How Mike Mills Found Comfort in Ermanno Olmi
Earlier this month, director Mike Mills paid a visit to New York in support of his third narrative feature, 20th Century Women, a deeply personal coming-of-age tale about a teenage boy growing up in Carter-era Southern California with his single mother (Annette Bening) and her eccentric tenants (Greta Gerwig and Billy Crudup). Nominated for two Golden Globes, this moving follow-up to Mills’s Oscar-winning Beginners candid
While he was in town, Mills stopped by our office to talk about the Italian director Ermanno Olmi, whose spacious visual compositions and subtle characterizations have had a profound impact on his sensibility. In the below video—the second in our new Under the Influence series—Mills explains why he considers Olmi’s beautiful humanist dramas Il posto and I fidanzati his personal Xanax.
