Dicuss Paul Thomas Anderson films

[Soggy Bagel's Revenge!]

This is a thread to discuss the films of a very well-regarded modern director, Paul Thomas Anderson.

Two nights ago, I popped "Punch-Drunk Love" into my DVD player, and watched it for a second time. Despite not having the large image and sound of the theatre I saw it in, the experience was still the same. This is one terribly difficult to watch, intensely nerve-wracking film. There was not a single moment while watching "Punch Drunk Love" in which I felt comfortable. Because of the perfect orchestration of very cold ligting, lots of uninteresting space in the shot framing, the very toned-down performances, and Jon Brion's only subtly dramatic score; the film constantly puts the viewer in a state of discomfort.

I remember, after seeing "Punch-Drunk Love" theatrically, thinking that it was a fantastic film, but very different from anything Anderson had previously made. "Sydney", "Boogie Nights", and "Magnolia" are all very welcoming films. "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia" both begin with very exciting opening sequences with loud music, many characters, and plenty going on. These very entertaining sequences served as a perfect way to draw the viewer into the tale, and to prepare them for the story to come by allowing the viewer to feel as if they're well-acquanted with the characters in a very short amount of time.

"Punch-Drunk Love", however, begins with a very stale opening with no music, one character, and very little action, save the truck crashing at the very opening. This, I believe serves sort of as a jolt simply to get people looking up at the screen and paying attention. From there, the pacing of the scene is so slow, that the viewer actually begins to become bored. While they're bored, however, they're still watching what's going onscreen, waiting for something else interesting like the truck crashing. The anticipation for something the viewer don't know is a very uncomfortable feeling. This sets the stage, and that same kind of uncomfortable anticipation continues throughout the entire film.

As you can see, the structure of "Punch Drunk" is quite different from the other films. This is, I think, because "Magnolia", "Boogie Nights", and "Sydney" are all very character-based films. They have strong characters that the audience empathizes with, and the films are made in such a way as to promote that empathy. "Punch-Drunk Love", in my opinion, is not at all a character-based film. None of the supporting characters in the film, even Emily Watson's character, are really given any kind of real character development. They are there to encite emotion. The character Barry Egan, who, for the most part, is never not in a scene (I believe the one exception is the short section with the Mattress Man hiring his goons), and he serves as our vessel for the film. The viewer is not really there to learn a lot about him in the traditional sense of character development, they instead are there to experience his emotions. Through Barry, we see curiosity, uncertainty, anger, fear, and fascination -- all of it tinged with a feeling of uncomfortable nervousness.

Well those are my thoughts for the time being. Primarily on "Punch-Drunk". if anybody would like to add comparisons to and comments on "Sydney", "Boogie Nights", and "Magnolia" as well, please do so.

Arigato,
Brook

[FurryHumanBeing]

That's exactly why I liked PDL, becaus it made me feel uncomfortable!

I don't feel like talking about any of his films now, but I will say that I do think they are all modern day masterpieces, and await his next film.

[MrTony]

I just saw this for the first time Monday night. I agree 100% with Soggy's and Furry's statements about not feeling comfortable for a second. I felt I barely had a chance to breathe between scenes. Quite refreshing, I thought.

As far as lack of character development - when I saw that in Soggy's post, I at first said to myself "What the hell is he talking about?" But you may be onto something. Perhaps Barry is just there as a surrogate for the audience - a representation of our own neuroses and internal conflicts.

Oh, and I love the car crash at the beginning, and the keyboard instrument being dropped in the street. They're both terrific examples of off-the-wall things that happen every day in real life, and in the case of the car crash, we don't give much thought to because they don't involve us.

[Disco Stu]

My favorite of PTA's films is Hard Eight, but it was only after a few viewings that I got hooked into it. At first I was annoyed at the brilliant first hour that devolves into seemingly nothing, with a disapointing last 40 minutes that is underserving of the opening. But then I really got into the pathos of Phillip Baker Hall's character (Sydney) and the way that Sam Jackson (Jimmy) paints his own decsions as being nothing personal and yet a neccesity considering the information that he knows, almost as if he was doing Sydney a favor by him taking advantage, because at least Jimmy knows him, and better to get it out of the way now, rather than later. That's the most brilliant justification of a criminal act I've yet heard.

The sadness inherent in John Reilly's character (John) contributes to the believability of his puppy dog love for Sydney, and yet I still wonder to this day whether he really was there to bury his mother. In the amazing opening scene (has there ever been a scene with more dramatic possibility than this?), it almsot seems that John is trying to get Sydney to go away by saying something ridiculous, that can't possibly be believed. Perhaps John has whittled his life away doing something else that we have to invent for ourselves. In comparison, I thought of Roddy Piper's character of John Nada in They Live, where the look of being lost tells everything, without any dialogue ever being satisfactory or even necessary.

