Martin Scorsese Praises Ari Aster's ‘Hereditary' and ‘Midsommar'

Last October, the day after Martin Scorsese premiered “The Irishman” at the New York Film Festival, he had an on-stage chat with the fest's outgoing director Kent Jones at the Alice Tully Hull. The whole conversation is worth a watch on YouTube, as, during the course of the 30 minutes they had, Scorsese and Jones ended up talking about a host of cinematic topics, including Scorsese’s love for Joanna Hogg and Ari Aster.

Scorsese lauded Aster's “Hereditary” and its ability to create what he saw as a family-driven narrative that doubled as horror and drama, "It's horror, but it's more than that," Scorsese said of Aster's feature-length debut. "For me, when you take the horror out, it still works. But the horror elements, how should I say this — they shock you in a good way. They shock you into an awakening of the real pain of these people."

In my review of the film, I called Ari Aster’s “Hereditary” a “game-changing masterpiece.”

Now comes the news [via EW], that in the Blu-Ray of Aster’s directors cut of “Midsommar” Scorsese has written an intro, again raving about Aster and “Hereditary.”

“A couple of years ago, I watched a first film called Hereditary by a director named Ari Aster. Right from the start, I was impressed,” Scorsese wrote. “Here was a young filmmaker that obviously knew cinema. The formal control, the precision of the framing and the movement within the frame, the pacing of the action, the sound — it was all there, immediately evident.”

“But as the picture went on, it started to affect me in different ways,” he continued. “It became disturbing to the point of being uncomfortably so, particularly during the remarkable family dinner scene after the sister has been killed. Like all memorable horror films, it tunnels deep into something unnameable and unspeakable, and the violence is as emotional as it is physical.”

Scorses then goes on to talk about “Midsommar,” which he admitted to having not yet seen at last year’s NYFF. Now he has, and his reaction is just as glowing, if not more so, than it was when he saw “Hereditary.”

“Obviously, I was looking forward to Midsommar, which sounded like it was going to be made on a more ambitious scale — shot in a foreign country, bigger cast, slightly bigger budget. Sometimes, in particular cases that I can remember, a relatively successful first picture has led to a more expensive but less impressive second feature. More money sometimes means the possibility of more interference and anxiety and eagerness to please, making the picture less concentrated and more diffuse.”

“So, I started watching Midsommar, and very early on, I knew that this was not going to be the case.”

“I don’t want to give away anything about this picture, because you need to discover it for yourself. I can tell you that the formal control is just as impressive as that of Hereditary, maybe more so, and that it digs into emotions that are just as real and deeply uncomfortable as the ones shared between the characters in the earlier picture. I can also tell you that there are true visions in this picture, particularly in the final stretch, that you are not likely to forget. I certainly haven’t.”

I thought the original theatrically released cut of “Midsommar” was quite good, but it felt like it was missing something. A re-evaluation of Ari Aster’s “Midsommar” was high on my list of writing priorities as I watched the 3-hour director’s cut — a fuller, more depth-filled, and coherent version than the theatrically released one.

Director Aster, adding 30 minutes to the original cut, has claimed that “Midsommar” is his “breakup movie.” After all, the screenplay was written when the director, as he acknowledged at the New York premiere I attended back in the summer, was going through a rough patch in a long-term relationship.

“Midsommar,” much like Aster’s debut, “Hereditary,” is a story about grief, but done within the horror genre. It mixes horror, drama, and farce to the point where this odd amalgam of genres starts to feel like a surreal nightmare. Suffice to say, the considerable visual framing talents that Aster showed in “Hereditary” are back on display here.

What I had originally dismissed as an ‘unsubtle” and “messy” movie turned out to be a sheer delight with Aster’s 3-hour director’s cut. The relationship between Dani and Christian is more fully fleshed-out, with more conversation added between the two to make the viewer more aware of their tumultuously shared history together. Florence Pugh, an absolutely marvelous acting talent, plays Dani with the kind of wide-eyed vulnerability that is sometimes too hard to watch. However, in the three-hour cut, the transformation that happens to her on-screen feels so much more intense.