P.T. Anderson: Professional Bunter

Blowhard at Uncouth Reflections asks, "Is there a more overrated mainstream director than P.T. Anderson?"

Anderson is definitely a strange case. Like all of moviedom, I was excited when Boogie Nights came out. I remember that the theater was packed on opening night, an indication that my college town's hipoisie were tuned in.

Here's what I felt when it was over:  dissatisfied and feeling like I had no grounding to be dissatisfied. Somehow it would have been improper to express my disappointment. Maybe I had been wrong to expect it to be funnier and more compelling. I definitely felt that the great film that could have been made from the 70s porn milieu wasn't on the screen.

Then Magnolia came out and I hated it. It was much too self-serious and I couldn't help but see it as a depressing Bollywood movie. In Indian films, it seems that every single character gets a scene in which they cry. There was even a musical number in it!

It was all too showy and luxuriated in misery. One of the critics I used to like, and whose name has been lost to me, said, "As much as I like Magnolia, I could never like it as much as Anderson does."

I was in the minority, though. Magnolia was praised almost unanimously. I didn't like it but I had to agree that it avoided being a bad movie.

But that made me eager to see what was next. I was sure that Anderson was going to finally make the misstep he had been flirting with. He was going to overreach and his next big, bloated film was going to look as ridiculous to everyone as it did to me.

But Punch Drunk Love wasn't that movie. It was as if he had hedged every bet. The film was small and ostensibly a love story. By presenting Adam Sandler in a dramatic role, he had ensured the financial return of a sideshow--people were going to check it out as an oddity at the very least.

It was then I figured that, whatever was wrong with Anderson's films, he was good at playing the critical game. He never attempted so much that he failed but his films seemed like artistic statements.

I puzzled over There Will Be Blood for a few days after seeing it. I couldn't figure out what the hell it was supposed to be about. It wasn't good storytelling and it didn't seem to be experimental storytelling. There seemed to be no reason why he presented the scenes he did.

I chalk the praise up to the Faulkner effect. By forcing the audience to figure out the film, they grow more attached to it. One is satisfied and proud when one completes a jigsaw puzzle even though what it's supposed to be--a picture--is lumpy and distorted.

That's where my interest in Anderson ended. He had gotten away with whatever he was doing for too long. The audiences come into his films expecting to see an Important P.T. Anderson film and, as long as he continues to be obtuse and indulgent to his actors, that's what they'll see.