There is a sadness in all of the characters in Hard Eight. It is that rare movie, like Woody Allen's Manhattan, which can be watched from any of the character's persepectives and be understood from their eyes. Each time, you watch it. you get something new.

It even offers screenwriters the opportunity to experiment with it. There are three points in the film where the movie could go off in any conceivable direction. The first is after the opening coffee shop conversation. The second is after Sydney gets John a room. And the third is when Sydney gets awoken by the phone call. Try writing your own version of what happens from any of these points, and you wouldn't really be betraying anything, you would just have a great jump off point.



Boogie Nights is a great film that is eminently rewatchable, but it's the traditional and obvious structure that ultimately makes it a little too conventional. Yes, Anderson cops to using Scorsese, Altman, and Demme as inspiration. But I think he should have stuck with just ripping off Demme's approach in Something Wild, which is an utterly unpredictable movie that veers as much as Boogie Nights does, from satire to sex comedy to black comedy to scary thriller to romantic comedy to every genre and back again. Boogie Nights is a little too modeled on Goodfellas, even though i enjoy it more than Goodfellas, because I find there are many more characters that I cared about, because Anderson cared about them too. Anderson also tops Scorsese because his rip-off of Raging Bull in the concluding scene, is even better than the actual scene in Raging Bull, because it is not just sad and ironic, but funny too, and it has a huge plastic penis in it, which is more than I can say for most mainstream films.

It did inspire me to seek out the film which Anderson steals from verbatim on purpose, the documentary on John Holmes, "Exhausted." Most of the documentary footage from Amber Waves' film is taken from "Exhausted" and makes watching the John Holmes even more amusing. Anybody who seeks it out should definitely learn a little about Holmes beforehand, because it makes it much funnier. Holmes was a psychologically fascinating liar and to learn his life is to love his ego and ignorance.

Boogie Nights has the best deleted scene I've seen on a DVD, and while I understand why Anderson cut it out, it didn't fit into the flow of the film, it is truly hilarious. Please watch the Chico and Brock 16MM scene for a great laugh. Especially because this scene is also taken from "Exhausted."

Regarding Magnolia:

Magnolia may be one of the biggest mistakes made in the last ten years, but that does not mean it is not a great movie. Pauline Kael wrote a terribly prophetic and insightful review of Bernardo Bertolucci's "1900" (released in 1976). The title of the review was "Hail Folly!" In the review, she points to the fact that often after a great financial and/or critical success, a director will do much soul searching and produce an extremely personal script.

This script will conatin all the great ideas this director has ever wanted to shoot. There will be no revisions of this script and no studio can tamper with it. The director will fight to get all these ideas on screen. When the shooting is finished he will have an enormous amount of film, and often these movies are over three hours long. "1900" (made after "Last Tango in Paris") in its director's cut, is four hours long. "New York, New York" made after Scorsese made "Taxi Driver" is three hours. Coppola wants to release a three and a half hour version of "Apocalypse Now." Cimino's "Heaven's Gate" is more than four hours long, and made after "The Deer Hunter" (which I will not defend), is the ultimate cinematic folly.

Once the director gets into the editing room he may realize what has happened, that there is no way to make a coherent film out of the endless reels. The director realizes his failure at some point during the editing, and usually results are some of the greatest bad movies ever. They may be flawed masterpieces, but they are mistakes nonetheless. What Kael's point was was that only great directors with great alent can go this wrong. Hacks cannot produce such work. No one ever told the director no, and so he went on his worst instincts over and over again. Hacks don't allow themselves to follow their instincts, or if they do, they let the studio intervene. Often there will be a few incredible scenes within these movies, better than anything they have done before or since.

"Magnolia" is certainly flawed. Many scenes go on way too long, the frogs don't make the inteneded point, the ending is unsatisfying, there are some terrible decisions made in the last hour of the film, and there is often simnple directorial ego on screen. But even within these terribly edited scenes, there is brilliance. Look at the scenes where Jason Robards babbles on incoherently, for what seems like ten minutes. It seems like it doesn't fit, like it should be cut, but look at it in the way I did. This is a messy movie with messy emotions. Tidyness has no place in "Magnolia." This is a man who has at the end who has no way to express the profound thoughts he has in him. So he expresses them with incoherence. Whatever you think of the of the "Wise Up" musical sequence, it is certainly unexpected, and apart from certain scenes of "Timecode" (which considering the techniques involved is a more challenging task) it is the only time I've seen a piece of music evoke the right emotions for so many different characters at the same time, especially considering the many motives at hand. This is the kind of scene that would not come out of an executive meeting ("Hey, what if they all sing at the same time"). I also know that's it's kind of hackneyed to have two older charcters dying of cancer, I don't think he's making a point about life's repetition. But this is a personal film, as Anderson's father had died of cancer, and flawed masterpieces must have their excesses.

