's a it's a trap I think you get into when you're young and then you get older and it's like oh actually Spielberg's the greatest and the phase that that's where I stand now Spielberg is just as good as it gets and that film I remember you know walking out and I was like it's like this it's such a hokey ending and he does the Spielberg thing and it's so saccharine and I return to it maybe ten years ago maybe a little bit more than ten years ago and it was like the most haunting thing I'd ever seen and it's it's like it's it almost feels evil it's you know like he's given one last day with his mother but it's not his mother it's been like centuries since his mother died and it's and it's this like this false like clone of his mother who can only stay alive for one day which you know like makes no sense but it's also it's perfect and then and and so he he holds onto that memory for eternity with like this but it's a false memory and she's false but he's false - and it could just like enough to make you sick but it's so it's really really a debt that for me is one of the great endings ever films where it's impossible to know how to feel I feel like that's what you're specializing in right now with hereditary and now this and it's really kind of amazing to see the similar similarities between the two films the way that they kind of are reliant on this externalization of inner torment and of grief when you're setting about to write in the first draft and you're just writing these scripts are you are you thinking about things like that or does it really just kind of come out of you cuz it feels like it comes from like a very deep well of anger or despair both films I mean and I mean and I'm say I mean that is a compliment when you watch a film made by someone who's just making a film because they want to make a cool film he can tell the difference between someone who's really feeling the things they're putting up on screen and it's very hard to also represent those things well thank you yeah there's enough spare - there's enough despair to go around I i I've plenty left it's I'm just dipping my toe and in the pool of despair but yeah I mean I don't know I see both films is kind of being intuitive in a way like I kind of they kind of spilled out of me i I did a lot of I guess like outlining for both when I was writing them and I wrote them both like back to back I've I have like 10 screenplays lying around that I'm ready to you know I don't want to make all of them anymore but but I want to make some of them still and in those I wrote pretty pretty close to each other and I think I had extinguished some stuff with threat I'm her hereditary I said her but there was but there was some leftover of like what I was I I wasn't quite aware of it while I was writing it or even as I was like preparing the film and then it's embarrassing because you watch it and you know it's usually like in the editing room when you're like really picking it apart and that's and you realize like oh god like this is like I'm just going down the same the same alley with this one but but yeah I I don't know we we we've talked about this before and I talked about it a lot when I was when I was taking hereditary around but just I I really love melodrama and I feel like there's this tradition melodrama and I'm sure I'm repeating myself but maybe it bears repeating in my case because I feel that I'm always trying to like match what's going on inside of the characters which is usually what's going on inside of me with the the form of the film like you know with like to have to have the film be as big or painful or you know apocalyptic as as whatever you know the person at the heart of the story is is feeling so you do feel like there's a in each film is there a character that you're identifying the most with or do you kind of spread it out of months characters in and I could see that with hereditary in this film it seems like the heart is really with Danny yeah well with hereditary I was kind of spread all over but a lot of me was in Peter and a lot of me was in Annie in this film which is we tried the Alex Wolff and Toni Collette characters in this film I really put a lot of myself into Danny but I've been in Christians position and I you know I wanted Christian to be at least relatable but we are so aligned with Danny that there's almost no hope of like really siding with the guy and and so yeah I mean I'm forgetting what question I mean visit it but identification with identification with the characters and I mean Danny Hearst Danny feels like there's the real emotional center of the film it's actually hard to to get a handle on any of the guys yeah whereas she's very emotionally relatable throughout the film and there's something because funny you were talking about melodrama often in even some of the great melodramas there's there's kind of like a general 'no stew to the way that people react and the way people talk about things whereas there's a lot of intricate in the script about the way people actually communicate or don't communicate and fight and I was really the scene that I really can't stop thinking about because it's just rough it reflects so many things that I've been through is when she finds out that he has decided to go to Sweden and heston told her which is just it's so insane not only because she's been through this but that's just a thing you don't do in a relationship but then the way that she wants him to stay in the room and finish the