Written and Directed by: Paul Thomas Anderson
Nominated for Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.
Nominated for Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.
It was such a pleasant surprise, this film. A director like PTA who was made films on dark themes and characters - and has done them really well, he has come to a genre like rom-com and he's done it with such grace. I was laughing out loud at so many instances. Like laughing out loud, not even chuckling. Beautiful conversations throughout. Interesting usage of pacing - to create awkward moments, deadpan humor. Both the characters, Alana and Gary, are beautifully explored. The setting, the period setting also came through so well - whether it's the roads filled with neon lights or the lighting within scenes. I could recall Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, for the colors in the film.
The film has a conventional structure, and I think that was a safety net for PTA to go batshit crazy in between wherever he wanted. For example, the whole Bradley Cooper sequence wasn't adding to the core story at all, but it was a nice detour. Elements like waterbeds, pinball machines, they add character to the film. These are the elements that define the tone of the film. The banality of the world sets the tone. Just like in Burn After Reading, there's a "massaging" machine that adds a beautiful layer to the entire film. It's just a prop, but a well thought through one. The film is interesting because it's a coming-of-age story of Gary also - rom-coms with this quality, where we see at least one of them having an arc, are always fun.
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