"And it is in the humble opinion of this narrator that this is not just...one of those things." A review & essay on Magnolia (1999)

What happened to the Paul Thomas Anderson who directed Hard Eight? He seemed confident that he could hold our attention without mountains of hysteria. My opinion is, admittedly, fickle when it comes to certain miscellany, rarely when it comes to film, but I am forever being pissed off and then really thrilled by Magnolia and then it goes and pisses me off again and the lousy pendulum swings back and forth to my befuddlement (and everyone else’s profound indifference). I’ve seen it 3 or 4 times, and this recent viewing was its most winning to date. I suppose a movie which was written around Aimee Mann songs is going to irk someone who finds her music Sarah McLachlan-esque treacle. Everybody has guilty pleasures, and I’m surprised the man who would go on to make There Will Be Blood did not hesitate to exhibit his enthusiasm for Ms. Mann’s maudlin heart-string-tuggings for all the world to see.

Boogie Nights was a satire about several characters involved in a particular industry in California. Magnolia is about California, the United States, the world, our whole fucking existence, and it is not amused, even when it is satirical. There is very little humor to be found here, as the characters begin where the characters of Boogie Nights ended: suicidal, desperate, drugged into oblivion, hopelessly fucked up. Magnolia introduces us to 9 primary characters (most of them unfortunate wretches, whether they know it or not), but unlike Boogie Nights, all of them are essential to the story. Where whole scenes in Boogie Nights could’ve been removed without altering the message, just about every scene in Magnolia is a vital piece of the puzzle, or “mosaic” as it refers to itself.


The irony is that the acting in Boogie Nights is considerably better. Julianne Moore is the film’s weakest link – I wouldn’t have felt like the film was literally shrieking and clawing at my eyes and ears if she had been replaced with somebody, anybody, else. It’s a lot like watching Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest, a farce of a performance – instead of being raw, it is the polar opposite – affected. We are supposed to be traumatized by this woman’s quivering rage. Anderson’s direction of her acting (if indeed he directed her acting at all) is the biggest fumble of his career – she’s embarrassing to watch, and not embarrassing like “Yeah Linda’s supposed to be a train wreck” but like “This is Julianne Moore miserably failing in pretending to be a train wreck.” She’s so utterly fake – every line, every look, every fiber of her being is failing in capturing the shrill impotence of Linda Partridge. Her acting is like a garish weight hanging around the neck of the whole film, and what’s worse, the character of Linda Partridge could’ve given another actress the opportunity to shine.

Besides Julianne Moore and the familiar feeling that Anderson’s ego is getting the best of him, Magnolia propels itself along pretty well, and maintained a tight grip on my attention. The prologue (the three tales narrated by Ricky Jay before the opening credits) is one of the most brilliant things I've ever seen. Those first six minutes get an A+ from me...but then there's the matter of that pesky movie attached to them. Despite not explaining the relevance of the prologue until the very end of the 3+ hour film, the pace never lags except when it stops for one of Jason Robard’s sluggish monologues.


(But the man is doped to the gills and approximately 117 years old, so that’s acceptable). Magnolia doesn’t feel like 3 hours and that’s precisely because Anderson is incapable of being boring.

In the credits, the entire cast is listed with special distinction going to Melora Walters ("...and Melora Walters") who plays Claudia Wilson, the daughter of Jimmy Gator (Philip Baker Hall). Whenever a film or a television show lists a cast member with the "And," usually that means they are the most senior of the group, but other times it is because there is something particularly significant about that cast member. I don't think he chose Melora Walters simply because her last name was the furthest in the alphabet. She is the soul of Magnolia - the film weeps for her, and, in a sense, the fucked up state of everything can be symbolized in her own private anguish. Unlike Julianne Moore, she truly seems to be in distress. If anyone is in doubt about her character holding a significance the others do not, consider the very end of the film. The last shot is Claudia sitting in her bedroom looking dejected.


While an Aimee Mann song prods your heart on the soundtrack, the shot is sustained, lingering on the broken young woman.


And just when I was thinking that the moment was not as poignant as it thinks it is, Melora Walters suddenly looks directly at the camera...



Cut to black. I found I was smiling too.

Melora Walter's scenes with John C. Reilly were probably my favorite in the film, along with Philip Baker Hall's nervous breakdown on live television. It's fitting that he should suffer this fate, considering the lifetime of it that he has inflicted on his daughter. His deterioration combined with its being broadcast on television and the staging of it on a dramatically lit quiz show set endows it grandeur: it's as if the whole world is falling apart right along with Jimmy. There are echoes of Howard Beale here as well.