conversation with him because the worst thing would be if he were to leave he's going to leave and she's been through so much she just needs him in the room like things like that make it seem like you've really deeply felt this this relationship and that it's reflective of something you've really been through without having to go too much into your personal story No yeah I'm just I'm just working out the most cryptic answer I can give but yeah that well you know so writing the script was therapeutic like you know what I would otherwise be doing like I if I weren't writing the script I would have been in a room just like you know kind of navigating the ruins of you know a failed relationship but then you sort of yeah but this gave me the opportunity to sort of work it out well publicly I guess but I didn't it at the time that was just therapeutic and yeah I mean I I can also see how well I realized that might've been pushing you to an uncomfortable place I did there was one other thing I want to bring up in terms of just the depiction of a relationship we've been talking lately also about this movie 45 years Andrew hey film with Charlotte Rampling I discovered that it's also a favorite film of yours and there's the way that you depict the end of a young relationship I found interesting parallels in the way that film depicts the end of a long relationship and sometimes it's the same communication problems that go on I mean and that movie also has like a great central metaphorical conceit so why is that one of your favorite films well yeah so I saw that film for the first time at AFI Fest and I was like so floored I didn't really know what to do I it it it has this it has this like perfect cut to black at the end like they're there there's a long list of like great you know cuts to black and that for me is like maybe the one and i i i just like totally broke down when it happened it cut to black and i like just like broke down crying and i went to see it again a couple days later and the same thing happened and and you know that is like an exquisitely quiet movie it's just it's so quiet and it's so quiet that it's like it encourages the viewer to I guess like lean in towards it so that at the end like this like it's there's this silent moment and it's a gesture and it's an expression on a person's face but because you are so drawn in there because I at least I was so drawn in like it was just like beyond devastating and and you know if people haven't seen the film you should it's about it's it stars Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay which is a brilliant pairing as like a happy couple there they're happy and they're comfortable and like they have a great life and one day the the husband finds out that his lover before he married his wife fifty years ago she she fell and she fell in in the they were you know Swiss Alps I think and she fell into the ice she and she's just been on like they just found her corpse and she's been perfectly preserved and ice and so they're about to celebrate their 45th anniversary in a very public way with all of their friends and family which is already a nightmare to to consider and then and he is moving into like just like reveries and and and he becomes like haunted by this woman and it's it's sort of a ghost story and and all of a sudden this relationship that she thought she knew and it's like life that she thought she knew is thrown into question for her because she's seeing him fall into question and or fall into questioning and and just you you see like everything it's all in her eyes the whole movie is like in her eyes and in the way they interact and this little you know it it takes place over a week over the course of a week at seven days and you just see the routine and how the routine is changing in these minut ways and then at the end there at the at the at the 45th anniversary this is just after she's confronted him saying like we are good we're going back to normal like we are like you know that this is over and of course he falls in line with that but it's too late for her and now she's she can't trust anything and when she confronts him it's it's it's in the evening and the film is shot very naturalistically but outside there's this blue light it's it's like Twilight and the blue light this is a kind of artificial it's very weird it's the first time in the film that it feels a little there's some artifice to the film and it's very subtle and then then at the end you know the next day he has he's woken up and he's he's like on his best behavior and he's really trying and now she really doesn't know what to trust and they could they go to this you know this anniversary party and she's you know and he makes a speech and it's very beautiful but all of it but it's like dense with meaning with with with like so many made like possible meanings and they go up to dance this dance to smoke gets in your eyes by the platters right and and the light that blue light has come back and they're dancing in this blue light that is like so surreal and strange and it feels like a dream and at the end of the song she just like you know she pulls her hand away from him and you see in her eyes that this like she's been holding up this this illusion like for the whole movie and it just has crashed down on her she can't hold it up anymore and you just it's just in her face and then you cut to black and it's the it's the greatest and it only works because you're you're just like you're