To coincide with the release of his monumental political action-comedy satire One Battle After Another in cinemas this week, here are three films that influenced the work of arguably America’s most restlessly innovative recent cinematic genius Paul Thomas Anderson.
From poetic visual meditations on ritual and spirituality, to dark noir explorations of post-World War 2 nuclear age anxiety and the dangerously unchecked personal paranoia enacted as legislation by mad leaders, these three films offer a glimpse into the films that have made Anderson, as offered by the director in lists of films he thinks we should all see.
THE ARTHOUSE ESSENTIAL
Baraka — YouTube
Anderson spoke much of the influence of this no-dialogue, no-narration assemblage of gloriously shot 65mm images by director Ron Fricke from 1992 as a key influence on his approach to making his scientology-inspired 2012 drama, The Master. Though some critics dismissed Baraka as a glossy, travelogue eroticising the rituals of different cultures in silent but visually impressive “shoo-wah ... we are the world” deference, it and its 2012 follow-up Samsara have stood the test of time as unique meditations on the mysterious human drive for meaning and divine guidance — both well and evil intentioned — in a world that grows ever more perplexing and disconnected as history unfolds.
Fricke had previously served as the cinematographer for director Godfrey Reggio’s acclaimed non-narrative Qatsi series and the influence of those is evident here in the aesthetic choices and approach, even as Fricke’s concerns are more strongly spiritual, ritual and philosophically focused.
Shot over 14 months in 24 countries and across six continents, Baraka quietly but awesomely unravels its whimsical observations over the course of 97 minutes best experienced on the biggest screen possible as you journey from the ancient holy sites of Jerusalem and Japan, to the birthplace of man in Tanzania, to the worst in our natures offered by the silent judgments of Auschwitz and the Cambodian killing fields of Tuol Sleng.
THE STONE-COLD CLASSIC
Stray Dog — YouTube
Anderson drew on the simple premise of Akira Kurosawa’s 1949 Japanese noir classic for a key scene in his own 1999 classic multi-character drama Magnolia. “This is what I call a ‘pop song’ movie. You can say it in one sentence: a rookie cop loses his gun,” said Anderson.
On a basic level that is indeed the main drive of Kurosawa’s film in which his longtime collaborator, actor Toshiro Mifune, plays newly promoted homicide detective Murakami whose gun is stolen while he’s riding on a crowded Tokyo trolley car. As Murakami — sweating buckets because of the heatwave attacking the city and his increasingly unbearable levels of anxiety and shame — desperately tries to retrieve his Colt pistol, his journey leads him down a twisting and dark path through the Tokyo underworld in a first “day on the job from hell” that’s unmatched in movie history.
Expertly controlled by Kurosawa over the course of the film’s two hours, the potboiler crime narrative becomes a dark parable about the crushing weight of the national trauma suffered by Japan in the wake of its costly World War 2 failures and the horrific end brought to them by the detonation of the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Populated with memorably drawn characters and performances and draped in a broodingly dark atmosphere, it’s a film that adeptly weaves together genre and social critique in a quietly profound final web rarely equalled since.
THE DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH
Secret Honor — YouTube
Anderson is a clear and admitted inheritor and disciple of the anarchic, absurdist cynicism and satirical genius of 1970s’ legend Robert Altman. This single character drama, while atypically quiet in approach and focus, demonstrates Altman’s unique abilities to direct actors and mine dark humour from serious subjects as ably as his more celebrated multi-character, sprawling, frenetic classics ever did. It’s also a perfect demonstration of Altman’s talents as one of the great on-screen adapters of stage material of any cinematic era.
Starring later frequent Anderson favourite Philip Baker Hall as a drowning, paranoid, solo-drinking, tape-recording Richard Nixon, the 1984 film adapted from their own one-play by writers Donald Freed and Arnold M Stone sees the disgraced former US president agitatedly pacing his study in his Saddle River, New Jersey, mansion in the 1980s. Armed with a pistol, a bottle of whisky, a tape recorder and surrounded by CCTV, an embittered Nixon recalls with increasing rage, disappointment and suspicion the story of his life to ultimately prove that, in the words of the film’s publicity posters, “anyone can be the president”.
Completely carried by the intensity, venom and passion of Hall’s performance, it’s a film that though far less seen and appreciated than many of Altman’s deserved classic other works, remains in the words of the late legendary critic Roger Ebert, a “scathing, lacerating [and] brilliant movie,” and one that, in the context of the current American Trump 2.0 moment, is as darkly prescient and relevant as it ever was.
