Paul Thomas Anderson is
one of the best directors at the moment, so I was of course looking
forward to this one. And as he doesn't rush with the productions of
his movies it took almost 6 years to finally get a new movie from
him. Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) is an alcoholic World War II
veteran who has some serious anger issues. He meets a cult
religiously believing in The Cause and befriends the leader Lancaster
Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Even though Freddie's anger seems to
cause more trouble than anything good they still become depended on
each other and together spread the word of The Cause. The story is
quite interesting and even though this is not about scientology the
similarities are quite obvious at times. The cast is superb, Joaquin
Phoenix portrays probably the best performance of his career, Philip
Seymour Hoffman is great as always and Amy Adams was surprisingly
good as well. The movie looks larger than it actually is, mostly
thanks to the beautiful 65 mm photography. Direction focuses on
closeups and the sets are usually quite small so the photography
gives it the larger scale. Even though I understand why it was used,
to bring more scale for the emotions, I still think it could have
been utilized a bit better. Especially since the biggest problem this
movie had was the feeling it left me with. Even though I was
entertained and even amazed at times, still I was thinking “was
that it?” when the end credits rolled. And to be honest that's a
bit unforgivable. I mean I like open endings, it's good to leave
something for the viewer to ponder on, but as this movie does it most
of the time right from the start and the characters are quite grand,
I was constantly waiting for some kind of closure of epic
proportions. The kind which would tie up the movie and leave me
thinking how it actually got there, kind of like in There Will BeBlood (2007), but there is none. And that's a huge disappointment in an otherwise
brilliant movie.
71%
