Families and Filmographies

For film students of the '90s, Martin Scorsese was, for obvious and well-established reasons, our god of cinema. Our “greatest living (or working) director”. To say that now, in 2008, sounds like a hollow cliche. But back in college, films like Goodfellas, Taxi Driver, even Cape Fear... we could never get enough of them. Of course, Scorsese begat Tarantino, which begat '90s crime cinema, etc, etc, etc. And after some rather transparent bids for critical affection, now Scorsese wins Oscars for movies he probably shouldn't have, while largely generally operating as a shadow of his former self. Hey, we all get old. 

But quietly, slowly, someone's taken away that mantle of our "greatest working director": 

P.T. Anderson. 

This is a personal declaration, and I don't expect others to agree, but with apologies to Marty, Spielberg, or anyone else who would aspire to the title (Lynch, Coen, Mann, Soderbergh, Wong Kar-Wai, don't know who else...), it's not even close. Not only are Anderson's films full of life and vitality in a way that's reminiscent of Scorsese at his peak (an intensity that feels forced and contrived in Marty’s recent films), but Anderson peels back layers of human frailty, pain and repressed emotion in ways that Scorsese never dared. In so many of Scorcese’s films, inner life barely exists, whereas for Anderson, it churns its way to the surface, despite all efforts to withhold. 

Anderson is superficially admired for his complex, interwoven narratives, and vast, Altman-like canvases. But over the span of two weeks, I’ve rewatched his five picture filmography, and while his work is undeniably riddled with consistent themes and motifs, one stands out above all others in both is grandiosity and simplicity: family. This is his true subject matter, and it runs like an underground river through all of his work.

Fascinatingly, Anderson's own personal life - his family - is largely an enigma, to the point where Esquire magazine was inspired to write an expose on his upbringing, revealing Anderson's close childhood proximity to the Hollywood machine (his father was a famed voice-over artist), which resulted in an early obsession with filmmaking and a rather naked ambition, that for unexplained reasons, Anderson now wants to obscure. Sadly, Anderson won't acknowledge - nor even speak to - his best friends from childhood, many of whom were also the progeny of celebrities and Hollywood types. But what's most interesting about this are the hints of his personal life that seep into his creative work. Clearly, he doesn't want to self-consciously expose himself like a Charlie Kaufman, but many of those autobiographical elements are certainly there, though perhaps more in thematics than narrative.

What's fascinating about this theme of family, and also terribly sad, is the arc of it across his five films. His first (Hard Eight) and last (There Will Be Blood) films have, on the surface, the least to do with family of any of his films, but in some ways they are the most instructive, and represent an almost titanic shift in world view that will be interesting to see how Anderson transitions next as an artist (and probably for those who know him, as a person).

HARD EIGHT

Let's start with Hard Eight, the least "familial" of his filmography. It opens with John C. Reilly meeting Philip Baker Hall against the backdrop of the younger man's inability to pay for his mother's burial. As with so many of Anderson's scenarios, even when family isn't onscreen, they are just beyond the edges of the frame. Hall becomes a mentor to this troubled, somewhat dimwitted lug, but though Reilly fails to internalize the lessons that Hall tries to impart, true devotion arises nonetheless. We learn, shockingly, that Hall murdered Reilly's father years earlier, which is why he befriended him in the first place. Hall has his own children, but they are also stage left, likely resentful and broken. But real affection develops between these two men, as Hall takes over the role of the dutiful father, and probably serves it better than Reilly's blood relation. The climax of the film is gripping in its emotional simplicity: an older man tells a younger man on the phone that he loves him like his own son. The younger man cries. The older man tries to hold it together. Devotion. Emotional need and fulfillment. Love.

Sure, the movie's narrative actually ends with bullets and blood, but that's not the point. Superficially, it's a movie about gambling, the low-rent casinos populating California and Nevada, and petty misbehaviors, but ultimately, it's about family. About finding a family when your real family has been lost, or taken away.

BOOGIE NIGHTS

Now let's take Boogie Nights. Again, it doesn't appear to be about family at all. It's about the '70s and big cocks. But coming off the last comment, family is exactly what it's about. Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg) is viewed as a worthless do-nothing by his overbearing mother, and flees home. He discovers a new home, filled with troubled dreamers, who just so happen to be porn actors. Burt Reynolds is the paternal familia of the clan, and Julianne Moore is, quite literally, referred to as "Momma" by the damaged young porn actors who want to find someone to emotionally protect them.  The fact that they fuck together on camera is merely window dressing. All of these sad souls live on the proverbial knife edge of success and complete destruction, with only the prospect of another seedy, sweaty porn shoot to give them hope for another day. In this world to be a porn star is to have self-worth, which Anderson makes visually clear by capturing Diggler in the literal halo of a spotlight at a porn movie award ceremonies. A cheesy karate kick even infuses it with a parodic aura of super-hero strength. Validation = self worth. 