Even if you hate "Magnolia," you have to admit that Anderson is a talented guy. The writing in "Magnolia: is unapologetically emotional (rare for a Hollywood movie to be uncynical about that kind of stuff), the camerawork is fantastic, the music is dead-on, and the cast is amazing. The Tom Cruise scenes are very funny, the scene with Phil Hoffman on the phone is terrific, and just about all of John C. Reilly's scenes are amazing. Phillip Baker Hall has an amazing, yet mannered scene where he tries to explain to his daughter that he's dying.

Howard Hawks once said (in an oft-quoted line by Roger Ebert) that a great movie has three good scenes and no bad scenes. For "Magnolia," I think we should make an amendment. It has a handful of bad scenes, but just as many great ones.


I also just watched Punch Drunk Love last week for the second time and felt the same way I did the first time. I was blown away by how Anderson used the prototypical Sandler character that he has played in virtually every one of his roles, each annoying me more than the last, a timid man with huge moments where he loses control to a PG-13 point, in order to make us laugh, and made it anew. I feel that Barry Egan is a completely developed character, amazing for a movie with only 87 minutes before the credits roll. I can understand all of his motivations, his insecurities, his reactions, and this is why I have a problem with the lack of character development in the rest of the film. Soggy suggested to me that the movie might be in some way a hallucination or a fever dream or a nightmare, which I'm willing to accept, but then I cannot go with Barry being so defined and Emily Watson and Luis Guzman having no characters to play. The uncomfortable torture of the sister birthday party is the scene that gets to me most, but I wouldn't say that the rest of the movie is on that level of squirmability. I was actively rooting for Barry at the end of the film when he confronts the Mattress Man and honestly throughout, even vocally when I saw it in the theater (normally I am composed, but I was rather into it, as was the crowd at the sold out theater). The sister scene is rather reminiscent of almost all of Welcome to the Dollhouse, where you are mad at yourself for laughing at things you went through as well. However, no movie is as uncomfortable to sit through as Chuck and Buck, and that will remain the champ until perhaps a Labute film surpasses it.

I too love the opening of PDL, considering how quiet it all is. The tension is built really well, the way that Barry is almost hiding behind his coffee mug for protection, shielding him from life, and especially the piano. This is especially noteworthy because Anderson is prone to have extremely long scored sequences, there's one in Magnolia that must go on for 40 minutes, and it makes the silence work even better.

I also thought it was amazing that the 4 best car crashes of the year occurred in movies that were much better at being great films than the movies that were trying to be about car crashes. Each movie had 2 car crashes, and they were PDL and Adaptation.







For those who post in this topic, you should keep in mind that this idea developed because of a discussion between Soggy and I to avoid the general dull nature of Software topics. I certainly had grown tired of "What discs don't have inserts" and "Should I buy 'Movie that I will just buy because I'm a dolt who spends their money indiscriminately and then complains about being broke' blind?" The inital topic title was supposed to reflect that but the mods, in their wisdom, have changed it to not be so vague. The initial title was something to the effect of "Tired of humdrum topics that only discuss release dates and issues with extended branching? Post here." What I'm getting at is, please don't just throw down your opinion without reasoning. Don't just post, "yeah I liked Boogie Nights and PDL. Anderson's a cool director." Put some thought into it. Perhaps I only say this because I long for the arguments of old which required both thought and rapid fire responses. But I know from talking to some of you, that you do have opinions and thoughts to back them up, even if you are often unwilling to.

[Daniel Shock]

I just watched Punched Drunk Love last night for the first time. I was stunned at how good it was. My brother didn't like it because he was expecting and Adam Sandler film. Its too early for me to think brilliant thoughts, but I've loved all of PTA's movies.

I loved how Boogie Nights reminded me of high school drama club, but in a porno setting. How funny.

[Locke_]

I like Punch Drunk Love A LOT! I thought it was one of the best looking dvds in video quality and the audio was very good as well. It's quite fun to watch, but I wouldn't say I was uncomfortable watching it... more like stressed kinda. In the scene when Barry is at work getting calls from Georgia, dealing with his sister and his future girl, explaining the "piano" and pudding, and his workers has an accident, I could feel myself tensing up in frusteration because I felt for Barry.

The fast pace makes me tense as well. So much that could have gone wrong didn't, in a way. For example, Georgia could have played the tape she could have had while talking to Barry when Barry says he does have a girlfriend but she's on a trip. Although he didn't have a girlfriend yet, Emily Watson's character could have heard the conversation and not known that. Just one of the things that could have gone wrong.

