Brady Corbet is reminding audiences just how special of a filmmaker Mia Hansen-Løve is.
Corbet, whose feature “The Brutalist” is predicted to be a top contender at the 2025 Oscars, said during a visit to the Criterion Closet in the below video that Hansen-Løve is among the modern all-time greats. Writer/director/actor Corbet co-led Hansen-Løve’s 2014 autobiographical film “Eden” alongside fellow filmmaker Greta Gerwig.
“This one I actually have so I’m not going to take it,” Corbet said while holding a Blu-ray of Hansen-Løve’s 2021 film “Bergman Island.” He added, “I just want to call out Mia Hansen-Løve, one of my favorite directors that I worked with years ago on a film called ‘Eden.’ This is her film ‘Bergman Island.’ I encourage everyone to seek it out because I think she is one of our great contemporary treasures.”
Corbet further shared how much a trip to the Criterion Closet means to him on a personal note.
“I’m very, very grateful to be able to do this because many years ago, seven or eight years ago, my family and I had a fire where we lost most of our DVDs, books, and such,” he said. “I just feel fortunate to be able to replenish the account, so to speak.”
“The Brutalist” is nominated for Best Picture, with Corbet also nominated in the Best Director category, among other nods for the film. And Corbet isn’t the only filmmaker who fondly remembers working with Hansen-Løve: Corbet’s “Eden” co-star Gerwig was originally set to reunite with Hansen-Løve on “Bergman Island.” Gerwig was cast alongside John Turturro and later, Owen Wilson, in an early iteration of the film. All three actors parted ways with the 2021 feature due to scheduling conflicts.
Instead, “Bergman Island” was led by Vicky Krieps and Tim Roth, who play two writer/directors who create a movie within a movie; Mia Wasikowska and Anders Danielsen Lie are their surrogate characters, with Krieps as Hansen-Løve’s own insert in the autofiction feature.
Hansen-Løve told IndieWire that really there is no distinction between reality and fiction, especially when it comes to depicting one’s own story on the screen.
“At the end, it’s just two sides,” Hansen-Løve said. “It’s what fiction is about for me: revealing who you are and who you are not at the same time; who you cannot be, but who you are inside. There is a constant dialogue and tension between the characters you invented, the official characters that you create when you write very personal films, and who you are in your everyday life. Sometimes you use fictional characters to do things that you cannot do in real life, to emancipate when you cannot emancipate. It’s also an escape somehow, and it helps you live, cope. And also believe.”
Check out Corbet’s closet picks, including a lot of love for Luchino Visconti — he picks “The Leopard,” “Death in Venice,” and “The Damned,” which he says was a big influence on his directorial debut, “The Childhood of a Leader” — above.
