Okay, some more PDA for PTA...

As a filmbuffrsquos filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson PTA has perhaps only one real Hollywood rival from among his rsquo90s offkilter lsquoVHSgenerationrsquo contemporaries And thatrsquos Quentin TarantinoBoth blessed with a love for music have remained equally carefulconservative with their filmmaking output perennially teasing their bhakttype fans in anticipation of their latest work Tarantino will soon be on to his tenth film having announced it as his lastPTA just released his tenth actionthriller One Battle After Another 2025 The nearuniversal PDA public display of affection for which suggests itrsquos his most loved film yet Is itWell firstly for a writerdirector there are actually PTAs And I mean this purely in terms of expanding the cleverly original writingfilmmaking with a wider worldview hence higher artistic ambitionsInglourious Basterds 2009 was that pivot for Tarantino As There Will Be Blood 2007 was for PTAFilmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson PicWikimedia CommonsI remember walking across Berlin in 2007 wholly covered in billboards of There Will Be Blood mdash wondering if that was the only film premiering at the Berlinale film festival that yearWhat explained this blitzkrieg Sure it was PTArsquos first film in five years since PunchDrunk Love But more so that it starred Daniel DayLewis who for an actor is even more frugal with his filmic produceAuteurs achieve scale or go lsquomainstreamrsquo once bestknown actors invest in them Box office be damned Studios naturally follow And there are no greater fans of great directorsstorytellers than fine actors Their role is the annual bonusHow else to explain Bradley Cooper for merely a masculine monologue in PTArsquos Licorice Pizza 2021 And where do you think Joaquin Phoenixrsquos maddest performance Joker 2019 emanate from if not PTArsquos The Master 2012 firstSame thought applies to Indian mainstream Only wersquove progressively eaten up every ounce of collective acclaim mdash press awards plaudits reviews everything mdash turning movies into sports measured by numbers aloneAlso therersquos a perceivable bias for the sorta films from the nonwestern world that get accepted at the top film festivals making Indian mainstream actors wary of shutting their eyes and punting for the same global stage if at all This will eventually change hopefully Just not yetWhat did a lowkey surreal romcom PunchDrunk Love 2002 about a loser salesman with seven sisters do for its lead Adam Sandler Showed his staggering emotional range beyond an adorable clown onscreenDayLewis could see that Where did lsquoPTA IIrsquo go with There Will Be Blood Pretty much narrate history of capitalism religion America and oil with threefour main characters in under three hoursIt sucks the blood outta your brains enough that you wonrsquot rot them over Insta Reels for a while Great cinema is our only protective antidote to senseless scroll The screenrsquos not going anywhere anywayDid There Will Be Blood fit seamlessly into the directorrsquos recurring personal themes of greed redemption power submission sexual repressionhellip Hell yeahI guess PTA established his artistic obsession with characters on the fringe mdash anywhere on a scale between selfabsorbed flawedfrustrated amp fully fed up incel loser mdash right from his maiden cult classic Boogie Nights 1997It synced so well with Martin Scorsese San Fernando Valley in LA of PTArsquos childhood that he often returned to being what Little Italy in New York City is to Scorsese And whatrsquos Boogie Nights if not Goodfellas 1990 of the porn industryYou can also see how PTA figures the easiest way to place audiences into another world is by literally transporting them into another time making the period his piegravece de reacutesistanceOnce in often surveying vast wilderness what holds you are truths that elevate his fiction without getting in the way of the storyAnd so Magnolia 1999 may be his most personal film about dying fathers you remember it most for Tom Cruise in the ensembleThat is if you saw that character through the prism of misogynist seduction communities in the US that became the rage at least around me once we read Neil Straussrsquos nonfiction book The Game 2005The Master 2012 of course makes the most sense if we literally equate it to Scientology that incidentally Cruise follows in real life You notice how the violence in the film stays offscene Cult and cruelty get conveyed through performances alone They hit you harderWhich is why PTArsquos ninth film Licorice Pizza 2021 about a 15yearold hustler kid in love with a 25yearold woman being his groupie seemed lsquoPeak PTA IIrsquo telling it like it is so straight out of a novel and straightforward shorn of obvious chops to show offWhat about One Battle After Another 2025 with Scorsesersquos muse Leonardo DiCaprio killing it with that phonescene and the theatre laughing as they did on Wolf of Wall Street 2013 while guns go offThe setting is both period and present The wild zaniness reminds you of PTArsquos earlier works and the deep politics of what defined him later Such that Sean Penn should walk away with Best Supporting Actor for a white supremacist soldierItrsquos blended PTArsquos most current movie I saw its irony and youthful rebelliousness as a love letter to Gen Z who will hopefully burn through his filmography mdash once done raving about possibly his most accessible picture everMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass cultureHe tweets mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper