Few filmmakers from the past quarter century embody the indie filmmaking dream better than Darren Aronofsky. After bursting onto the scene with his microbudget debut feature “Pi” in 1998, he has gradually made his way through bigger and bigger projects without compromising his signature worldview. From Oscar-winning prestige dramas like “Black Swan” and “The Whale” to blockbusters such as “Noah,” Aronofsky is the rare director who has found ways to bend every level of the film industry ecosystem to his personal style at one point or another.
His eclectic career has seen him work in a variety of genres, from esoteric sci-fi dramas and psychological thrillers to full on Biblical epics. But after a quarter century, it’s increasingly easy to look back and examine the themes that Aronofsky keeps returning to. His films frequently feature deep dives into the complexities of the human mind, examining the way obsessions and addictions can convince people that it’s possible to create order out of chaos. In an almost paradoxical sense, he appears to be equally interested in the mathematically precise realities of the real world and the esoteric symbolism of dreams. That scientific approach to crafting his characters’ psyches gives him a strong artistic foundation for any genre he chooses to dabble in.
Aronofsky has also established himself as one of Hollywood’s most successful directors of actors, as his cast members frequently go on to award season glory after working with him. Aronofsky helped revive Mickey Rourke’s career (and earned him his first Oscar nomination) by casting him in “The Wrestler” in 2008. Soon after, Natalie Portman won an Oscar for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role for her nightmarish performance as an obsessive ballerina in “Black Swan.” And of course, Brendan Fraser completed his comeback when he won Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role for playing a 600lb man in Aronofsky’s “The Whale.”
Aronofsky has been known to take inspiration from a variety of non-film influences, namely literature and theatre. But make no mistake — he’s also a serious cinephile. Over the years he has spoken out about the movies that have shaped him, from complex genre films to more muted character studies. Taken as a whole, his favorite movies paint a clear picture of the ideas that shaped him. Keep reading for 10 of Darren Aronofsky’s favorite films.
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“Amadeus” (dir. Miloš Forman, 1984)
Image Credit: ©Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection In his films “The Wrestler” and “Black Swan,” Aronofsky showed a clear interest in exploring the lives of artists who sacrifice everything in pursuit of perfecting their craft. So it’s not particularly surprising that he singled out Miloš Forman’s fictionalized Mozart biopic “Amadeus” as one of his four favorite movies in a recent interview with Letterboxd.
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“La Dolce Vita” (dir. Federico Fellini, 1960)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection Few films have shaped cinematic history more than “La Dolce Vita,” Federico Fellini’s 1960 Palme d’Or winner that helped usher in the aesthetics of 1960s cool and gave us a slew of hip new words like “paparazzi.” The impact of the film was not lost on Aronofsky, who told Letterboxd that it was one of his four favorite movies.
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“Yojimbo” (dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1961)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection Given Sergio Leone and Akira Kurosawa’s willingness to steal from each other, it’s not surprising that Aronofsky also admires Kurosawa’s samurai classic “Yojimbo.” He told Letterboxd that it’s one of his four favorite movies, and also compared Leone’s “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” favorably to it in 2015.
“It’s this idea of using music to enter a new chapter by going back to the main refrain, like the moment with Toshiro Mifune in ‘Yojimbo’ where suddenly he’s the bad-ass in town, and the most valuable chess player on the board,” he said. “Now, it’s all about how that chess piece is going to be moved.”
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“The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” (dir. Sergio Leone, 1966)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection Aronofsky has praised Spaghetti Western legend Sergio Leone on multiple occasions (then again, who hasn’t?) In a 2015 interview, he cited Leone’s trilogy-concluding “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” as one of his personal favorites.
“With this film, Leone makes opera,” he said. “There’s that great scene later on, when the ugly is searching for the tombstone, and the camera’s spinning, chasing him. It’s no longer just cinema, it’s become operatic.”
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“Angel Heart” (dir. Alan Parker, 1987)
Image Credit: ©TriStar Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection If you’ve ever wondered where Aronofsky got the idea to cast Mickey Rourke — whose career was not exactly booming at the time — in “The Wrestler,” the answer might lie in his formative experience watching the actor team up with Robert De Niro in “Angel Heart.”
