Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymoutr Hoffman, Amy Adams, Laura Dern
Have I Seen it Before: I know I did. I don’t really remember having much of a reaction back then.
Did I Like It: It’s kind of fun to appraoch this film, if even for a moment, like the filmmakers and studio treated promoting the film. Is the film a post-World War II drama about a broken man (Phoenix) failing to—and failing to try to—find his way in the 1950s, or is it a thinly veiled roman à clef of the early days of…
…eep. I’m a little concerned I might get my own cease and desist letter if I finish that description of the film. You all know what I’m talking about.
If the film is more the prior description, it kind of sinks into the ponderous messes that Anderson is occasionaly guilty of making. Phoenix lurches his way through the saga of a deeply misanthropic man with the same somewhat jevenile approach he would later bring to bear in Joker (2019), almost to the point that I think dubbing that later film a rip off of Taxi Driver (1976) and The King of Comedy (1982), when Arthur Fleck clearly owes a lot to Freddy Quill as well.
When it is that… ahem… other thing, the film really comes alive. The targets are hit, especially Hoffman’s performance as a pulp writer turned religious figure. You know the type. His delicate balance between charisma and bleak, unrelenting cynic makes the man it is all (allegedly) based on that much more fascinating.
One could almost begin to see where people might start to devote themselves to such an organization*, when it has only Hoffman’s charisma to act as its guiding light. It also, thankfully, shows its hostility towards descent, and the absolutely ridiculous string of questions with which adherents must cope. It’s a delicate depicition of a cult before it even asks you to do something terrible, just when its being its most silly.
*They are the only western religion, after all, with a very clear stance of the motion blurring feature of modern TVs. There I go again, tipping my hand about what we’re actually discussing. In my defense, though: That bit was positive.