Open Mike: The Must-See Movies of Paul Thomas Anderson

["Open Mike" is the often off-topic, anything-goes editorial page of TOP. It appears on Wednesdays.]

And now for something completely different. I'm wary of movies—there's too much drek and dross out there, too much dirt to move to find the occasional gem. To get around this, I tend to follow threads of some sort—a director I like, an actor, even a writer (who are risky to follow because they usually don't have enough control over the final movie. That's the result of how they're treated, not their own integrity). Sometimes a specific sub-genre. I'm also suspicious of movies that are too widely liked; if "everybody" loves something, I've learned that it probably won't have enough in it to think about. The only kinds of movies I'm a sucker for are classic film noir and anti-westerns, and I don't even like all of those. I'm more or less allergic to sci-fi and fantasy, which makes current moviedom bleak territory. Bottom line, taking a flier on a movie has such low odds of success I tend not to do it without something more to go on. Hopefully I'll revisit a few of these threads now and again, on random Wednesdays. —MJ

Paul Thomas Anderson in 2007. Photo by Jürgen Fauth.

Paul Thomas Anderson (AKA P.T. Anderson or "PTA"), born 1970, is an American film director known for hard-edged, unsentimental, naturalistic movies filmed with skill and economy. His movies feature excellent acting and great respect for actors' performances. His life-partner and the mother of his children is Maya Rudolph of "SNL" fame. Anderson's career seems to have subsided somewhat in recent years but his best movies are worth considering as parts of a greater whole. Fun fact: he was once literally an understudy to Robert Altman, having been engaged as an alternate director in case the aging and ailing Altman was unable to finish the film he was working on.

Five of his films in no particular order:

Magnolia (1999): Anderson's masterpiece so far, and the movie he made when he had fully "arrived" after his debut with Hard Eight and the box-office success of Boogie Nights. Exuberant and full-blooded, it's a big movie about nothing less than the human condition. It tells of the foibles of living and the futility of making plans in an unruly world, by following a bunch of tangential events that unfold over one day in L.A. There are bits and pieces to savor around every unforeseen turn, and all-in performances from an all-star cast. Not everybody likes Magnolia; those who don't should see it again.

Hard Eight (1996): A curiously paced (slow in the first half, fast in the second), character-driven study of a gentlemanly "old hood" seeking to redeem himself for his past acts but not quite able, in the end, to abandon his habit of using violence for revenge and expediency. No matter how fast or slow the story moves, our interest in these "characters at the margins" and their varied relationships to each other carries our interest, sometimes almost hypnotically. Set in Las Vegas, Hard Eight is a great but underappreciated neo-noir with superb casting and acting. And, with Samuel L. Jackson and Gwyneth Paltrow in supporting roles, and Philip Seymour Hoffman with a walk-on, it has an impressive range of star power for a first feature film.

Boogie Nights (1997): At some point in American cultural history, the free love and flower-power of the hippie years morphed into sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll; folk music turned to punk rock; etc. Consequences set in, you might say. This movie tells the story of a particularly acute juncture of that change...in the porn industry. Told with a minimum of prurient sex, which, you can't help but reflect, the movie industry also routinely uses to sell its product. Addictively watchable, and arguably the career-best performances of both Mark Wahlberg and the late Burt Reynolds—the latter of whom always had a touch of genial sleaziness about him, except maybe in Deliverance.

Punch-Drunk Love (2002): I have a sort of side-interest in good performances from people not known for actual non-comedic acting, especially if they're anomalies in that person's career: Robin Williams playing it straight in Awakenings, singer and onetime celeb Cher in Moonstruck, Will Forte in Nebraska. (I love acting.) I've never cared for Adam Sandler, but PTA, an actor's director if there ever was one, gets to the core of Sandler's persona and his appeal—and extracts Sandler's least quirky performance. It's a film that wanted to be slight and silly, but is experimental and unconventional anyway. But it falls flat as a love story and a drama. Punch-Drunk Love is to PTA's ouvre what Anomalisa is to Charlie Kaufman's. Fooled a lot of Sandler fans, who weren't amused. (Ironically, Sandler is one of the few stars I've had a personal brush with—among a small crowd, I watched a scene from Mr. Deeds being filmed on the streets of New York city. The lighting was especially interesting!)

