“THE NEW PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON IS THE GREATEST FILM OF OUR TIMES AND CAPTURES THE ZEITGEIST LIKE EGON SPENGLER WITH A GHOST TRAP!” screams the internet consensus for One Battle After Another, as pro critics tend to every time they’ve seen a new Anderson film at least three times at festivals. I’ve only seen six of his films (counting this one) and responded to There Will Be Blood with that sort of awe. The rest varied for me — Phantom Thread was an intriguing battle of repressed wills, but I couldn’t connect with his California ode Licorice Pizza. His tenth feature, Battle is an effectively pulse-pounding thriller that’s exactly the sort of antihero conflict I do enjoy — call it “bad guys vs. worse guys” — but somehow I thought it’d be much more complicated than it actually is. Maybe that’s on me for declining to remain Extremely Online these days.
“Hey, wanna get some Fun Dips and go see Last Tango in Paris at Grauman’s? I have to bring an adult so they’ll let me in.”
It’s a bit early but I’m counting down the days till this year’s Academy Awards nominations are announced on February 8th, which will begin my annual Oscar Quest to see all the Best Picture nominees before the big ceremony on March 27th. These past couple years, the streaming era has made it easier than ever to make a side quest of catching nominees in the other categories as well. A few weeks ago I decided to get a head start by catching possible contenders in advance and thereby easing up my viewing load during the season itself. Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza was one of a few ballyhooed works to convince me after the fact that, on second thought, I’ll wait till AMPAS voters tell me which ones I “have” to see and go from there.
“Why, hello, viewer. Join me for breakfast and ambiguity, won’t you.”
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
This time of year is my annual Oscar Quest, during which I venture out to see all Academy Award nominees for Best Picture, regardless of whether I think I’ll like them or not, whether their politics and beliefs agree with mine or not, whether they’re good or bad for me, and whether or not my friends and family have ever heard of them. I’ve seen every Best Picture nominee from 1997 to the present. As of February 21st I’ve officially seen all nine of this year’s Best Picture nominees. I’m not sure I’ll be able to cover the others in full before the Oscars telecast on March 4th, but let’s see how far I can get before I burn out.
Onward to nominee #7: writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread, reportedly the acting farewell of Daniel Day-Lewis, the closest that men have to an answer to Meryl Streep. I’ve only seen one other PTA film, the stunning There Will Be Blood, in which he guided Day-Lewis through brutally yet artfully steamrolling any and all other actors in his path. In their latest team-up he plays another smug period-piece professional with deplorable ideas about how to be the best there is at what he does, but this time winning the movie through sheer force of will wasn’t quite so simple.
Readers who consider themselves unabashed Midlife Crisis Crossover completists (i.e., my wife and me) may recall my preoccupation with the trailers for Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film The Master, in which Academy Award Winner Phillip Seymour Hoffman plays a charismatic jack-of-all-trades who’s not named Hub L. Ronnard, who attracts followers to his self-invented belief system that’s not called Scientetics or Dianology, who has Academy Award Nominee Amy Adams as the wife by his side, and who’s trying to lure Academy Award Nominee Joaquin Phoenix to his side with vague platitudes and cryptic encouragement.
Recapping our first three installments for newcomers:
* Teaser Trailer #1: a reserved interrogation, a forgotten fight, some crawling through machinery, and adult sand sculptures, all set to spooky bass-‘n’-percussion from composer Jonny Greenwood, the Radiohead guitarist who also worked with Anderson on There Will Be Blood.
* Teaser Trailer #2: Hoffman takes center stage with his myriad talents and elliptical statements of purpose, all overlapping and fighting to surface in the consciousness of Phoenix, who chafes in a new, awkward chapter of his life. Adams loves her husband. The Greenwood score repeats.
* Full Trailer #1: an unbalanced Phoenix fails at life on the post-war homefront and instead follows a writer who’s big on doublespeak and revival tents. Adams is not at all happy this time around — glaring at doubters, questioning Phoenix’s sanity, and acting perfectly fine with her husband’s shenanigans. Greenwood is replaced at the 1:39 mark with Jo Stafford’s maudlin 1950 hit “No Other Love“.
And now, the four-part miniseries, “The Trailers of The Master“, concludes with the final, fragmented chapter:
Other than reruns from previous trailers, the core is a stilted speech about how human spirits trump the animal kingdom. A soft orchestra is drowned out by Joaquin Phoenix drumming like Buddy Rich on a locked window. Standard male viewers should now be excited by the prospect of fights, guns, motorcycle races, and sex scenes. (Yeeeey.)
