Just saw it. Still soaking it in. It is indeed a very sexual film with Quill's libido on full display including a notably distracting song and dance performance by PSH at a party in Freddie's point of view. Very 1950s body types which of course got some people in the audience uncomfortable seeing so many different kinds of female forms in a scene that long. Freddie's level of alcoholism also got some gasps. A cocktail with paint thinner? Oh boy.
I sort of give credit to PTA just for showing something that we were taught was so unfathomable to expect from the so-called 'Greatest Generation'. But he doesn't generalize in his subverting. Freddie is a bizarre character who is never made into some societal anti-hero. There is definitely something wrong with him.
Phoenix is incredible but I understand why he and PSH have been tying at some film festivals. This is really an incredible match of two distinctly but equally off-beat actors. I've always loved Phoenix but I never really bought too much into PSH as anything more than a loud, bombast who won Heath Ledger's Oscar (in a film that seemed an effort to ruin everything associated with in Cold Blood). Here it is clear he plays the guy truly into 'The Cause' with not a lot of winking or nodding, far beyond just being a charlatan. He does want to lasso the dragon and the dragon is Phoenix. The scenes between the two of them make the film. Amy Adams is good as the cold believer who is skeptical of Freddie and Laura Dern also is good in her few scenes, but they can get a little lost in the shuffle.
The photography is gorgeous. I think my favorite part was when you had the transitions of rack focus going from seeing the boat then going Freddie Quill seeing the boat for the first time. Also, the scenes of Freddie's photography.
I loved Greenwood's score and also, of course, some of the musical choices in the film, non-diegetic and diegetic alike.
I definitely think the film is more character study than narrative, but I feel like the audience has two plausible places to go with the ending.
I hope the people who did the costumes, cinematography, score (especially when Greenwood was disqualified from his work in There Will Be Blood), and art direction are nominated in addition to the acting and direction of Paul Thomas Anderson.
I can see the cool feeling people get with the film but a character like Freddie is a bit hard to work into feeling warm and fuzzy about. You are explicitly introduced to his mind in the first moments of the film. He's a fiend but he is not Daniel Plainview either. There are moments of self-awareness by the film where Freddie kills the tension and unhappiness really mounting, the Doris Day quip as one example. I think the emotional depth issues stem from one guy with a Messianic complex who seems to build a reputation of lies and the other is an alcoholic who may or may not be insane (either hereditary or the war really screwing him up or entirely his alcoholism). There's not really a real normal person in their group who gets their say until the John Moore scene.
I definitely think the film is more character study than narrative, but I feel like the audience has two plausible places to go with the ending.
SPOILER ALERT: Is Freddie entering a state of going in circles (with the first and final scenes) with The Cause just as a footnote, and possibly with some majorly ignored mental health issues, or can he go to the 'next life'? Although he appeared to be up to his old tricks again he also seemed to actually be interested in who he was having sex with and when he was trying to see Doris again he seemed like the person he was in the pre-War period.
Also other SPOILERS:
Did the daughter and her husband leave 'The Cause'? Some time went by with Amy's character no longer pregnant and the son going from a skeptic not buying his father's BS to being knee deep in it. Amy's character mentioned 'DCF' or something and changed the subject.
Does anybody think that Freddie knowingly poisoned his co-worker (mentioning that he reminded him of his father) or was it just the guy could not handle his cocktail?
If Amy's getting nominated for an Oscar (which I think she should and will), I honestly wonder which scene is in the clip reel because he showiest scenes have her jerking off her husband (somebody in our audience openly recoiled at the discovery when she said the lines 'Do you cum for me?', apparently not realizing what she was doing this whole time) and reading porn all in a close-up to Freddie Quills. Probably something boring (in comparison to those two) like the dinner table scene.
There seemed to be some scenes missing that were in the trailers such as that one scene where Freddie's sanity seems to be in question, a nervous breakdown is mentioned. Pretty sure it was done by the Navy and not Lancaster (the questioner is never shown). That was notable because Phoenix was shot in close-up the entire time and in fact, that whole scene was the first teaser of the film. Some early media reports did mention stuff in the trailers were not in the final cut but the entirety of that scene not shown was surprising. I guess the logic was there were lots of showy scenes of Phoenix anyway or that the scene raised questions that why he was not placed in the looney bin already.
Updated On: 9/22/12 at 10:43 PM