But we still need family. The film keeps coming back to that point. None of these characters have it (Julianne Moore is even prevented by the legal system from having it, due to her career choice), and so they create a substitute family in Reynolds' house. On the one hand, it's a grim, sad movie (despite its propulsive visual energy) because of the subject matter itself, but there's a quiet, dignified hope in the notion that troubled people can find each other and create enclaves of support. Interestingly, it may be Don Cheadle who is given the only true redemption in the film though, which Anderson stages by allowing the character to leave the porn industry and get married, preparing for fatherhood. In marriage and pregnancy is family, and thus, success and purity - at least in the context of this film. Cheadle’s final scene even features him in a bright white suit, which needs to be splattered with blood – a kind of reverse baptism. For the others, they'll keep stringing it along, and in Anderson's view, that's better than nothing. And so that's something. Sad, but somehow beautiful.

So chalk up two films with a rather positive view of the potential of self-selected families. It's somehow inspiring.

MAGNOLIA

Then comes Magnolia. Anderson's most ambitious film, and against the grandiosity of Blood, that's saying something. It's my favorite of his films, but I'll comment the least about it. Perhaps because it's the most obvious in relation to this overarching theme. Needless to say, people love and hate it for its many, interlocking storylines that sometimes relate, and sometimes don't. Chance, circumstance and fate are the themes the narrator explicitly refers to. But what is underneath all of these characters: the awareness that family has demonstrably let them all down.

This is a noticeable shift from Boogie Nights, where Diggler's break from family can be chalked up to impulsive immaturity and the natural need to break away. All teenagers hate their parents, right? But in Magnolia, families (and, specifically, fathers), do truly devastating things to their children, from which few recover. Let's list them, quickly: Philip Baker Hall sexually molested daughter Melora Waters, leaving her incapable of a competent, stable relationship with men. Jason Robards abandoned his wife, dying of cancer, thereby forever alienating his son, Tom Cruise, who reacts by trying to somehow outdo the hatred, the philandering, the misogyny in a misplaced effort to gain that same father's love. Failing that, he seeks to destroy the father on his deathbed, only to be left destroyed himself (ironically, Cruise's final moments onscreen hint at the potential return of familial self-selection). Stanley Spector, the young game show whiz kid, is pushed and prodded to perform and excel by his unsympathetic father, which mirrors William H. Macy's own backstory, whose game show success left him unable to connect with anyone (male or female), devoid of any self-esteem or self-understanding. Macy is a flash-forward of Spector's life in 35 years. Yes, in Magnolia, dads are true shitballs, which makes you curious as to Anderson's reticence to speak about his own family. 

PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE

Punch-Drunk Love is Anderson's slightest, and most tender, film. It's a romantic comedy that to some appears almost absent of comedy, as well as any conventional view of romance. Saying that, it's deeply funny, and intensely romantic - you just have to be in the right frame of mind. Much like Melora Waters and John C. Reilly in Magnolia it's all about emotionally blocked people, who just want to find a way to connect with someone. Anderson even stages Adam Sandler as Barry Egan (in a revelatory performance) and Emily Watson (Lena) in nearly identical ways as Waters/Reilly from Magnolia on a first date. Almost as if all first dates are universal in their insecurities, the need for validation, and an unavoidable desire to bullshit to make ourselves feel better. 

But what does this have to do with family? The reason the film is called Punch-Drunk Love is that it is, above all, about rage. About how damaged people want to tear everything down, but as a way of actually trying to find something soft and cuddly. Sandler's character arc is about channeling that rage, to transform those repressed emotions into something that will burst out of him with a "strength you can't even begin to imagine", like a caterpillar that's become a butterfly. Prior to finding love, his rage was destructive. But with love, it becomes transcendent. It's a beautiful image, but what's relevant here is where his rage comes from: his five, ball-busting, harpie sisters. Anderson gives Sandler these 5 sisters who routinely call him names you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy, diminishing him in their eyes and his own. To call them castrating would be kind.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Anderson has 4 sisters of his own.