Quite fun, interesting, and... I guess "emotional" could be the right word because we feel the frusteration Barry has.

[Monterey Jack]

Originally posted by Soggy Bagel's Revenge!
None of the supporting characters in the film, even Emma Watson

Hermione Granger was in this movie?

I believe you meant "Emily" Watson, Soggy.

As for me, I've found all of P.T. Anderson's films to date to be tremendously involving on an emotional level, and didn't find Punch-Drunk Love to be "uncomfortable" at all. It's bloody brilliant!

-Hard Eight (Sydney): A-

-Boogie Nights: A

-Magnolia: A+

-Punch-Drunk Love: A

[Morticia]

We do have 2 Film Class discussions on PTA films:

Magnolia
Boogie Nights

[Locke_]

Yeah, but here we discuss his films and style of filmmaking in general too.

[mlemmond]

I have only seen 2 of PTA's films Boogie Nights which I own and Punch Drunk Love which I rented and plan to own.

I liked Boogie Nights the first time I saw it although I feel it begins to drag on a little near the end. I kind of lose interest in the film after Dirk throws his tantrum and parts ways with Burt Reynolds character and dives into drug addiction.

Punch Drunk Love for me was different I thought it was an okay movie after watching it, but after returning it to netflix and thinking more about it over the last couple of days I've come to realize why I only thought it was okay. Alot of the way I felt about the movie had to do with the anxiety (sp?) and irritation you feel watching this guys sisters just grind him down. The more I think about the movie the more I want to see it again.

I like the idea concieved here BTW, I like the idea of discussing an actor or directors entire body of work in one thead.

[asphodel5]

I have yet to rewatch Punch Drunk Love. I was planning on doing it earlier in the week, but I got distracted. I think that today will be the day. I will post expanded comments after I re-watch it.

I agree with Soggy's "uncomfortable" argument. I think that picture in the booklet that has Barry with a semi- truck for a spine is a great summation of the tone of the majority of the film (and the emotions that it arouses in viewers). Barry is a man on the edge who is harried by nearly every one that he meets (sisters, co-workers etc). He realizes that he is socially awkward, so he attempts to keep to himself, but of course this never really seems to work out. He is forced into awkward situations. Anderson has done his best to make us feel his unease. The movie was filled with interrupted silences. Just as we begin to feel at ease and catch our breath, the score kicks in or we are confronted with something like the car crash.

The film reminds me of a wooden roller coaster that I used to ride a lot. It was called "the racer". It had two tracks. You could choose to ride forward or backward. PDL is like riding the backward racer. We know that we are on a set path and we know that the man who is controling it should be able to get us through to the end. We also know that it should follow a familiar pattern of ups and downs. In the case of PDL, we are always on edge because we are left expecting a rise or a fall at any second, but they are so sudden that we can't accurately anticpate them until we are already swept away.

Ok. I hope that some of those ramblings make sense. I've been writing them off and on at work, so they be sort of jumpy. I'll try to post some better stuff after I see it again.

[Morticia]

Originally posted by Locke_
Yeah, but here we discuss his films and style of filmmaking in general too.

Yeah, but I just wanted to throw that out for the Newbies.

[Soggy Bagel's Revenge!]

Originally posted by Monterey Jack
Hermione Granger was in this movie?

I believe you meant "Emily" Watson, Soggy.

Good catch. I'll fix.

[FilmFanSea]

Personally, i think Magnolia is PT Anderson's masterpiece thus far. It is clearly operatic in design (almost Wagnerian), or perhaps Greek tragedy, full of hubris, duplicity, transgressions. The plague of frogs is the apotheosis, a sort of wake-up call to the characters. He develops themes of Image/Reality, Regret /Forgiveness, Chance/Free Will. The film is replete with powerful images, masterful intercutting and juxtaposition of the various narratives. And the acting is simply stellar. I'm not sure that William H. Macy or Philip Seymour Hoffman or Tom Cruise or Philip Baker Hall or John C. Reilly have ever been better. Macy, in particular, gives a heart-rending performance.

This film gets better with every viewing.

[Chewbacca]

I thought "Boogie Nights" was disappointing, the story was weak, it dragged and just went in circles. Continuation and creating suspense is a problem many young directors suffer from, they lack the knowledge and experience of how to deal with it. And why was Dirk's family ignored in the story once he became famous ? It was more of a comedy and not a picture of the real porn world, perhaps a Ron Jeremy cameo might've helped ! It's also the only PTA film I've ever seen BTW, actually, I'd rather watch a Paul Thomas film than a PTA film, maybe he should've directed it. I have a feeling PTA is the kind of director who likes to stuff his films with dozens of sub-plots and characters and then some, but overkill like that is just not my cup of tea so I guess his films are not for me.