When you listen to Chloé Zhao talk about the films that she loves, an obvious pattern emerges. The Oscar-winning director describes her favorite movies by focusing on their scope and the worlds they create. One of her favorite ways to praise a director is by focusing how they approach using their locations: how the tiny details that populate a setting are considered, and how the characters’ interactions with their surroundings establish and reflect their own internal universes.
The films that use their locations successfully, in Zhao’s eyes, can vary widely. Some are massive epics like “Lord of the Rings” or “Interstellar,” while others are intimate romantic dramas like “Happy Together” or “Wuthering Heights.” Zhao’s films are often compared to the works of Terrence Malick, and she’s unsurprisingly a big fan of the director’s absorbing and gorgeous works, especially his 2005 historical epic “The New World.” But Zhao’s no snob about the other movies and TV shows she considers her favorites: “Man of Steel” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” are among the titles she’s quick to praise.
The priority Zhao gives to world-building in film is well reflected in her own work as a director. Across her first three movies — “Songs My Brothers Taught Me,” “The Rider,” and “Nomadland,” which made her the second woman in history to win Best Director at the Oscars — she established herself as a chronicler of the American West, making movies about ordinary people in society’s margins navigating their ordinary troubles. Her first two films both starred non-professional actors, many from South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Lakota Sioux region. “Nomadland” had Oscar winner Frances McDormand in the lead as a widow who travels through the country working seasonal jobs as a nomad, but also featured of real-life modern nomads in its supporting cast. All three films are quiet and contemplative, placing the audience in the often quiet characters’ heads through the way they interact with the exquisite landscapes around them.
Those three movies established Zhao as an independent film darling, which made it intriguing when she joined up with Disney to direct “Eternals”: a big-budget superhero space epic and linchpin in Marvel’s Phase 4. The film didn’t become the critical darling that her pedigree promised, but nonetheless, seeing her move her sharp observant style to new subjects and genres remains an intriguing proposition. Zhao’s next film will see her take a stab at a historical romance; based on the book by Maggie O’Farrell, “Hamnet” will focus on the relationship between William Shakespeare and his wife Anne Hathaway (not that Anne Hathaway), and the devastating death of their only son.
It’s unclear how long we have to wait for Zhao’s return to the director’s chair, as “Hamnet” is still in pre-production. To bide the time before we can get another one of her movies, why not look at the movies that shaped her into the filmmaker she is? Here is a list of 10 of Zhao’s favorite films, compiled from interviews she’s given over the years and listed in no particular order.
In 2022, Zhao spoke with Google TV about her favorite movies and TV shows. One of her choices was “Blade Runner 2049,” Denis Villeneuve’s acclaimed followup to the ’80s cyberpunk classic. Zhao spoke about how the film speaks to her because it transports its audience members to another world.
“Every detail, structure, colors, how is this character interacting with the location,” Zhao said. “All of that says so much about that character.”
Another pick from Zhao’s Google video was Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi drama “Intersteller,” which she said had a huge impact on her, and was “ahead of its time.”
“I didn’t cry the first time I watched it. But between when that film first came out and where we are in the world, as a human being on this planet, I sobbed by the end, this time,” Zhao said. “I think in another 10 years when you watch Interstellar, it’s going to take a whole different meaning about our relationship with the planet, our planet’s relationship with the cosmos, and what’s the destiny of humanity.”
Zhao is a huge fan of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy by Peter Jackson, but she has a particular love for the second film in the fantasy epic. In her Google interview, she praised the film for its epic scale.
“The landscapes, the epic battles, it makes you fall in love with these characters and root for them in their struggles,” Zhao said.
In her Google video, Zhao praised the work of Andrea Arnold, best known for her 2016 Cannes Jury Prize winner “American Honey.” Her favorite movie from the English filmmaker is her 2011 adaptation of “Wuthering Heights,” the classic gothic romance from Emily Brontë.
“She has a very strong sense of place. When you watch ‘Wuthering Heights,’ you know this filmmaker isn’t just staring at her actor,” Zhao said. “She’s constantly looking. ‘What else around us can we capture?’ And the way the characters are interacting with this place says so much of their innocence and love for each other.”
The one filmmaker that Zhao is most consistently compared to in her career is Terrence Malick, whose luscious use of scenery and meditative stories feel like major influences on Zhao’s own style. Her favorite film from Malick, and one of her favorites overall, is 2005’s “The New World,” which tells the story of the first British settlers in the Americas. Zhao said the film has particular emotional meaning for her because she relates the love story between John Smith (Colin Farrell) and Pocahontas (Q’orianka Kilcher) — who fall for each other despite not speaking the same language — to her own youth, when she left her family in China to live in England and the United States as a teenager.
“I left home and I came to a country where I didn’t speak the language,” Zhao said. “So much of my youth is watching people without understanding what they’re saying. There’s one moment in the film that has such a huge impact on me as a filmmaker, the way that he contrasted [Pocahontas]’s immenint passing with the joyous expression she’s giving. He’s captured an essence about mortality and where we belong.”
In her Google TV interview, Zhao referred to Germany’s Werner Herzog as one of the most important and essential filmmakers to watch. Her favorite film from Herzog is one of his many documentaries: 2011’s “Into the Abyss,” which profiles two Texas men convicted of a triple homicide and given the death penalty.
“The film is a heavy subject, but that’s not what the film is about,” Zhao said. “That’s what the genius of Werner Herzog is, it’s always about more. It shows you how much life can shock you, and how magnificent it is to be alive in the most bittersweet way.”
No, it’s not a movie, but Zhao is a full-fledged “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” head. As she puts it in her Google TV video, the classic teen drama that starred Sarah Michelle Geller as the chosen hero against the demons plaguing our mortal world “is a very important show for me.”
“It was everything for me, for a few years in college,” Zhao said. “Vampires, witchcraft, teen romance, I mean, what else do you want?”
In an interview with USA Today during the 2021 Oscar season, Zhao referred to “Happy Together” as the “film that made me want to make films.” Wong Kar-wai’s 1997 romantic drama stars Leslie Cheung and Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, two of the director’s frequent collaborators, as a gay couple who become stranded in Argentina during a vacation and navigate their loving but tumultuous relationship in the foreign country.
In the same USA Today interview, Zhao revealed that the very first American movie she ever saw, or at least remembers seeing, is James Cameron’s action thriller “The Terminator.”
“I was like, ‘Holy (expletive), that looks crazy,'” Zhao said.
“Man of Stee,” and the comic book movies of Zack Snyder in general are a bit of a divisive topic on the internet. But Zhao is an unabashed fan of Snyder’s 2013 take on the Superman origin story, and named it a key inspiration for the character of Ikris (Richard Madden) when she was developing her superhero blockbuster “Eternals.” Zhao went as far as to compare Snyder’s gritty take on Superman to the films of her cinematic hero Terrence Malick.
“He approached this myth in an authentic and very real way. I remember thinking it was ‘Superman’ by Terrence Malick when I saw the trailer,” Zhao said. “This film left a strong impression on me.”
