From Hereditary to Eddington: why Ari Aster is among the most important directors of recent years

With his double diptych, the New York director went from an innovator of contemporary horror to a world-echoed singer of the American nightmare. In cinemas from today, Friday 17 October, distributed by I Wonder Pictures. in collaboration with WISE Pictures.

Midnight section of the Sundance Film Festival 2018. The public present in the large halls of Park City in Utah is presented, as a world premiere, with what on paper was a more or less classic family drama on the toxicity of a poisonous legacy that translates into mourning as an absolutely unsolicited life companion.

The title of the film was Hereditary – The origins of evila film that would have marked a fundamental point in the creation of the so-called elevated horroran under (or over) genre that is marking a small part of the history of cinema in recent years. More importantly, it marked the starting point of ‘s career Ari Aster.

The New York director was not only among the progenitors and great contributors to an extraordinarily effective imagery in speaking to international audiences, but has also become, especially with Eddingtonone of the main singers of the American nightmare of the contemporary United States. One of the directors, without a shadow of a doubt, more important of recent years.

Ari Aster, the innovator

Before making the leap into the world of feature films, Ari Aster stood out for his incredible production of shortsall based on examining issues related to the intimate sphere, from the individual to the domestic one, through the horror lens. A production within which the basis for his films can be found elevated to the point that one of them, Beau is scaredeven contains a direct reference in the title.

Already at this stage the filmmaker was weaving a web that had the purpose of dismantle that veneer of security and serenity that every American saw faltering in their personal experience. Hereditary – The origins of evil it is an extraordinary portrait of this new condition and the horror it hides, obviously taken to its extreme consequences. An excellent prelude to Midsommar – Village of the Damnednatural continuation of a path which, after destroying the first social nucleus, he does the same with the larger one through the story of an orphan struggling with a hostile microcosm with a very metaphorical flavour.

In this first phase of his career the director manages to combine one great clarity in identifying the “hot” topics for the general public to one very personal lookcapable of both creating a recognizable imprint and renewing the genre, deconstructing it and recomposing it in its own image and likeness. His is a postmodern and countercurrent approach compared to contemporary pop cinema and which tries to hook the viewer with absolutely unconventional weapons. First of all the reference to discomfort and disorientation, main engines with which he began his very interesting second part of his career in which he explores other genres.

Ari Aster, the singer of the American nightmare

After the theme that launched him, the director decides to raise the bar and reveal his true intentions: tell the contemporary American nightmare. A feat that is in some ways impossible to achieve, given that practically no one has managed to speak clearly about the stormy sea while swimming in the middle of it. The director, however, “doesn’t know it and tries anyway” with a new diptych that rereads the previous one.

The first chapter focuses again on a private setting, establishing the flow of the sea and charting a course. Here then is his very personal Odyssey of the common man, the aforementioned Beau is afraid, with an average American Joaquin Phoenix, besieged and very fragile, who tries to realize the parable of the prodigal son by indulging a sense of guilt driven by the loss of a mother who binds him to himself, castrating him, even after death. A merciless portrait which finds an extension in Eddington.

For his most ambitious film, Ari Aster creates a geographical bubble within another bubble, that of COVID, where he gives life to the representation of the new reality in which the USA has been living since then, made up of confusion due to fake news and online personalitiesdrivers of violence that has repercussions in the extreme political polarizations of the real country. A nation in disintegration controlled by interests that have nothing to do with the life of the common man, who is little more than a hostage at war with someone he doesn’t even see. Just him and a couple of other American colleagues they went that far.