Celine Song’s feature directorial debut – ‘Past Lives,’ premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, creating a stir. The film became the best-reviewed film by critics and became one of the strongest works to have come out this year during its festival run. With a poetic visual style and a layered narrative, it continued to resonate with viewers across the globe after its wider theatrical release by A24. Song shows her prowess at bringing out profound performances from her actors. Besides, she achieves incredible warmth despite the weight of her themes.
Before Past Lives, Song had worked as a staff writer for the first season of the Amazon series – The Wheel of Time. Her play – Endlings received its world premiere in 2019 at the American Repertory Theater and had its New York premiere in 2020 at New York Theatre Workshop. She has been a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and a semifinalist for the American Playwriting Foundation’s Relentless Award. The director spoke with the folks at Criterion about her favorite films from their collection. Let’s find out Celine Song’s favorite films and why she loves them.
1. The Tin Drum (1979)
Dir: Volker Schlöndorff
Celine Song lists the harrowing German war film – ‘The Tin Drum’ as one of her favorites. While speaking about this Günter Grass adaptation, she says.
“I was in college when I read The Tin Drum for the first time as part of my German literature class—then, shortly afterward, I saw the film. It was one of my mom’s favorite movies, and she recommended it to me. I loved it immediately, but it gave me nightmares for about a month. Nothing overtly scary happens in it, but it’s a film about the war, and there’s just a feeling of terror that pervades it. There are some images in it that I have never stopped thinking about and which have served as reference points in making my own work, like the chopping and devouring of the fish or the head of the horse.”
2. My Dinner with André (1981)
Dir: Louis Malle
Song adores Louis Malle’s dialogue-heavy, philosophical marvel. Here’s what she says about this classic comedy-drama.
“I’m always on the edge of my seat when I watch My Dinner with André. It’s just one long conversation between two people talking about everything from the abstract to the mundane, but you never know when it’s going to take a left turn and suddenly become very deep and intimate and reveal something devastating. As a playwright, first, I care about the way a conversation like this can be turned into something cinematic and riveting. Wallace Shawn’s plays are the reason I wanted to be a playwright to begin with.
He and André Gregory are massive figures in experimental theatre, and I love that the film makes you feel like you’re a part of their conversation. You get to see them be petty and gossipy but also deep and worldly. It’s become one of the comfort movies that I watch over and over. There’s a great line in it that is spoken in a voice-over as Shawn waits for the subway in New York: “When I was ten years old . . . all I thought about was art and music. Now I’m thirty-six, and all I think about is money.” When I first encountered this movie, I didn’t understand this because I was in my twenties, but now that I’m thirty-four, I get him completely.”
3. High and Low (1963)
Dir: Akira Kurosawa
Akira Kurosawa’s police procedural crime thriller is revered by several filmmakers. Song is no exception to it. Here’s what she says about it.
“High and Low is a masterful thriller. What I admire most in it is the power of Kurosawa’s blocking. It’s magical what he can do with a roomful of men. Just the way the characters are positioned in the frame can shift our perspective on what’s happening. Three actors will move to another part of the room, and suddenly the whole space looks completely different.
I love this movie as a textbook; sometimes, I rewatch it just so that I can learn something new about how you can tell a story using the characters’ body language and gaze without any words at all. There’s something very theatrical about it, and that’s a running theme in films I connect to because that’s where the bones of my work are. These are films with very contained worlds, and by being contained, they become the whole world. That really excites me, and it’s that quality that led me to the theatre.”
4. Pina (2011)
Dir: Wim Wenders
While discussing Wim Wenders’ seminal musical documentary, Song shares her association with its unquestionable brilliance.
“I saw this movie with a bunch of grad school friends, and when we came out of the screening, my friend Tara Ahmadinejad said: “So we have to quit theatre, right?” We all looked at one another like; it’s never going to get better than that, right? We were so affected by the film then, and it remains one of those special movies for me. Pina Bausch was a total master. She was to dance what Kubrick was to film. There’s no one like her, no one who could do what she was doing.
When she passed, there was a big collective moment of grief. In the interludes between the spectacular dance sequences, the members of her company, who had such intimate relationships with her, are photographed sitting in silence, grieving by themselves without saying anything. But over these images, we hear their personal reflections about their love for Pina in the voice-over. That juxtaposition between sound and image is inspiring. Wim Wenders depicts their grief so beautifully.”
5. The Age of Innocence (1993)
Dir: Martin Scorsese
There’s no doubt that Scorsese will continue to inspire people for generations to come. Song picks Daniel Day-Lewis starrer period romance as her favorite.