you're just you're it it only works because of how quiet the whole film is that this last moment feels staggering and and so it's it's it's kind of a breakup movie but it is it's it's ambiguous whether it doesn't again the movies 45 years for those who haven't seen it it's a really powerful film it makes me want to ask because you talk about how everything's in the you know in the face of the actress about your work with Florence Pugh who is really extraordinary in this film and that's that's I would say two back-to-back great performances from your lead actresses with Toni Collette and now Florence Pugh what was I mean how did you work with someone to get to that place of grief I mean I just really it was it was just radiating off the screen from the very beginning yeah I mean Florence is really an amazing actress and by the way sorry I just really did I give a synopsis for that whole movie like I just I I was like trying to listen to your question I did hear it but I was just thinking like what the was that I really recommend it I hope I I hope that I've intrigued anybody who hasn't seen the film to see it it's a great it really is a great film Jesus this is I've been doing press all day and so like I just forgot how to behave but but you'll have to put a warning on the podcast you're showing your Cinna philia your my deep love for a movie and my deep love of just like synopsize and like just explaining stories to people so anyway Florence Pugh yeah she's she's really remarkable I had a really strong feeling about her when I saw Lady Macbeth and I was already like kind of in the place of thinking about who might be able to to who might be able to do this and and she was at the top of our list and the casting like the casting process was long a lot of a lot of really wonderful actresses read for it and she couldn't read for it because she was she was shooting Park chan-wook's miniseries little drummer girl and and and we just kind of were holding off on making a decision about anybody because we wanted her to read and there was just a feeling about her that was kind of nagging and and ultimately you know we you know we realized that was for a reason and we we cast her and she's very different from Danny in in almost every way she's like hyper confident supernaturally confident and and I there was something exciting too after having seen Lady Macbeth's where she plays somebody who's so poised and so calculating playing somebody who's so like emotionally naked but yeah I mean she's she's really remarkable and I'm just in just a little about about the working with the other actors there's there seems to be kind of like each one has it comes with like a kind of a long history of their character and then they're kind of just let loose and I do know that there is a longer cut of this film I'm which which I'm very intrigued by I have to say is a lot can you talk at all about some of what this extra footage is and if it's more about the characters before they get there or is it actually more about the rituals at at the village there's a little bit more before they get there but most of it is in Horgan and there are more rituals there are a few more sort of genre things but yeah the original cut was almost four hours and it's I wouldn't I wouldn't recommend it people are laughing because they want a lot for our version well I I'm putting together an extended cut now it won't be it won't be that long but it but it might be around three hours and there's a lot more relationship stuff you know there's like a big argument between Danny and Christian and she apologizes after you know there's plenty of it's it's it's all kind of designed to like to really make you want that ending so I think we already today and you know in in in the way that you know kind of I don't know well and there's also actually a lot more between the guys I think one thing I was sad about with this cut although I do I'm very happy with this cut and I think the pacing in the current cut is the best that it's ever been but one thing I was sad to lose was that there's a lot between the guys that not so much all the guys but Josh and Christian their rivalry is more fleshed out and and I guess it's a slightly less reductive film as far as they're concerned but there is something I mean it's it's it's it's still like deliberately wrote I'm reductive in a way because they are foils to Danny the Josh Christian subplot by the way is the is the favorite subplot of all of my academic friends there's a lot more a lot of shocking things happen but can you believe he's stealing his thesis like they just cannot believe I there there's actually in their in their confrontation saying there's one that there's like extended version of Josh yelling at Christian that I kind of regret cutting down where Josh just screams like you didn't even know how to use JSTOR until I taught you and so so that'll be in the that'll be in the extended cut because you know and you know for me this is like kind of if it's a horror film it's it's an existential horror film and nothing reflects the meaninglessness of life more than two people fighting over a thesis and so that's so the more the better for me as far as I'm concerned and I do want to talk about some of the more horrific things and the violence but before I do I also want to say that nothing in the movie upsets me more nothing makes me hide my eyes more than when when Danny says that it's her fault that he forgot her birthday oh it's a killer no no it's my fault I should have reminded you oh my god it's it's it's rough I mean I the sick mind wrote that but you not to respond to that but but in terms of I do want to talk a little bit about how some of the more shocking images in hereditary and midsummer um mid Samar how they sort sort of skirt the line between a kind of absurdity you know the big shocking I'm not going to say it because there are people who have not seen hereditary but the big shocking thing that happens in the car hereditary and I would say the thing that happens in mid-summer with the mallets are almost like these extreme bordering on Looney Tunes versions of gore and I'm wondering I mean are you aware you must be when you're making of how to finally toed that line because it could go too far in one direction or the other and they're just so perfectly balanced thank you I'm sure I'm sure I'm sure some people feel that it crosses a line i but i don't know i mean it's all i mean you just kind of go by instinct really you're going by your gut and by you I mean you know one does but obviously but but you know for me in this film what's more interesting about that sane and I don't want to be too spoilery but um is that that's sort of everything in this film once you get to orga is designed to hopefully kind of play in two ways one that could be seen as like you know a horror movie spectacle where you know somebody witnesses something awful or it could be seen as like Danny being forced to confront something that she's been looking away from and then being presented with like a different way of viewing that thing that will maybe allow her to process it better and I do see I do see the well I see the community in two ways I really wanted Horgan to feel like a real place with a real history and a very rich sense of tradition and I want you to really like I want to feel like I lived in place and at the same time and I've talked about this I'm repeating myself but I wanted to play maybe if you ever watch it the second time or even maybe as you're watching it you start to sense this that they are like here strictly to fulfill her needs and that they are almost like a manifestation of her will and in that way I really see the film as a fairy tale as well but I guess when it comes to the gore like the the images of like body or I if anything certainly in hereditary with going back to I guess like the scene of the accident the next morning or what we do here it's that these are images that are making like very like strong consequential impacts on on the characters and I want to like I don't want that to be something that people understand like on an intellectual level or like you know like they get it like you know I like I I wanted to be something that is like felt and like so that if if anything to just bring you closer to that characters experience so you're hearing toni collette scream you know in you know total emotional agony but Ben you're seeing you know the source of that and hopefully you're feeling it I'm on some level it's there's no sense of off-screen terror which is a which is a tactic did a lot of filmmakers having it be very effective but if you don't see the things that you necessarily see then you can't feel what the characters are feeling and it's interesting that some of and some of the graphic things that are terrible things that happened to characters that do happen off screen aren't necessarily being seen by other people and that's that makes sense then we wouldn't see it like when I saw the but you know I love the I love the joke about skin the fool and that happens but you don't necessarily see that on screen because it's actually it's the if it's the after effect that characters see that's it so it actually stays really attached to point of view that's really interesting yeah it's it's I don't know it's it's it's it's sort of a game of like withholding in certain places and then like indulging in others and I also want you just know you were talking about harga you know that you were you were so meticulous about it and you want to make it seem like a real place with its own rich tradition what kind of research did you do to make that possible I mean this is not really your it's not your background you don't come from a place like that well I did a lot of research into you know Swedish midsummer traditions and a lot of research into German and English and traditions I looked into Swedish folklore learned the runic alphabet and then we built our own language called the effect language which is sort of a combination of runes and these emotional hieroglyphs that we kind of created and and did a lot of research into different spiritual movements and I deliberately looked into spirit spiritual movements that I found beautiful as opposed to ones that I was skeptical about and that was that was I that I would say would be would have been the most important part of the process and actually the stuff that finds its way into the film more than anything and that's interesting because it that is part of the ambiguity that you feel like was this a good experience for to me ultimately but because there is actual there's actual catharsis beauty and like release right this experience yeah I mean that that was the idea it was to to blur blur the line as as thoroughly as possible while still presenting this community that you know they murder people well as Pele says what is everyone deserves to have a family is that is that is that how he phrases