And then he did. He scaled back the sprawl to make the modest shaggy dog romance Punch Drunk Love, then upped it again for There Will Be Blood and The Master while scaling back the silliness, then he returned to sprawl and silliness and little else for Inherent Vice, and then he made Phantom Thread, a film so classically constructed it was almost completely unrecognizable as a Paul Thomas Anderson film.
Understanding these shifts in Anderson's films while detecting the phantom threads that run through them provides structure for Ethan Warren's The Cinema of Paul Thomas Anderson: American Apocrypha, the latest installment in Wallflower Press' Directors' Cuts series. After an introductory chapter in which Warren provides a chronological sprint through the filmmaker's career with making of, plot, and legacy details, the author parts with chronology for a theme by theme look at that career, loosely using each film as a way into a particular discussion. He uses Punch Drunk Love as the first stop on Anderson's map of the San Fernando Valley. The Scorsese and Altman indebted Boogie Nights leads to a look at the filmmakers who influenced Anderson. Phantom Thread's depiction of sibling, child/parent, and marital relationships is the gateway into a chapter on Anderson's treatment of family. Etcetera.
More important than any structural device is Warren's particular takes on the films. He seems to attempt to keep a certain amount of critical distance, especially since he regularly quotes and refers to other writers' takes on these films, though he does allow certain biases to leak into the discussion and sometimes sculpt the facts to support his opinions. So he describes Philip Seymour Hoffman's Scotty in Boogie Nights as "mincing" in an effort to support the idea that he is a homophobic construction (an idea the writer implies through the writings of others but refuses to commit to himself) when Hoffman's deliberately awkward, stilted, uncomfortable-in-his-own-skin performance is the opposite of mincing. Warren quotes a writer named Jason Sperb to suggest that Anderson's refusal to divulge the non-porn names of Rollergirl and Amber Waves in Boogie Nights is evidence of the director's misogyny without clarifying that Sperb is simply wrong and both character's non-porn names are most definitely given in the film (Rollergirl's real name is "Brandy" and Amber's is "Maggie," by the way). It's one thing to misremember a few minor details in a film full of details; it's another thing to use mistakes as evidence to support a moral condemnation.
Warren also pretends that Magnolia, a film completely focused on examining and calling out patriarchal monstrosity, doesn't have a clear theme and pretends its ending somehow reinstates and supports patriarchal structures by making assumptions that have little to do with what's actually on screen, possibly because it's clear he doesn't like the movie (that also seems to be the same reason he manipulates certain details about Boogie Nights).
However, there are also a lot of provocative and well argued points in American Apocrypha. If I seem a bit overly defensive of Boogie Nights and Magnolia, it's because they're my personal favorites of Anderson's movies, but I do agree with Warren that they tend to overly rely on characters over-explaining their feelings and intentions, and reading this book I learned that this is a result of Anderson's insistence on filming his first few scripts with rigid, dogged fidelity. I agree that if any character supports an argument that Anderson has a problem with women, it's Dirk Diggler's monstrous mom (though the implication that she may be closely based on Anderson's own actual mom adds a complication worth underlining). I agree that Emily Watson's Lena is one of Anderson's most poorly written female characters (why anyone so utterly appealing would tirelessly pursue someone as utterly unappealing as Adam Sandler's Barry Egan strains credulity even in a movie as cartoonish as Punch Drunk Love).
So it's a good idea to bring your own critical thinking skills and familiarity with Anderson's work to The Cinema of Paul Thomas Anderson: American Apocrypha. If you do, it can be a rewarding read. If you consistently take everything in it at face value, it can be frustrating at times. I guess you can say the same thing about a lot of the movies it discusses.