The officially R-rated movie begins its limited-release rollout to American theaters on September 14th. IMDb lists release dates in several other countries over the next several months, mostly in Europe. (Is Scientology discussed or even heard of in Asia? I’d be curious to know.) My intrigue in the general concept has ebbed a bit, but we’ll have to see if Indianapolis’ only art-house cinema offers it before next Oscar season; how my curiosity, budget, and conscience are doing by then; and if I’m not yet tired of those involved repeating in every related interview like a holy mantra, “IT’S NOT ABOUT SCIENTOLOGY.” When I turn it over in my head, it’s funnier because I hear it in the voice of Arnold Schwarzenegger from Kindergarten Cop. In reality, it grows more disappointing every time I hear it.
I was previously intrigued by the first and second teaser trailers for The Master, the new film from writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson, whose psycho-oil-magnate character study There Will Be Blood remains indelible and haunting even though I only saw it the one time in its theatrical release. The Master is an alleged roman à clef, or perhaps a mere parable, about the introduction of Scientology to the masses by one man who at first glance doesn’t quite appear to be Moses or Mohammed.
A longer, less vague full-length trailer is now available, with new shots of Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the cagey author, Joaquin Phoenix as the agitated follower, and Amy Adams as the female.
The “cult” aspect is now unmistakably in the forefront. Hoffman has crowds at his disposal and detractors in the corners. Phoenix is all about the head-tilting, lip-curling, mule-headed arrogance. Adams has more than one line as the naive (?), supportive wife. Non-believers probably played by decent character actors will presumably either get on board with Hoffmanetics or suffer ignominious fates.
To be honest, I’m a little afraid to get too attached to this. If the movie turns out to be a three-hour sex scene and the only scenes with clothing are all in the trailer, I may have to bow out. If the plot takes a hairpin curve and ends with a surprise endorsement of Scientology in the form of an hour-long passionate hard-sell from the cast and crew, I promise I’ll pitch a fit. If we can tell early on that this was filmed during Phoenix’s bizarre rap phase, I’m out. If the next trailer is all about explosions and collisions, I’ll flip a coin.
In the first teaser trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson’s next film, The Master, we saw Joaquin Phoenix as an uneasy rapscallion on the verge of doing something different with his life. In the new teaser, Philip Seymour Hoffman is a jack of several trades probing Phoenix with questions and strange reassurances. While the Internet is firmly convinced The Master chronicles the secret origin of Scientology with all the names changed, let it be known Hoffman here distances himself from the late L. Ron Hubbard in a very concrete way: he disguises himself with a mustache.
Not only do we finally see and hear costar Amy Adams, we also hear her hint at Hoffman’s character working on his most important text, a revolutionary self-help tome possibly to be titled Ianetics-Day.
Meanwhile at home, the most optimistic Scientologists hope this film will be, best-case scenario, their version of The Last Temptation of Christ. If it’s not, Anderson may look forward to being banned from working in their half of Hollywood in the future, and resigned to working in the Jewish half instead. If all else fails, there’s always work to be done in the malnourished field of Christian direct-to-DVD.
From Paul Thomas Anderson, the director of There Will Be Blood, comes another fictional biopic about a potentially disturbed self-made man whose work would come to affect millions in ways not necessarily for the better. Despite Anderson’s own denials, parts of the Internet swear The Master is thinly veiled nonfiction about L. Ron Hubbard, Dianetics, and/or the creation of Scientology. Any similarities to any movements living or dead, real or fictional, will no doubt be left to the viewer to decide and write pretentious essays in response.
(That’s not meant as derogatory. Seriously, I look forward to reading said essays. Some days I thrive on pretentiousness.)
The cast includes Joaquin Phoenix, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Laura Dern, and Kevin J. O’Connor (the lanky toady from Stephen Sommers’ The Mummy). As with Blood, Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood is composing the presumably eerie, non-traditional score. This first teaser avoids any overt hints of its ostensible subject, instead focusing on flashbacks of Phoenix’s shenanigans while an obscured interrogator watches his immature smugness melt into unease.
[Content warning: teaser contains brief clip of bawdy sand-sculpting.]
I’ve played this a few extra times for the soundtrack alone, but I’m also savoring the one-minute sample of Phoenix’s performance that hints at grander, controversial, hopefully pretentious things to come.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 