[CORRECTION the next day: On second thought I really have to withdraw the implicit recommendation here for Punch-Drunk Love. I watched it again last night and it's a much worse movie than I remembered. It employs many of the motifs, plot twists, and directing devices of violent thrillers in the service of alleged "comedy," which just doesn't work. And, the cardinal sin for a rom-com, it falls flat as a love story. The motives of the people don't ring true to human nature—there's no real chemistry between the leads, and Barry's significant oddities just don't add up to an integrated human, even a sick, repressed and persecuted one. And there are lots of holes in the plot, for example the fact that Barry says $500 is a lot of money for him when the extortionists take if from him but then has a nice sojourn in Hawaii on his own dime (when his pudding scheme is delayed).

Bah. Skip that one, and let's maybe depend on the dependable Hugh Crawford and insert The Master into the list instead? I haven't seen it—it's a roman à clef about L. Ron Hubbard, which doesn't seem promising to me, but I'll defer to Hugh.

I'll stick by my loyalty to Hard Eight, which I this is a great neo-noir film. —Ed.]

There Will Be Blood (2007): PTA's adaptation of an Upton Sinclair novel. Nominated for numerous awards. Daniel Day-Lewis won the Oscar, a Golden Globe, and a BAFTA award for his portrayal of Daniel Plainview, and Robert Elswit won the Academy Award for best cinematographer. Anderson was nominated for Best Director. (I haven't seen this one yet. Not a fan of bloody movies, so the title sort of turned me away back when it was in theaters. I think this is P.T. Anderson's most famous movie, however.)

This post is not quite all the way OT (off-topic) because Paul Thomas Anderson tends to work with excellent cinematographers, and tends to get excellent work out of the ones he works with. The photography is something I seldom look at until the second viewing, unless the movie is in black-and-white, which none of these are.

Mike

P.S. Editors Needed Everywhere, Dept.: "He also worked as a production assistant on numerous commercials and music videos before he got the chance to make his first feature, something he liked to call Hard Eight (1996), but would later become known to the public as 'Hard Eight'." (Sentence from the IMDB bio of Anderson.)

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(Not) everything must fade away

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

hugh crawford: "You left out The Master? Not only the most beautifully photographed of PTA's films, especially in a theater in 70mm, but photography or at least a photographer plays a central role. Not entirely realistic as I can't think of anything in a darkroom that you would try to drink, but the department store portrait session had a certain ring to it. Makes me want to see it again but I don't know if I could stand seeing it on a small screen knowing what I'm missing by not seeing it in 70mm."

Mike replies: I thought something about leaving out The Master would be the first comment, and sure enough....

Ben: "I find his films beautiful to watch but fundamentally unsatisfying as films. I actually think it is a rather sad commentary that he is considered one of the great auteurs of our age, as I find his fundamentally bleak vision of humanity rather simplistic and un-challenging. Fantastic performances, yes. Beautiful cinematography, absolutely. Great scores as well. But fundamentally important stories that make for great films? Sad to say, but this piece—the most challenging, of course—is all too often missing."

Mike replies: That's true of Punch-Drunk Love (see the "Correction" above). But Anderson deserves the status of auteur (the French word for "author"), because (something I neglected to mention, bad bad bad), he mostly writes his own movies—something he shares with Woody Allen, the Coen Brothers, Orson Welles, Federico Fellini and other legitimate auteurs. The term to me really just means an individual who has artistic control over the results, rather than being a pawn at the mercy of producers.

Ben: "Yes, I agree. But I don’t think he should be classed as a ‘great’ auteur—that was the gist of my comment, and why I used the adjective. Makes me wonder...would his films be better if he weren’t an auteur? The great performances, great cinematography...might go farther with someone else’s script."

