["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.)
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(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.