it did when he's trying to convince Danny to stay yeah that's a really interesting line because it tied it back into hereditary as well this idea of kind of forming an alternate family yeah the end of Reddit area I also think it's just kind of beautifully positive right there ascending to this other plane where they're and they're all of all of the all of the bitterness is of the of the earthbound family gone and they can yeah start a new tradition oh yeah I mean I mean the movie at that point has just gone insane and and the and you know the problems of real life have been replaced by you know floating women sawing their head off so it's like yes but but yeah I mean and again that's a film that I hope I hope that you know like I you know you there's nothing worse than a film that's like you know it was all a dream and and that's certainly not what these films are but but I it it was very important especially with Reddit arey that the metaphor like continued to function even as all these things are happening in the story and that they you know kind of I and so hope you know hopefully that that that's the case there and I and I hope that's the case here but at a certain point I know that I like I have to like let go of that stuff and then just pursue just something on a more like base kind of a less like cerebral level and just kind of go where the where the movie wants to go I mean it's all it's all laid out and it's it's all so clear in a way right one of the great things is if you actually look at the walls I noticed this the second time I saw it if you look at all the walls and in the loft where they're sleeping and in some of the other scenes like the plot is sort of laid out for you it's all there which is and which makes a lot of sense it's not like you're spoiling things for the audience but you're in this way you're saying that these things are inexorable its fate these things are going to happen whether you like it or not I love what I love with this film is that it's a gradual journey to the thing that was going to happen all along which also makes it seem like hereditary in a way yeah I that that is how I see both films but especially this one you know I mean if anybody has any any understanding whatsoever of like you know this genre or you know like then you know where these you know what's coming you know this is like not gonna work out for these people and and that they're gonna be sacrificed and so for me that's the least interesting thing about the film and and and and it I really wanted to treat it as a given and for me there is something at least from my perspective there's something more disturbing about just like throwing these lives away like almost from the very beginning like treating it treating them as though which which is what these films do like it's like it these these characters are always cattle in these films and so by the time you see them kind of you see their core their corpses drips dressed up and and you know kind of presented in these tableaus like that that was that was inevitable we all knew that was going to come and if anything like the the catharsis of seeing it happen like you know is denied you and and and you just you're left with like the fact and and so for me it was it was never like the goal was never to subvert the genre but rather to kind of to like to to get to that destination that you have to get to in a way that I hope feels emotionally surprising so that once you arrive there it's it's it's kind of everything you've been expecting you know in a way that's kind of unadorned but then but it's but hopefully it's it's different what I want to talk about the way that it's shot and lit as well because I think this connects to what you're saying I know it seems like the choice to make it all so bright which is such which is sort of a subversive idea I think for a horror film if if we're gonna call it a horror film because it's it is about things being very clear this movie is after the first 10 minutes which I think are extraordinary by the way I think of the I when I was watching it I'm always aware hyper aware of people coming in late to movies and this couple came in like 10 minutes after it start and sat down with their coke and I thought you just missed everything how are you going to watch this movie and understand this movie but aside from the first 10 minutes which is you know gloomy or darker as a different color palettes that in winter the the brightness of this film it's perfectly in keeping with what you're saying it's all laid out for you there's no turning back everything is revealed how did you actually get this beautiful strange vibrant these colors in this lighting well I mean shooting outside every day is a nightmare you're chasing the Sun you're depending on weather which is nothing to depend on and you know continuity is a problem all the time like distractingly so because you because you go home every night wondering like is this movie gonna work like I like is this gonna match at all is anything gonna match and and so there was a certain amount of control we had to give up we were able to sort of design our own lenses my cinematographer Pavel puggalski has a really good relationship with Panavision and on both reddit airy and this we we we were able to design design lenses for the film like have them make us these custom lenses and so we we were working large format on this film and and we we knew that we were sort of pursuing this three-strip Technicolor look but not the way three-strip Technicolor actually looks but the way you kind of imagine it looking i if it makes any sense and so exists in your mind and your memory exactly and even at the very end of the film like there's a moment where there's one character's eyes are shut and we're in his perspective and they're opened up again when they're opened up again I refer to that as the the Crayola section of the movie with all the flowers yeah exactly and and so a lot of that I mean most of that I wouldn't say most of it but a great deal that was done in the grade as we were color correcting and you know as we were in the DI and yeah that was a very important part of the process and we we we did a lot of that work before we were shooting and we had a lot that we were using and putting over the image on on the monitor that we had on set so we could see kind of how that grade was interacting with what we were shooting did I did I read somewhere they a part of this you had tested shooting this on 35 millimeter or that or that some scenes we thought about it we we did a little test and then we decided to go Laura large-format did um did digital but yeah but we thought about it and it it was pretty clear pretty quickly that we didn't want to go that way given what what we wanted to do with the film yeah and then I mean yet the making of this film was just so tumultuous you know we I while I was editing hereditary it it looked like this was gonna get a green light but we were editing hereditary in the spring and it looked like we would have to shoot the film in the summer so I had shot list the movie while I was finishing hereditary so we could go out scouting for a field because we knew that we had to build this village in an empty field and I needed to know what the geography needed to be so I needed to do the shot list so then we found a field while I was finishing the film this empty field that was wild and totally uncultivated and then we had to cultivate it and you know and build this village in two months and so I came back to do press for hereditary and then I went over there and we had less than two months of pre-production before we were shooting at the beginning of August so credit Terry came out June 8th I was in Hungary on June 9th and we were shooting first week of August yeah it was really it was it was very hard something you wouldn't want to repeat going so fast from one to the other I'm sure probably not I mean every I was a joke although it's not really a joke we every time we drove onto that set it was like a funeral march I was just like it's appropriate is what are we doing what do we why why did we do this I want to get some a few questions from the audience but um just wanted to say like are you surprised at the the ardor with which people talk about hereditary I hereditary has become this kind of cult sensation and I suppose was actually a big big hit but I believe that there was a screening of the film or somebody showed their hereditary tattoo to you receive same it C nine times how do you process having written something so profoundly sad and and I don't know gut wrenching and then having it out in the world or people or just hunters to have obsessed with it as this thing that you even can process I mean I think my trick is I don't process anything and then it just and then it just comes out as some like evil movie and so yeah I mean I I haven't been able to process anything because I was thrown right into this film when that film came out so I was aware that it was doing well but I also didn't I mean like I didn't experience that I was hearing about it but I was already like I I was thrown from what you know what what what I was told was a success into this like imminent failure you know and so and every day the water was just like up to my nose and up to my my crews nose you know we were like we it was really it it was very hairy we we you know we we've lost our first ad on the first day of shooting we had to fly in a new first ad who didn't know the movie it was just like I mean it just went on and on and on and so this is the first time that there's been like like things are just settling now and so I guess now is my opportunity to process it although I have a feeling I'm to do everything I can to not do that and so I'll just I'll just avoid processing well despite all the hardships of the film it but it's it's a it's a beautiful film it really is you can say that about a lot of films of this genre [Applause] [Music] anybody has a really good question yes right there oh wait we're gonna have a mic coming so just just wait hi between first of all thank you so much for midsummer thank you for hereditary both incredible films as hopefully everyone think so but something that I that occurred to me when I was watching midsummer and something that I loved from hereditary two is the way that you create anxiety and with midsummer it seemed more apparent to me this recurrent use of breath in terms of just not just how characters are feeling but also ritualistically in mid-summer where it's used as sort of like a instrument and I wondered if that was like an intentional thing for you or like how to create anxiety and using breath particularly yeah that's that's intentional I mean it's it's I mean I I'm a very anxious guy so I don't have to do much to like you know research whatever like what does it feel like to like if you think you're gonna die but I you know and so you know I I don't know I feel like I'm not sure if this is the way it is for everybody but there's like always this kind of like white noise like underneath everything that tells me I'm doomed and so do you like that everyone laughs when you say that and so you know I can just tap into that anytime that's just that's just that's just there for me to draw from but I'm I'm I'm glad to hear that it it makes you anxious to that's the dream over here on the side yes sorry to make to make you run around hello um one thing I drew from the film it was my impression that it was a big metaphor and all the American men were parts of Danny's psyche that she needed to deal with in some way to heal was that intentional do you agree with that impression I like that I like that reading I don't want to do anything to like throw water on that nose okay no not not necessarily but I but that actually has that has occurred to me in retrospect like there are times I watch the film and I see it that way as well and so you know I mean there's a lot of stuff going on unconsciously as I make these films that I catch later on and so like that doesn't it also doesn't sound like absolutely wrong to me but it wasn't it it it wasn't really on my mind until until later but that that has occurred to me here and there but I would not say that that that was something I was consciously pursuing I like that idea right here on the front hey all right hi first of all thank you for doing what we do and I think you're a really special filmmaker I don't think that there's anybody in American cinema right now that's making films quite like yours so I hope you find the strength to process everything you need to and keep making movies because they're they're really special my question was about your use of long takes that struck me I mean in hereditary as well but especially in mid some Marcus I saw it recently obviously and so it struck me right from the beginning like the shot of Florence just at the close-up when she's on the phone how long that was that was recurring throughout the film so I was curious your standpoint as a director what gives you the confidence to feel like you can hold the audience's attention for that long is it films like 45 years or other films that do the same thing successfully is it your faith in the performers is it the production design is it a combination of those things what's your mentality as far as I'm gonna hold this shot for a really long time and I trust that the audience will be there with me I well I guess it's as simple as I like that kind of filmmaking and those are the films that I enjoy and I like the idea of like seeing how efficient I can be while also like holding something and there are there are a lot of you know takes in the film that have been cut down that go on for like two three more minutes because then you know you've got to go by your gut when you're actually putting the thing together and and there is like and that's the risk of shooting that way I I actually find it easier than shooting coverage I really don't like shooting coverage and the reason for that is I don't really know what I'm getting until I get into the cutting room like you after a while you you you know you you have it in your gut like what will and won't won't work but when you do a long take when you do this like long sustain'd take that maybe covers the whole scene and in one master you know if you have it or not and it drives actors nuts and it drives I you know I think it can draw it drive the camera crew nuts but I think it also kind of galvanizes them and but it and I think it it can be very exciting for the crew why is it drive the actors notes I thought maybe some of them I like playing out a longer thing because there are some takes that are ruined by the camera where they're killing it and I would have and if it was being covered that would have been it you know but it's not so and so and and that and that and that's what happens is the camera crew needs time to get it and to warm up and and it's never like these long takes you never get on the first tag because they need to like really start to feel their marks the timing needs just to work and and sometimes the actors are there like ready and they they hit their peak early on and and and I part of a part of directing is also using your judgement about how the actors work and whether this long take is going to work for them and whether this is the same to to do something like that or where is this the scene to pull back and put the performance first and so you know that's but but I do i do prefer long takes because I know what I have on the day on set and I can walk away with confidence that I that I've I have it because I just saw it like it worked especially with the lighting issues I guess in Oregon that probably was a lifesaver yeah coverage outside was a nightmare because there are scenes where we had to where there are a lot of setups and you know the Sun starts over here and then by the end it's over here so the shadows go from over here and over here and and that that's a problem for continuity and again it's just when when you're shooting outside you have to really learn what to prioritize yeah thank you so much want to get on the side of the room yeah right here front I are you doing first of all like many of all thank you for hereditary amid some are gray even there's something wrong with the Johnsons messed me up and I didn't hose you so fantastic job a couple of questions so a few weeks ago went to go