The porn industry in Boogie Nights was about the porn industry; it was not intended to be a microcosm on the scale that Magnolia is. Where Boogie Nights repeated the same theme in different scenarios, each character in Magnolia represents a different theme, and by weaving them together, a portrait emerges of the bleak system operating in Los Angeles, each character a part of the system, all affecting one another in direct and indirect ways: while demagogue Frank T.J. Mackey (Tom Cruise) indoctrinates scores of men into his nauseating worldview, young women who have already been used as sperm receptacles (Mackey’s term, not mine) numb their despair with drugs as Ron Popeil infomercials, softcore porn, and the NASDAQ serve as the soundtrack for all of it. Earl Partridge (Robards), the patriarch of the entire sick fiasco, lies dying in his bed, cursing and weeping, evoking sympathy from a tender home-care nurse (Philip Seymour Hoffman) despite the rotting man’s miserable legacy. We see the story of overwhelmed young quiz show prodigy Stanley (Jeremy Blackman) being swallowed up in the machine juxtaposed with the story of chewed up and spit out former child quiz show prodigy Donnie Smith (William H. Macy) and ponder Stanley’s future with apprehension. The cycle of life and death proceeds uninterrupted like a wheel spinning endlessly through a puddle of sewage. P.T. Anderson is sick of it, and if God won’t interrupt the madness, Mr. Anderson will.

Warning: If you haven’t seen Magnolia, you should stop reading this instant.

Earlier, the little black kid warned in his rap to police officer Jim Kurring (the great John C. Reilly) about where Magnolia was heading: “When the sunshine don’t work, the good Lord bring the rain in.”

P.T.'s Intervention, when it is finally summoned, is a singular cinematic moment, one destined to become an iconic scene like the Royale with cheese monologue from Pulp Fiction or the “Layla” montage from Goodfellas. It also has the unique distinction of being the single most bizarre deus ex machina in the history of deus ex machinas.

Just as several character arcs are reaching their crescendo, the sky begins raining frogs. Yes.




The film has already established its belief that impossible coincidences happen all the time in life, uncanny intersections of fate, and that these are not just terrific accidents, not chance, but something else, something supernatural, mystical government, something…and the biblical plague which descends upon the residents of P.T.’s San Fernando Valley is just another one of these occurrences. Of course, Raining Frogs is as arbitrary as squids erupting from all the characters’ toilets or the Moon disappearing or an earthquake, but it’s still really neat, no? I think so. Some might not, and they are entitled to considering frogs raining from the sky in the film’s third act to be a deal-breaker, but the audacity and plain weirdness of frogs takes the work of P.T. Anderson and the expectations an audience might have for what a P.T. Anderson film can be to delirious new heights. If he’s capable of raining frogs, he is capable of Any. Fucking. Thing.

Magnolia came out right on the heels of Boogie Nights. While critics and audiences alike were still reeling from being effectively gobsmacked by this wunderkind seeming to pop out of nowhere, he quickly dropped another bomb on them, to ensure that there’d be no confusion as to whether or not he was a one-hit wonder (nobody knew he had directed a film before Boogie Nights). While Boogie Nights was like a benevolent deity, first bemused, and then disappointed with the world it displayed, Magnolia is thoroughly disgusted. It’s not very crafty about concealing this fact either, and wears its big, gooey, sentimental heart quite obnoxiously on its sleeve.

Grade: B


* Coming Soon: A review of P.T. Anderson's fourth picture, Punch-Drunk Love (2002)

* A review of P.T. Anderson's second picture, Boogie Nights (1997)

* A review of P.T. Anderson's first picture, Hard Eight (1996)

“There are shadows in life, baby.” A review of and essay on Boogie Nights (1997)

After garnering little acclaim with Hard Eight, P.T. Anderson refused to go unnoticed with his second feature, the sprawling, black-humored, porn satire Boogie Nights. While watching it, I felt even more dismayed at the lack of appreciation for his first film, as he would likely not have felt the mad urge to overcompensate wildly with the crowded antics of Boogie Nights. If Hard Eight is like a magician who does one ingenious trick well, then Boogie Nights is the more popular attraction in the next tent who can juggle chainsaws while reciting the alphabet backwards riding a unicycle on a tightrope elevated over a pit of starving wolverines.