Mike: Could be. I think that might be a structural problem of Hollywood—the writing of movies is not considered a creative art, and not accorded any respect. Scripts are reworked to death by multiple parties and don't represent one unified, integrated creative vision. Nearly the only way a writer can get artistic respect in Hollywood is if he's also the director, or if he and the director are friends. So maybe it's basically a matter of creative control.

Comments

[louis]

hi mike,

with regard to cinematography, i have converted many colour films that i enjoy to black and white and often find that the cinematography can be much better appreciated in the black and white version. vertigo and the godfather trilogy come to mind as looking very beautiful in black and white.

[Stan B.]

Some good flicks there to be sure, but There Will Be Blood is like an anemic Citizen Kane, a one trick pony where you simply wait for Daniel Day-Lewis to erupt into yet another fit of violence.

Good flicks of late: November, American Animals, Hostiles, Blindspotting...

[John Camp]

About writers...there's a screenwriter's book that I once looked at, briefly; the second or third chapter was entitled. "...And the Writer Got Screwed."

My wife likes all kinds of movies. I don't. She once asked me, with some asperity, what kind of movies I liked. I had to think about it, and finally came up with, "I like movies where s*** blows up."

[c.d.embrey]

Boogie Nights—been there and done that. To paraphrase soundman Jim Tanenbaum (Avatar) I'm a gaffer, not a censor. I was lighting director (credited as Max Schultz) on several John Holmes films in the mid 1970s.

BTW Boogie Nights co-star William H. Macey, is Felicity Huffman's husband.

[Speed]

For readers who grew up in Northeast Ohio (Cleveland/Akron), Paul Thomas Anderson is the son of the late Ernie Anderson.

Ernie was an actor who was the voice of ABC and a Cleveland television late-night horror movie host known as "Ghoulardi" (after whom Anderson later named his production company).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Thomas_Anderson

[Mike Plews]

I watched two B&W films this week one from the 1950's the other an art house favorite from last year.
They were remarkably similar. Odd Man Out was made in the 1950's and is probably James Masons best film. Cold War is a polish film getting a lot of well deserved praise.
Thematically both seem much the same. Both are shot in the same academy aspect ratio. Both are black and white.
I'm not going into detail about the respective plots. TOP readers should just watch them both. Glorious photography, great performances and great scripts. I just happened to land on them one day apart and did not expect all the connections I felt.

[Ramón Acosta]

A while back you recommended some movies shot exclusively using natural light. Can you point me in the right direction?

[David Bennett]

As I recall, there is very little blood in ‘There Will Be Blood’. Watch it.

[Nigel]

I'm inclined to agree with Ben, and this bit from a Guardian review of some years ago, which might apply to several of his films:
This is certainly a distinctive picture, composed in a startling, even riveting idiom by a director with style. But it is almost entirely depthless: a trompe-l'oeil of elusive ideas and replicant emotions...

[scott kirkpatrick]

So what did you think of Phantom Thread?

And I will definitely have to see the full Boogie Nights, after checking out the 3 minute one-shot pool traverse that is on YouTube.

[Robert Roaldi]

I've noticed that comedic actors often do very well in dramatic roles. I can't remember in what movie/TV show I saw him, but Dick Van Dyke is another example. Hugh Grant is good in the TV series Very British Scandal playing Jeremy Thorpe. There are probably other examples but I can't think of any right now.

[marcin wuu]

For a second there I thought it would be about Wes Anderson, and I was like, "wait, what?" Cause it's so much not a director I'd ever think you'd appreciate...

[Rob Campbell]

The last movie I saw in a movie house was Thunderball, on release.

We used to have a television subscription to a movie channel but gave up on it after a while: everything seemed to be as John Camp says he likes: shit gets blown up. Perhaps it's something in the diets that produce it.

The last directors I enjoyed were Fellini, Antonioni and Woody Allen, the latter for his Jewish humour that seems to me to be so much more advanced that the rest; really clever rather than dumb.

More rewarding, I think, than the cinema is some television stuff. Enjoyed the French Engrenages and Braquo a lot; the nice thing about those is that the characters grow on one (both love and hate) and show a sustained development that has time to appear over many hours of viewing. Can't stand space movies or British detective series, where the Englishness falls on its face (for me) as would songs about UK highways if up against Route 66. It's all on too small a scale and cosy.

