Blowhard, Esq. writes:
Is there a more overrated mainstream director than P.T. Anderson? Yes, he has loads of talent, there’s no question about that. The level of craft in his films is always high and Anderson himself has good visual instincts and a strong rhythm when it comes to editing individual scenes. Yet for all his precociousness, his films add up to nothing for me. They may tackle Big Important Themes — family dynamics, addiction, self-delusion, and pornography in BOOGIE NIGHTS; family dynamics, addiction, sexual abuse, and television in MAGNOLIA; father-son relations, exploitation, greed, and capitalism in THERE WILL BE BLOOD — but he spends so much time demanding a Best Picture Oscar in every frame that he forgets to say anything particularly insightful or meaningful about any of these topics.
In THE MASTER, he takes on family dynamics, addiction, cults, and post-WWII masculinity and yet again Anderson the writer lets down Anderson the visual stylist. Actually, outside of some mid-century department store porn in the opening half hour, even Anderson the visual stylist isn’t much in evidence. At least BOOGIE NIGHTS gave us the opening tracking shot and BLOOD had the burning oil derricks. Here, we mostly get Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix engaged in a lot of Method-inspired hysterics with nary a pretentious plague of frogs to be seen. While watching BLOOD it occurred to me that Anderson makes literary fiction novels for the screen. His upcoming film, an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice, looks like it will continue this trend.
Related
- The hallmarks of a Jonny Greenwood score: atonality and Asian wood blocks.
- David Thomson isn’t a fan, but Anthony Lane liked it.
Blowhard, Esq.
Callowman
Sherbrooke
Eddie Pensier
Enzo Nakamura
Epaminondas
Fabrizio del Wrongo
Fenster
Brundle Guy
Glynn Marshes
Paleo Retiree
Atypical Neurotic
Question Lady
Sax von Stroheim
Sir Barken Hyena
The Mistaken
Uncouth Reflections 
Well said. I thought “Boogie Nights” was a respectable entertainment but Anderson’s pretension and self-indulgence have been choking the life out of his movies since then.
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BOOGIE NIGHTS is the only one I can rewatch, which I did from time to time when it ran constantly on cable. That film has some exuberance whereas everything he’s made since feels like a slog. Any film that gives us Mark Wahlberg singing “You Got the Touch” and Heather Graham as Roller Girl is worth something.
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I would have liked “BN” a lot more had it been a shorter, less ambitious look at the ’70s and ’80s porn scene. It starts out that way — and I think many folks see those early bits as the best parts of the movie — but PTA has to turn it into an epic with a point. He wants it to be a Scorsese-style quasi-moralistic ode to excess and bad behavior. I’m not super turned on by Scorsese’s movies in that vein — and he does ’em better than PTA. The last time I tried to watch it, with an ex-gf, she looked at me about halfway through and said, “Can we turn this off?”
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Remember when, if Pynchon wrote a new one, you would have cared? Or at least noticed.
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The cult of Pynchon eludes me. I read half of “Gravity’s Rainbow” years ago and that was enough, thankyouverymuch. You a fan? Maybe I’ll take a look at “The Crying of Lot 49” some day.
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Half of Gravity’s Rainbow? You must have the patience of Job. I barely made it 20 pages.
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I was young and naive, convinced it had secrets to unlock. I gave up in exasperation and have never been tempted to give it another go.
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If you didn’t like the first chapter of GR, don’t waste your time on Lot 49. I’ve read GR through a couple times. It collapses entirely into pothead twaddle towards the end. The good parts, I liked a lot in my 20s. There’s some very good writing in there. In my 40s I don’t enjoy lit fic any more, though.
But even when I still liked Pynchon, his 80s-and-after comeback material left me cold. He took the worst parts of his good years and started cranking it out as formulaic schtick. I notice there’s a character in that movie called Dr. Blatnoyd, played by Martin Short. I never heard of the book, but I will bet money Short is perfectly cast.
Imagine a character called Dr. Blatnoyd, played by Martin Short, getting on a human nerve, forever.
That’s Pynchon.
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A talented guy, but his movies often seem like empty exercises to me. The main things I get from them are 1) PTA is ambitious, and 2) PTA expends a lot of energy in putting ’em together. That’s often what I get out of literary fiction too: A feeling that, above all, the author wants to be absolutely sure that I realize he has poured his blood and guts into this thing. He has bled for his art! I thought “The Master” was very impressive . . . and a grind.
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Hard to take a filmmaker or writer who demands submission to his genius.
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Like a lot of hyped directors, he has *moments* of greatness. The scene in Boogie Nights where Alfred Molina is dancing around to shitty 80s songs while his chinese houseboy is throwing firecrackers was a masterpiece. But Magnolia… that was PTA’s “Heaven’s Gate”. Tedious shite. I did enjoy There Will Be Blood a great deal, but he kept it dark and lean.
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I’ll give PTA one thing: he is a universe of talent above M. Night Shayamalan
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You think? I dunno, although I won’t be watching either again anytime soon, I enjoyed THE SIXTH SENSE and UNBREAKABLE a lot. Shayamalan can be a bit somber and serious, tho, I’ll grant you that.
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Funny how these things go. I completely and totally agree with you on the entire string of his movies till The Master. I don’t know why but I’ve seen them all and they amount to almost nothing. I loved The Master. Something about it caught me someplace and didn’t let go. I can’t specify what, so I am suspicious of my own affections to some extent. I mean, sometimes you just get carried away and on further reflection, or on later viewing, you wonder why. That doesn’t diminish the feeling of being carried away in the moment, but it is possible to think of films using different brains, the same way a love affair can seem nonsensical in retrospect.
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