I know his earliest film was a 32 minute short titled “The Dirk Diggler Story” but since it was only 32 minutes, it probably maintained its focus on just a handful of characters, as opposed to the 10 or so in Boogie Nights. That is not including Thomas Jane, Melora Walters, Philip Baker Hall, Ricky Jay, and Alfred Molina’s parts, er, roles. This is a busy, busy movie, and yet, each time I watch it (this would be my 4th or 5th time returning to it) it inspires further and further benumbed indifference. The only thing keeping me afloat this time were the performances, which are across-the-board brilliant. I do not like Mark Wahlberg , so it is not without difficulty that I write that he is incredible as the sweetly dim Eddie Adams. After getting hooked up with Rollergirl (Heather Graham) through prolific porno director Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds), he is walking home from the restaurant where he busses tables when Horner’s car pulls up besides him on the sidewalk. Amber Waves (Julianne Moore) and Rollergirl are in the car with Jack, who calls to Eddie:

Jack: Eddie!

Eddie: Hi.

Jack: Wanna ride?

Eddie: Jack?

Jack: Yeah. Wanna ride?

Eddie: Uh..well. I…I’m goin’ really far……

Rollergirl: Do you remember me from a couple hours ago?

Eddie: Yeah…I remember…

…………

Amber: Come with us sweetie.

Eddie: ………‘Kay.

It’s impossible to capture the comic impact of Wahlberg’s delivery of those few beats and then innocently, “ ‘kay.” His sweet innocence is also hilarious when Jack first introduces him to the even dimmer Reed Rothchild (John C. Reilly) at a big party at Jack’s house. Eddie is completely oblivious to Reed's ham-fisted efforts at sizing him up. Reed, in the middle of mixing margheritas, abruptly asks Eddie if he works out and how much he can squat. Then he asks Eddie if he’s seen Star Wars and tells him that people have told him he looks like Han Solo…..and then another abrupt question for Eddie:

Reed: What do you bench?

Eddie: (bashful) You tell first…

Reed: I asked you first.

Eddie: (bashful)…same time…

Reed: …cool…

No amount of ellipses can illustrate the perfect, perfect comic timing of this exchange. And there are many, many wonderfully hilarious moments. I saw shades of Dr. Steve Brule (John C. Reilly’s hysterically obtuse character on Tim & Eric’s Awesome Show) when Reed recites a poem from memory that he composed while sitting in a jacuzzi with Eddie:

“I love you. You love me. Going down the sugar tree. We'll go down the sugar tree, and see lots of bees: playing. Playing. But the bees won't sting…because you love me.”

More comic invention, delivered with relish by brilliant actors: After Burt Reynolds, Amber, and Rollergirl pick up Eddie, they take him to a diner where Jack explains that it takes more than looking photogenic to be a successful porn actor:

"But you can work out in the morning, you can work out at noon, you can work out at night. Doesn't matter…if you don't have those juices flowing…down there…in the Mr. Torpedo area…in the fun zone."

Again, it’s all in Reynold’s delivery...

...but if you’ve seen the film, I would hope you recognize this line and found it as amusing as I did. It is this very giddiness I felt at the light-hearted moments that had me off balance when the film lurches into the blackest of tragedy (Little Bill’s story, for example). The movie wants to be too many things at once, and instead of finding a fascinating individual and exploring the nuances of him or her, it procrastinates with subplots upon subplots, many of which are entertaining and involving, most of which unnecessarily pad the running time. I understand that the film wants to be an epic, and create an archetype for the adult film industry, thus has bigger things on its mind than just exploring the main issue, which, as I see it, is the short term seduction of fornicating willy-nilly without commitment inevitably leading to the long-term consequences of feeling an utter, utter emptiness inside. Sex is a good thing, says Boogie Nights; it is fun. But when indulged in a vacuum, it bears no fruits (the deepening of a relationship, sowing affection or love, maturing empathy or character), nothing but a momentary animal gratification that hardly fills the building void this very same behavior has left in its wake. Eddie talks about how every one is blessed with “one special thing” and his one special thing is his enormous dong. He rides his monumental cock’s coattails for a couple years before he falls prey to the delusion that he has earned a status as someone more substantial than a gigantic penis with a man attached to it.