People talk about the need to watch movies on big screens. I have a fairly big tv set (Samsung) and one night, watching something on my little iPad, I realised that from where I sit, the screen on the iPad is exactly the same size as the tv one appears to be. As with snaps, viewing distance rules...

All that said, I never could get into Breaking Bad, despite enjoying the first show.

[Alan]

There isn't much blood, actually. The protagonist and the antagonist in that movie made for some edgy scenes; both, well portrayed.

We (my mother, father, wife, and thirteen year old son) went to watch Magnolia when it was in the theatres. As we were walking out, our son said, "I know I'm only thirteen but that was the crummiest movie I have ever seen"! To which, my mother replied, "well, I'm sixty and that was the crummiest movie I have ever seen"!

I need to watch that movie again.

[AN]

I think There Will Be Blood is my favorite movie, period. I saw it in the theater, and then a few weeks later, I went to see it in the theater again. That's never happened before or since.

[David Comdico]

I'm completely immune to the charms of PTA. He's a pure cineaste so I should in theory like him. He has a great sense of cinema and cinematic technique. The opening of Magnolia is, for example, a deft piece of filmmaking. But I always end up concluding that his movies are essentially empty of real ideas or feeling, that too much of the experience in his films are taken from other films not from life. I also think he is too permissive with his actors and allows them to chew the scenery ("I drink your milkshake"), which American audiences seem to like and view as 'good acting.' To me it exposes his content as essentially pulp dressed up with art house posturing.

[David Kieltyka]

The Master is in many ways a version of Boogie Nights, but about the religious cult industry of the late '40s/early '50s rather than the porn industry of the late '70s/early '80s. If you like the latter you'll probably like the former. I really like 'em both…they are quite bleak films, though.

[Patrick]

When I saw the title of this post, I thought the next line should be - Spoiler Alert: There aren't any. I find his stuff to be short on dramatic tension, not much in the way of narrative. I don't remember any blood, or certainly not much, in There Will be Blood, you could watch that. Day-Lewis is great, as he is in everything. I suppose that movie is the one of Anderson's I find the least lacking in the things that make a movie entertaining.

[javier castro]

Probably one of the most misunderstood artistic labels/concepts is that of "cinema d'auteur".

It was originally established by the french nouvelle vague cinema critics of the 50´s & 60's to vindicate the work of Hollywood mainstream directors, the theory being that although they were "professionals for hire", working most of the time on materials they did not develop under circumstances they did not control, they managed to transfer their personal vision, their artistic personality and their ideas to them, making very personal worlds "under disguise".

Ford, Hitchcok, Hawks, did not write their films and at the time were not considered artists. Artisans, at most. Then the art film label and prestige was reserved for films usually pedantic, formally pretentious, adressed to a "cultivated audience" and with no commercial ambition.

How that concept gave birth to a whole new "genre" of cinema of "personal expression" and came to dignify precisely the opposite type of works, contradicting it's original intent and meaning is a mistery to me.

One of the things I like about Hollywood is how open it is: The Master for instance, was shot by a Rumanian director of photography, Mihai Malaimare. It was his first full scale, big budget US film, and he dared to shoot a good portion of it with old Carl Zeiss Jena, Schneider and Hassy Zeiss lenses and famously used an Olympus 24mm for some shots, using also a 65mm camera for most of it, for great bokeh. I doubt any industry executive in the rest of the world would have trusted a foreign newcomer and let him shoot with old, cheap, crappy lenses.

[john robison]

I must be a cranky old man. I don't follow modern movies and sure ain't gonna pay the price to see one in a theater. For the past 15~20 years I've stopped recommending any movie to anyone. So very often they simply didn't enjoy it. The last good one I personally viewed and liked was 'Sully, Miracle on the Hudson'. Another one I liked was 'Good Night and Good Luck', it seems like I prefer well done historical movies.
PS, Going way back, 'Apollo 13'
PPS, Going way way back, 'Tora Tora Tora'