“This is my favorite Scorsese film, and it features my favorite performance by Daniel Day-Lewis. It’s a period romance set in New York City, but it’s buoyantly modern in Scorsese’s hands. The film is about the tension between the practical matters of life and matters of the heart—and it takes this tension very seriously. The film’s depiction of intimacy is also exemplary. I look to it when I’m thinking about how to portray eroticism. There’s a political and ideological undercurrent to what could have been a story just about longing or not getting your way.
It’s actually a very scathing movie. You can feel his voice in the part of it that’s tough and sharp around the edges. In that way, it’s very much a Scorsese movie, even though he hasn’t made anything else quite like this one. He’s made other historical films, but not such a straight romance set in chambers and ballrooms. The ending, with Daniel Day-Lewis as aged Newland sitting in that courtyard staring up at Ellen’s window, always takes my breath away.”
Read More: 10 Best Films of Martin Scorsese
6. Barry Lyndon (1975)
Dir: Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick’s sumptuous period drama is a treat to all the senses. Song appreciates this incredible work like any film scholar would and shares her insights.
“Barry Lyndon contains what I believe is at the heart of Kubrick’s work—that people are really, really small in the face of history, time, space. All of the characters are like dust, as if they just might blow away any moment and disappear. Their pettiness and egos, and power-mongering are held up to be laughed at. It’s a comedy, even though it’s made up of a series of perfectly crafted unfortunate events. There’s quite a bit of trolling in it, which is a quality you always find in Kubrick’s films. Its sense of humor is very dark, which I love. The visual world of Barry Lyndon is unbelievable. I often pause the film when I’m watching it just so I can look at it as if it were a painting in a museum. It’s my favorite Kubrick.”
7. The Celebration (1998)
Dir: Thomas Vinterberg
While Another Round and The Hunt brought a lot of love his way, The Celebration still remains to be Vinterberg’s bewitching cinematic achievement. Song admires this tragically masterful drama and speaks about its distinct use of humor.
“This is another film that has its own contained world. It’s a masterful film by Thomas Vinterberg, and in many ways, it’s a Greek tragedy in which the characters are experiencing a divine revelation. The filmmaking and the performances are so psychologically sharp that it feels real, even though it’s depicting an extraordinary situation. It’s amazing to watch how Vinterberg hides and reveals the truth—through the look on someone’s face or through a spare line of dialogue. And it also has an amazing sense of humor, not unlike what you’d find in a Greek tragedy. What we’re witnessing is devastating, but every psychological beat is so perfectly crafted that I feel totally taken in by it, taken on an emotional ride. That’s something I want to be able to achieve in my work.”
8. Howards End (1992)
Dir: James Ivory
James Ivory’s E M Forster adaptation is one of Song’s favorites. Here’s what she finds to be most satisfying about this gorgeous work.
“I most love the lightness with which life and death are treated in this film, its morbid gallows humor. Period romantic comedy is one of my favorite genres of movies. It’s a film that’s interested in materialism and the way money works, and it explores these themes directly and with totally clear eyes. The subject of property isn’t something we often talk about in the arts, and I understand that—we don’t want to talk about rent in a movie since we talk about rent in our everyday lives. But the truth is, if you’re interested in humanity and are trying to depict a human life accurately, it would be absurd to dismiss the primary drama that rules people’s lives: where and how are we going to live? The movie tackles this existential question, and for that, I admire it tremendously.”
9. Closely Watched Trains (1966)
Dir: Jiří Menzel
Czech director Jiri Menzel’s seminal anti-war film enthralled the Past Lives director. She speaks in detail about the way it explores facets of history.
“I grew up on the literature of Bohumil Hrabal, and I have read almost every book he’s ever written. Because I love the book that this movie is based on, it was hard to imagine loving the movie as much. However, as Hrabal’s fellow countryman and his deep soul match, Jiří Menzel tells the crushing story of a lazy young man in wartime. I believe every movie about war has the challenge to not accidentally become pro-war propaganda—and this film is passionately antiwar (as is the book) because it leads the audience to feel the complete meaninglessness of war.
There are no war heroes in the film, only ordinary nobodies whose passions and joys in life are ended brutally by war, without fanfare or a mention in history books. In the film, under the weight of history, human life is snuffed out as if it were a fly, and humanity is totally flattened. I connect deeply to stories like this.”
10. And Everything Is Going Fine (2010)
Dir: Steven Soderbergh
Song puts Steven Soderbergh’s documentary about Spalding Gray as one of her favorites.
“This was my first real encounter with Spalding Gray. I’d read him before I saw this film. Gray was such a gifted monologist that, while listening to his gentle voice telling stories, without even noticing, you take his hand and go through the woods and into the water, and then eventually you realize you’re drowning in the middle of the ocean. You slip into his language until you’ve gotten completely lost, and he’s the only person you’re holding on to. Of course, it would have been best to see this in the theatre, but Soderbergh captures that live feeling by crafting the film in such a disciplined way.”