In fact he is not the only porn star in the film laboring under such a delusion – Buck Swope (Don Cheadle), who, interestingly, we never get to see doing anything remotely sexual, is shocked when he attempts to apply for a loan from the bank to pursue a career as the owner of his own stereo/speaker/electronics store and is rejected. He asks why, and the bank manager informs him that they don’t do business with “pornographers.” “I am an actor!” Buck informs him, and when the man repeats the word “pornographer,” Buck exclaims, “Stop saying that!”

I was going to write “when Buck attempts to pursue a legitimate career” but stopped because isn’t a porn actor’s work as legitimate as any other line of work? Is it? Whether you feel it is or it isn’t, one must admit that the majority of inhabitants of the United States, especially in Reagan's 80's, find pornography to be a necessary evil. They’ll jack off to it in private and not talk about it, but as soon as someone starts talking frankly about it and treating it like it’s not something meant only to be enjoyed under a code of silence, these same people will stand up in righteous indignation. I’m not sure if Boogie Nights reaches any conclusions, but it asks several essential questions. But it could’ve asked those questions without pointless detours. We have many scenes detailing Buck’s desire to form a unique identity (at first he wants to be “The Cowboy”, which is ironic, you see, because he is black). He is counseled by Becky Barnett (Nicole Parker) to try something else (her identity, she declares, is “Chocolate Love”). In addition to being an apparent porn star, he works at a stereo store where he heart-breakingly defers to his prick boss when the man screeches “…that cowboy Western shit is dead” and then there’s the business with the applying for the loan and his relationship with Melora Walters and a strange, surreal episode which begins as an innocent trip to the donut shop and ends as a nightmarish bloodbath. Buck’s entire story is fun and entertaining and all, but is any of it necessary? It’s all making the exact same point that the Dirk Diggler story is making, which is that a history in the porn industry leads to disappointment and dead-ends once you’re out of it. Ditto with Amber Wave’s subplot about losing custody of her son because of her history in the porn industry and how the scarlet letter of her career forever damns her to loss of credibility and trustworthiness in her bids to win back custody of the boy. Same point, different character.


Consider “The Dirk Diggler Story” was 32 minutes long. Boogie Nights is 155 minutes. I haven’t seen “The Dirk Diggler Story” but I assume it had a beginning, a middle, and an end. Boogie Nights has a beginning, a middle, 15 wacky rest stops, a detour to crazy town, ten different tourist attractions, a promise that the end is coming soon, another zany trip down a back road, and then a denouement, and then a coda, and an end. When I say a promise that it will end soon, I’m speaking of the title card, “Long Way Down (One Last Thing)” which struck me as P.T. acknowledging the unnecessary lengths to which the film has gone and is ensuring us, “This will be the last gratuitous detour. Last one. Seriously.” The reason I’m okay with all these unnecessary subplots, and characters, and detours is because they are all (well most) exciting, especially the trip to Rahad Jackson’s drug mansion. I love that scene. I also love Dirk and Reed’s pathetic attempts to begin careers as pop musicians. I would not remove any of Scotty J.’s hideously awkward scenes either, because Philip Seymour Hoffman is so goddamn good. Also goddamn good are Thomas Jane as Todd Parker, Ricky Jay as Kurt Longjohn, and Robert Ridgley is too convincing as a guy admitting to a weakness for child pornography, but that is not to say he is unlikable. All the characters have their own charms. Alfred Molina stands out, an astonishing feat among so many colorful people. However, the scene of two young men visiting a barely clothed psychotic drug-dealer acquaintance of a third friend was already done in Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine. The temperamental drug dealer plays Russian roulette in front of them in that too, although none of the three friends are looking to rob him. Despite not being original, the Alfred Molina scene is fucking awesome, and puts Rick Springfield’s Jesse’s Girl to uncanny good use. There is also a sustained shot of Dirk sitting and watching, just a shot of his face, that is held for a good minute and a half or so that harkens to the moment in Milos Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest near the end when the camera considers Randall P. McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) as he just sits and thinks. It's not clear exactly what is going through either Dirk's mind or Randall's, but from their facial expressions in both scenes, what is clear is that both are in the midst of epiphanies.


When I mentioned earlier that the film has bigger things on its mind than exploring the fundamental point, I meant that P.T. Anderson wants to create a world. Hence, the sizable population and the repeating of the same point in several different realms – this career choice leaves no one unscathed.