see a screening of Mandy with a writer Aaron Stewart on and he was mentioning how there is some sort of similarities between writing stories in particularly horror where it's more so about getting this core story first and then seeing how this implementation of something terrible and frightening sort of carries a story and really makes it much more terrifying and I was wondering if that's really like if that's really how your approach is to writing screenplays in general but mainly horror and also notice that I read that you said that you sort of realized after making midsummer that you've realized that both hereditary omits so much sort of connected in a way and I've seen that both films are kind of like the polar opposite of one another like for example hereditary dark is the shots really built up attention and yet you know with the contrasting with the light and all the beauty that is in mid-summer especially in the last few scenes with Peter and hereditary and Danny midsummer and wondering if that was sort of either unconscious you know whilst writing and making the film if you really realize okay well one really well I'm friends with Aaron Stewart on he's a great guy but but What did he say he said that [Music] until you're asking me that I mean in the case of these films I was sort of writing through crises and Jean genre can be very helpful in that it like provides you with a framework that's very like sturdy and and so it allows you to take very messy feelings and emotions and then like and then it gives you a path to sort of organize them and so I guess that was my process on these two I can't really I don't I don't have I guess the insight to go go beyond that except for the fact that you know I wake up and I get coffee and I sit down and I procrastinate writing you know but I they I do see that they are sort of companions to each other in a lot of ways that wasn't strategic and a lot of that occurred to me in retrospect like while I was cutting this film and then there are certain things that occur to you when you finish the script and it's like oh that's cool like Oh king and queen got it and and you know and oh like these are the themes and these are the themes and I maybe more and more I I'm thinking about themes like as I'm writing and but but I I tend to sort of catch the themes as I'm going along so yeah I mean it's I don't know it's it's it's not it's not like these things aren't totally accidental but I try not to be overly cut yeah exactly thank you very much yeah thank you we have time for one more right in the center yes as he mentioned that both movies are I did pool well he mentioned that and it made me notice more how in Herrera Terry death kind of pulled the family apart and then death in this film actually brought her to a family that was their kind of crazy but in the sense they're very sweetness in the way that they both experienced things as a family compared to how shoes her original family was kind of pulled away by her sister's mental illness and well my question is when you're writing this would you have felt comfortable someone else directing it no I wouldn't have yeah yeah yeah I would not have been comfortable with anybody else directing it but yeah that's that that's certainly there and you know I I I don't really consider this a horror movie I consider a reddit area horror movie but I I do like if this is a horror film it's like a it's a it's a horror film about codependency in a way and so and so you you know she goes really from one codependent relationship to another right and and and it's like the ultimate codependent relationship this this new thing where people are mirroring each other and you could see them as very sweet or you could see them as kind of like weirdly vacant and and like weirdly yet like I mean the idea of the individual has been kind of extinguished there and obviously she's going with a group of people who are like who like really like live by that they you know they they they are careerist and individualist and and so you know I'm hoping again that you know it can play in in two different ways where you know and and you know that I that's why I was drawing from spiritual movements that I found beautiful that I found really then I that I had actual respect for and then at the same time I'm kind of you know looking at certain parts of Swedish history that are kind of unseemly that are kind of you know that are coming back and not just in Sweden all over Europe and here and so that you know in and there are sort of politics woven into the fabric of the film and in the margins and you know it was important for me that it just be kind of like texture and not like you know that we're not making a polemic in any way but but you know there are two sides so you know I already feel like I'm I'm like I need to go back to being cryptic but I so that's but but yeah well whatever you do next we hope that you will be back and talk about it always be back you just have to you just have to be around it you know I'll be here okay I'll be here if you're here thank you very very much [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Film at Lincoln Center

Views: 288,757

Keywords: Film Society of Lincoln Center, Ari Aster, Midsommar, Sweden, Hereditarty, A24, Director's Cut, Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, spoilers, 45 Years, Will Poulter, Film Comment

Id: aPGaPTdno10

Length: 62min 9sec (3729 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 12 2019