“At 18 backpacking Europe, often broke, i’d spend a lot of time escaping rain in movie theaters,” Aronofsky tweeted in 2020. “Saw Alan Parker’s ‘Angel Heart’ that way in Paris & it was the first time i sat through credits & watched a film again. didn’t move. got to meet him years later. generous with wisdom.”
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“Do the Right Thing” (dir. Spike Lee, 1989)
Image Credit: ©MCA/Courtesy Everett Collection Aronofsky has always been open about his admiration for Spike Lee’s Bed Stuy-set magnum opus “Do the Right Thing.”
“It was a major film when it came out for all of us, because New York was in a very different place than it was in 1977,” he said in a 2015 interview. “Race relations were really boiling over, and Spike Lee completely tapped into what was in everyone’s head every time you got on the subway, every time you walked down the street. He just made it a timeless tale… Spike is able to put a stylistic spin on everything, yet also make everything emotionally true and real. He was able to capture all that pain that was going on, but also have this humor and mischievous style.”
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“Full Metal Jacket” (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1987)
Image Credit: ©Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection Every great filmmaker needs a strong opinion about their favorite Stanley Kubrick movie. Aronofsky heaped praise on Kubrick’s war epic “Full Metal Jacket” in a 2015 interview, drawing clear parallels between the Vietnam War saga and his own works.
“The first half of ‘Full Metal Jacket’ is all about order, and turning these human beings into machines, but there’s this one piece of chaos, which is this overweight soldier, who is just slowly picked on until he eventually explodes,” he said. “Then, it’s all about bringing these machines and this order into chaos. Suddenly, the whole shooting style changes, and it’s a completely different movie. I think that final shot of the movie is all about taking the grid of that order and sticking it over that chaos, while they’re in hell, literally.”
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“West Side Story” (dirs. Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, 1961)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection Aronofsky might be best known for his cold, cerebral films, but that doesn’t mean he can’t appreciate some Old Hollywood magic. In a 2015 interview, he said that Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise’s original “West Side Story” is his “favorite musical.”
“I love that the sets are so realistic, and there is such a striving for this realism, even though they’re dancing and singing,” he said. “Once again, this kind realism mixed with the fantastical is something I’m just very attracted to, and has definitely been a big influence.”
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“Raging Bull” (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1980)
Image Credit: ©United Artists/Courtesy Everett Collection While promoting “The Wrestler” in 2009, Aronofsky paid tribute to some of the other great combat sports movies that preceded it. In an interview with Time Out, he heaped praise on Martin Scorsese’s boxing classic “Raging Bull.”
‘Well, ‘Raging Bull’ is masterful in many different ways,” he said. “It’s a very different type of film to ‘The Wrestler,’ but it’s been a major influence. Scorsese was using the camera as a paintbrush, especially in the fighting scenes. I watch that film and I question whether it’s possible to make some-thing like that today.”
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“Stop Making Sense” (dir. Jonathan Demme, 1984)
Image Credit: ©Cinecom Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection Jonathan Demme’s landmark Talking Heads concert film “Stop Making Sense” — which is getting a theatrical re-release from A24 later this year — has long been viewed as one of the great rock and roll films. Aronofsky agrees, as he heaped praise on it in 2015.
One of the cool things about that concert is, you never see the fans, which is a very rare thing. Concert films always have a cutaway to the fans, and it immediately dates every film out there, which sometimes can be really cool, as in Woodstock, and other times can be – I can’t think of a humiliating one – but I’m sure there’s many of them,” he said. “If you remember, he comes out in the opening scene alone with a boom box and sets it down, and you see the back of the stage, and it’s just a bare stage with him and a microphone and an acoustic guitar. By the end, you have these huge numbers with a 15, 20-piece band, backup singers and fully electrical. The way Demme decided to shoot it, and how he captured it, was perfect, because he’s hinting at it. That, for me, is the great thing: When the camera is pushing the story forward, and working so well with the music.”