A simultaneously touching and frustrating aspect of the film is the perspective of Amber, Jack, Dirk, and Rollergirl as a kind of surrogate family. Amber calls Dirk her “baby boy” and dotes on him. She also has sex with him, so it’s kind of weird, but I suspect a lot of men have been in sexual relations with women who nurtured them as if they were their children. Or something. And let it be known, Julianne Moore looks much, much, much better au naturale (as seen below) than covered in garish make-up. She looks so trashy and used-up and pale when wearing make-up, and I’m sure this effect is deliberate.




Joanna Gleason, who plays Dirk’s monstrously bitter mother, is exceptional too, in her two scenes. There is a fierce shouting match between her and Eddie that is so raw it left my mouth agape. It’s also funny how inarticulate Eddie is when having a verbal duel. He later proves himself to be even more ill-equipped to expound on violence in the media, the technical aspects of making his videos, and History:



This is another devastating point Anderson makes about individuals who place so much value on sex, putting all their eggs in one basket, the, uh, sex basket, that they find, when it is time to summon some other talent, they are left grasping for mental resources that they were too busy fucking to cultivate.

Ultimately, despite all the parts I love and the incisive satire, the film is not much more than a frenzied collage composed by a virtuoso. It does not feel assembled properly so much as a bright orange suitcase stuffed with items and then forced shut. But I am not confused as to why it is so loved and admired. The first time I saw it, I was amazed as well, but it diminishes with each consecutive viewing, and its epic length seems less and less warranted, as if by virtue of length alone, the film might be imbued with importance. In this case, more is less.

Grade: B+


* Coming Soon: A review of P.T. Anderson's third picture, Magnolia (1999)

* A review of P.T. Anderson's first picture, Hard Eight (1996)

“You humble yourself!” A review of and essay on Hard Eight (1996)

If you have not seen Hard Eight, I'd recommend not reading too far

P.T. Anderson is not a filmmaker to be watched casually. That was my mistake the first two times I viewed Hard Eight, but this time I was focusing on every nuance, every edit, every slight change in the way Philip Baker Hall looked at someone. A commonly overlooked film (not surprising considering the bombast of Anderson’s two follow-ups) Hard Eight unfairly gets excluded when considering great motion picture debuts of the last quarter of the 20th century. Hard Eight doesn’t have the noticeable technical prowess of the Coens’ Blood Simple or the urgency and profane ground-breaking of Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs – it has a leisurely pace which most first-time filmmakers are too impatient to indulge. I guess what it comes down to is the real star attraction of Blood Simple and Reservoir Dogs are the directors themselves, in their eagerness to display their audacious style innovations. The story seems relatively secondary to the presentation of the story.

This is where Hard Eight messed up its chances of getting attention – P.T. Anderson seems much more invested in communicating his devotion to the mysteries of Philip Baker Hall than to what pop music he is going to play over Philip Baker Hall or whether he can shoot Philip Baker Hall from an elevated angle through a revolving ceiling fan. That is not to say there are not flourishes of this sort (there is a long tracking shot following Philip Baker Hall as he twists and weaves past craps tables and patrons in a casino) but they are not underlined and apparent upon first, or even second viewing. You’d have to be blind not to notice all the impressive effects the Coens are able to employ throughout the course of their own debut, the prodigious Blood Simple. While Anderson may not have had the capabilities to achieve the technical advancements of Blood Simple (few debuts, if any, can match it in that department) it compensates with a precocious understanding of human relationships, the psychological give-and-take in social dynamics: the natural way a cocky hustler, Jimmy (Samuel L. Jackson) can become resentful and envious of the poise he sees in the much older Sydney (Hall), the way a pliable cocktail waitress, Clementine (Gwyneth Paltrow) can immediately feel shame just being in the presence of the dignified older man, the way a sleazy-minded John (John C. Reilly) can sit next to Sydney, and suddenly he is mentally disciplining himself to be a gentleman. Sydney walks past dice-throwers shamelessly hooting and hollering and they get irritated that he isn’t acting like a jackass along with them. One particularly curious scene finds Sydney staring down an obnoxious craps player (Philip Seymour Hoffman, in his one scene in the film), who belligerently urges Sydney to “…have fun old-timer!!” It seems all of Vegas resents Sydney for his sober, chaste restrained nature. He is an unwanted moral compass, and the funny thing is he isn’t trying to be. At all. That’s just how he is.


The sad thing is Hoffman’s jocular hostility provokes Sydney into rashly betting against him, “$2000 on the hard eight” and you’re sure the cackling slob will be beaten by Sydney, but no, the cackling slob wins and when Sydney walks away from the table, defeated, without a word, he is even able to calm this most irrevocable of jackasses into a moment’s thoughtful regret.