Sandler is left to feel unloved by his own family, and unworthy of their attention, so he ends up sobbing in front of his disinterested, awkward brother-in-law, who would rather be anywhere than even talking to this sad sack in a blue (get the obvious pun, “blue”?) suit. Though the movie is about the relationship with Watson, about pudding, and the curious appearance of an organ in the street, the specter of family hangs over, and underpins, everything about the character. Sandler finds love, he channels his rage into passion, and finds a modicum of happiness. Yet, it's impossible not to notice that, in doing so, family has been entirely excised. Which makes it all the more impossible not to see that, without family letting Sandler down to begin with, there would be no character, no movie.

Though I may be wrong, I believe that Anderson began his relationship with Fiona Apple around this period. It's as if the director, perhaps wounded by his own family, had found redemption. Again, by finding it outside of family. In many ways, this has been the only true happiness his characters are allowed from “family”: when they discover them outside their own flesh and blood. I bet Thanksgivings at the Anderson household are a laugh riot.

THERE WILL BE BLOOD

Which brings us to There Will Be Blood. Yes, the film is about greed, ambition and religion, certainly. But yet again, Anderson returns to the theme of constructed, chosen families. The families we self-select, rather than what is given by fate. Daniel Plainview takes in the infant of a dead oil worker, recognizing him as his own son. There appears to be real affection for this boy, but in truth, Plainview merely uses H.W. Plainview as a prop to appear as a righteous, upstanding family man to get in good with the local rubes, who want relatable "family" oil men raping their land, as opposed to single entrepreneurs  (how very Republican Party of them...). When the boy is physically damaged, instead of nurturing and protecting him, Plainview sends the boy away. This clearly devastates the man, but we don't know if it's for the boy, or the fact that Plainview recognizes in himself someone unworthy of the responsibility and value of family. It's not that Plainview doesn't have feelings, but he's a rare Anderson character that actually manages to swallow them - until they utterly pervert and destroy him from the inside.

Later, the film turns to a new family relationship, which Plainview is at first suspicious of, and then abjectly threatened by. And in this case, his suspicions are actually well-founded and correct: family is not family, blood is not blood (although there will be blood). Yet, though this intrusion is essentially benign, Plainview must cut it out with a violence that is sobering. Now for Anderson, self-selected families are no longer found, embraced and treasured. They are suspected, cast out, vilified.  Meanwhile, the biological family represented in the Sunday clan is just as fractured and dysfunctional: more sexual abuse, religious fundamentalism, and a "smart brother" who knew to get out while the getting is good.

It's a fascinating turn for Anderson when seen in context of his other films, all of which (except for Magnolia) are quietly, subtly obsessed with this notion of supplemental, chosen families, rather than biological connections. But instead of the genuine earnestness of Hard Eight, the shaggy-dog playfulness of Boogie Nights,  and the romantic wish-fulfillment of Punch-Drunk Love, you have a man who throws away his adopted child the moment that the son makes any choice contrary to the father. "Family" exists only as long as it is financially beneficial. When it is no longer to Plainview's advantage, he screams at his son's departing back, "You're just a bastard from a basket!". The only redemptive grace for H.W. is that he is deaf (due to Plainview's own drilling success) and can't hear these cruel, hateful words from a father who is not a father. 

It's no small accident that when Paul Sunday screams and begs for his life in the climactic bowling scene, he wails, "We're family!". Which, to anyone who knows Anderson's films well, is probably the worst thing in the world he could've said. Real families are meant to be steam-rolled, abandoned, chucked out the window. Or cut out of the will, as Plainview would have it. Or bludgeoned with a bowling pin. At the same time, Anderson is further diffusing and obscuring the notion of "family" at all. If Sunday would so claim to be Plainview's "family" - which is clearly absurd - the notion of "family" has no meaning at all. It certainly doesn't for Plainview. But does it for Anderson?

Anderson has clearly grown more guarded, if not downright cynical, when it comes to the idea of family. The director who seeks to escape his past may want to put his family history behind him. Even self-selected families are now suspect (hmm... wonder what Fiona thinks of all this...). His characters reach out for new family connections - in casinos, on porn shoots, in the warm embrace of an non-judgmental lover - but he ultimately brings us to a place where these constructs are just as easily torn to shreds, despite the years, the meaning, the deep need we all have for that comforting embrace. How we long for Claudia and the cop, Barry Egan and Lena, with their wounded need for love and understanding.

Daniel Plainview will never hold his son again, and in his own mind, never viewed him as a son at all. We know that Plainview is lost.  Anderson makes no bones about it. "I'm finished!", Plainview calls. One wonders where Anderson will emerge next.  As grim as his work can be, it is undeniably infused with energetic life, and pain and honesty. I, for one, will be there to greet him at the door to find out.