“I have a tendency to hold off starting a film until I feel myself forced to begin in order to see where I want to go, where I will take myself…I wrote about this in my book Making a Film (Fare un film), about La Strada (1954). At the beginning I had only a confused feeling, a kind of tone that lurked, which made me melancholy and gave me a diffused sense of guilt, like a shadow hanging over me. This feeling suggested two people who stay together, although it will be fatal, and they don’t know why. But once this feeling crystallized, the story came easily, as if it had been there waiting to be found.”

— Federico Fellini

Paul Thomas Anderson has got to be one of the most likable filmmakers in a very long time, besides his great talent as a filmmaker, his personality is so great, he’s just an egregious fellow who loves making movies and living life with his wife and kids. I was watching the Q&A he did at the Astor Theater, and it’s now one of my favorite film interviews of all time. 

I wasn’t aware of Paul’s existence until the year There Will Be Blood came out, I heard a segment on CNN, where Blood was getting comparisons to Citizen Kane, and from that moment I became curious about his work. It wasn’t long before I bought Magnolia at Best Buy, and I remember crying when the movie ended, I was hooked to this guy. Like most of my filmmaker infatuations, I had to see everything he had ever done, and by the time I was done watching his films countless times, I knew this guy was something special. 

I must admit The Master felt quite unconventional, and to say that “I got it”, would be an insincere thing to say. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t like the movie, it just means that at this point in time, I was unable to fully connect with it. I still love “The Master”, I saw it three times while it played in theaters, it only had a two and a half week run before it was pulled out, but my mindset on the movie didn’t change at all after I saw it all three times. When I think back on The Master, I feel as if Paul broke one of his rules about telling a story with flashbacks, he’s more of a linear guy, and he’s been very rigid about that. It jumbles up my mind when I begin to think about what The Master is…. It’s a character piece for sure, almost like Vertigo where Hitchcock completely disregards the cockamamie plot and paints a portrait of Scottie (James Stewart), that’s the sensation I gathered from it. The Master is more of a painting, it’s not a structured film in a conventional sense, the film has a life of its own, it breathes on its own, and it just takes you away. 

My thoughts on The Master are still very abstract, it’s an ambiguous piece of cinema, and that’s all I can say about it.

I digress, the Q&A that took place in the Astor Theater gave me more of a perspective on Paul, and one thing that I learned is that the great filmmakers cannot express “the process” of how their work comes to life. I think true genius comes from a mysterious place, and only presents itself as an idea, and this creative spark which ignites it is something that can’t be defined. Most of the questions asked in this Q&A couldn’t be answered, but Paul’s humor is what really made the whole thing a riot to experience. 

If I learned anything from this video is that, any semblance of the old Paul Thomas Anderson we knew in his Magnolia days, is all but gone. The biggest inspiration for Paul’s movies is life and age….I think wisdom is the greatest power a great filmmaker can possess…granted, wisdom comes in many forms, you don’t have to be Confucius — Paul’s wisdom comes from progress in life. 

After I saw this interview, I began to think about ‘The Master’ yet again, and it’s true to life, because when we sit down and think about what our lives mean we just end up with a big headache…and life just goes on, until it doesn’t. 

Here’s the amazing Q&A below:

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/watch-1-hour-q-a-with-paul-thomas-anderson-about-the-master-at-the-astor-theater-in-melbourne-australia-20121122

As I observed Daniel Day-Lewis’ performance in Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln”, it became evident that the embodiment  of Lewis’ performance as Abraham Lincoln, was nothing short of poetic. I believe a great performance sheds light into the soul of a person, and the connection an audience makes to that person becomes a mirror of something they see in themselves, or perhaps something that they see in others they know.

If there’s any magic in the movies, I believe that the magic mainly comes from the actor, who in their performance creates life, a life not entirely their own, but fabricated from whatever magical entity that possesses them. Of course not every actor or “movie star” possess such fathomable, God-given talent as Daniel Day, for he is a rare breed indeed. However, in a film like “Lincoln”, I experienced what I feel is a monumental acting performance unlike anything I have ever seen and felt. The reason for that feeling is yet to be known to me, but I think that emotions are stronger than words, it’s the meaning they hold as they are spoken, which is important.

There’s a very special line of dialogue in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s “The Barefoot Contessa”, the film is about the destructive nature of a beautiful woman, which is all too familiar in the annals of Hollywood’s existence, most noticeably Marilyn Monroe. In the scene Humphrey Bogart is trying to convince Ava Gardner to show up for a screen test, somewhere along the line he says “There’s more to talking than just words.”, and when I remembered that I knew that speech is like music, it is the music we emit from the core of our hearts. And meaningful talk, like music, must be sincere or else it doesn’t mean anything. Hence, “There’s more to talking than just words.” Great talk in the movies is nothing short of poetry.

When Daniel Day-Lewis speaks through his characters, he is not simply saying the words, he is releasing the emotions of his heart, and they come out of him as poetry. I believe this very talent, is what makes Daniel Day such an important actor, the many masks he wears are the very colors of our existence. In “Lincoln” we see a man bleed for the sake of humanity, and every bit of emotion he carries like Atlas, holding the celestial sphere over his shoulders. It is his righteousness to mend a country on the brink of destruction that leads to his death; the scene when Lincoln walks out the door for the last time, I felt like we were watching him slip into the arms of eternity.