This obsession with Sydney is what earns so much admiration from me for P.T. Anderson: he is not a type or a chess piece like the Colored Misters in Reservoir Dogs or the cheating wife/easily manipulated dim hero/scumbag cuckold/ sleazy hit man of Blood Simple. He is layers upon layers, endlessly worthy of study, complex, a contradictory enigma. All the other primary characters, Clementine, John, and Jimmy are defined by how they react to him, and what his presence inspires them to do.

The film opens ominously with the credits accompanied by funeral bells and what sounds like the thumps of a dark piston. One of the few things I take exception with in Hard Eight is the use of this music and sounds to open the film. This sets a misleading tone of doom for a film that is not about death or loss, but atonement and rescue, and this foreboding music is entirely inappropriate for thematic purposes. When the same music is played later in the film, it fits, because we hear it over the image of Gwyneth Paltrow’s cocktail waitress numbly adjusting her cleavage and her wardrobe while sitting on a bed Sydney has allowed her to use for the night in the spacious hotel suite he shares with John. She has incorrectly assumed Sydney expects a reward for his hospitality and not without reason, as altruism is mostly extinct in Las Vegas. This music alerts us to a death of a different kind as we see the glazed look in Clementine’s eyes as she adjusts her top to reveal more flesh. As we learn from her, this is routine behavior and she is not above turning tricks in addition to her job as a cocktail waitress, which requires she wear a titillating outfit, and flirt for tips. Previously, when she served Sydney a drink, he tells her she doesn’t have to do that with him. She is frank when he reappears in the extra bedroom with a robe, “…do you wanna fuck me?” Instead he softly reprimands her and explains that has nothing to do with it, “This is a comfortable bed for you. I want you to sleep on it…to give you something…a place to have a nice shower and a bed.” Instead of fucking her, he takes her to a diner for coffee and some food.


As for John C. Reilly’s character, we are introduced to him in Act 1 of the film, when he is hunched in defeat outside a café, and in desperate need of $6,000. In the compelling opening moments, Sydney introduces himself to the young man and asks him if he wants a cup of coffee and a cigarette. After convincing John that his intentions are harmless, they have a chat in the café, both men shown in close-up. John C. Reilly is as thin as you’re likely to see him, almost handsome, and Philip Baker Hall’s face, is, as already discussed, magnetizing, especially if it’s your first time watching the film, in which case you’re really not sure what he’s up to, and why he’s going out of his way to help this lost young man. Could he be up to something evil? This man, Sydney, seems like he could be capable of doing or being anything.


As the film progresses, the relationship between Sydney and John grows into a close bond, until Sydney is a father figure to John, and John like a son to Sydney. Things are only further complicated when John befriends the lowlife Jimmy and John and Clementine find themselves in a rather contrived situation involving a john who has been beaten unconscious, handcuffed, and held hostage by John, after being called for assistance by Clem when the man refused to pay her. John, in distress, calls Sydney to come to the hotel room where the two of them are hiding out with the unconscious man.


Clem is volatile and adamant about collecting her money to the point of hysteria. Even Sydney is unsure what to do and when Clem mutters sullenly, “You don’t have to help us,” he snaps at her, “I sure as hell don’t.” Then Clementine shrieks in defiance, “Then WHY DON’T YOU JUST GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!” Sydney, stunned, loses his cool for the first time in the film, “Clemetine. You got yourself in this situation. I did not get you here. So you humble yourself, you understand. You humble yourself!” To hear Sydney erupt, ever so briefly, like that, shook me and for the rest of the film, I was silently recovering from the shock of it.

Eventually, this tense hotel room dilemma is settled when Sydney finally persuades Clementine to unlock the handcuffs and for the three of them to simply leave, which they do, in the second masterful tracking shot of the film, as they exit the hotel room and, the camera angled up, they descend the motel stairs down into the camera, the high rises beyond the motel roof rising up behind them. Sydney convinces them to go away for a while, tells them to go to Niagara Falls. Once again Sydney has proven his adeptness at retrieving the people he cares about from near catastrophe.


As I said before, Sydney’s benevolent nature can remind one of a guardian angel, and while some may be waiting, upon first viewing, for the other shoe to drop, and for Sydney to reveal his sinister ulterior motives, they will be disappointed, when his ulterior motives finally are revealed, that they are far from sinister. First we learn from Jimmy, Sydney used to be a gangster type, a hood, a killer, not morally upright as misinterpreted, who murdered John’s father many years ago in Atlantic City. “I know some things about Atlantic City” threatens Jimmy, who then blackmails Sydney for $10,000 to prevent him from passing on this crucial information to John.


How Jimmy learns this information is not important, as Jimmy’s motivations for blackmailing Sydney further explore the way Sydney profoundly affects other people merely by being around. Jimmy doesn’t like being the second most composed cat in Vegas, and he certainly doesn’t like being thought little of by the first, so we get to see Samuel L. Jackson unleash another fine performance as the conflicted, reptilian Jimmy. Jackson is able to seem cocky and insecure with the same facial expression, and when he talks to Sydney, he is flustered, not cool, and it is very troubling for a character played by Samuel L. Jackson to feel not cool, especially when it is a short old man making him feel that way. Sydney gives him the money, after Jimmy pulls a gun on him and explains what it is about Sydney that irks him so much, and Sydney asks him to give his word that after the $10,000 has been given, Jimmy will consider the matter closed. Jimmy agrees, but Sydney is not stupid, and knowing Jimmy to be unprincipled and doubtful that he’ll keep his word, Sydney does what must be done.

Later that night, he waits for Jimmy to leave his house, then breaks in, finds a suitcase containing Jimmy’s guns, sets up a chair facing the front door, and sits, gun in hand, and simply waits. We see Jimmy acting wild at the craps table, laughing it up, winning the hard eight. Sydney sits and waits. Jimmy leaves with a woman. Sydney waits. Jimmy, busy undressing and groping the woman, “Let me see that pussy, baby” is startled to find Sydney aiming a gun at him. He shoots Jimmy dead.


Sydney goes to the café where he first found John hunched up sitting by the door, and sits at a booth and orders coffee. He looks at the white cuff of his shirt under his black coat. It is slightly smeared with blood. He covers the smeared cuff with his coat’s black sleeve.

There is one more shot after that, of Sydney looking at his coat sleeve, probably contemplating the significance of what he just did. I think the last shot should have been the cuff being covered and then a cut to the credits. After my first viewing of Hard Eight, that shot stayed with me, years later, after the rest of the film had faded from memory. I think it symbolizes a lot of things concerning Sydney’s motivations, his personality, his life. Just in case God’s not keeping track of him, Sydney has been taking care of his own penance, and I think what we all have to decide at the end is, does Sydney deserve to have that cuff covered up? I think the story of Hard Eight provides sufficient evidence that he has earned his absolution.

Grade: A-


Coming Soon: A review of P.T. Anderson's second picture, Boogie Nights (1997)

Just Got Both 2-Disc Collector's Edition DVD and Regular 1-Disc Edition DVD

This is a classic character arc told with the kind of sober restraint common among directors three times as old as P.T. Anderson. His last 4 films, as great as they are, were all obviously made by a young man. There Wil Be Blood is an old man's film.

What I mean by that is it has all the characteristics of a film directed by an old man: the austerity, the formalist's rigor, and the absence of sensational elements (sex, gore, pop music). I would say excessive formalism is a narrow (and favorable) manner of conducting aesthetics. I agree that this narrowness allows for fewer mistakes and could describe 3/4 of There Will Be Blood. The final scene in the Bowling Alley, we see Anderson let go of the formalist's leash on Daniel Day-Lewis's grim mad dog. I think the direction over the acting in the bowling alley scene is actually expansive, and incongruous to the style of the rest of the film, which is why it's so strange and seems so out of place. Plainview doesn't just lose control, the film loses control: just as a narrator in a Faulkner novel loses his grasp on sanity, so too does the prose become fragmented and disorienting. The volcanic lunacy on display in the Bowling Alley, and to a lesser extent, the Baptism, is like the psychotic loss of composure you witness in Jack Nicholson as he taps on the bathroom door in The Shining, “Not by the hair of your chinny-chin-chin?!” Is such flailing ham good acting? Well, not exactly, but it sure is interesting to watch. If Plainview’s outburst at the end had been less wacko, it wouldn’t have had viewers anguishing over what they thought of it days, weeks later, inspiring second trips to the theater. I think the ridiculousness and the monstrousness of Plainview’s outburst is perfect.

There Will Be Blood towers over the other best films of 2007, even, in my opinion, No Country For Old Men.