When it comes to writer-directors, the fans want a brand. We want to draw association from their name. God knows that our relatives, stuffed from Christmas lunch and about to nod off to the smell of roast chicken, don’t want to listen to us talk about ‘movie makers’ all afternoon, so brevity is key.

    When I sit down at the table to talk about Chris Nolan, I talk about scale and action, twists and turns. This is the Nolan brand. 

    When I talk about Quentin Tarantino, I talk about violence and blood, wit and cultural references. I even talk about feet. This is the Tarantino brand. 

    But when I talk about Paul Thomas Anderson… that’s when the table wonders off to watch TV or even wash the dishes and take out the trash (take me with you!).  

    

    There’s no short and sweet when it comes to Anderson. When I talk about his films, I come to dead-ends that contradict themselves. I track back on claims, and bounce around his career to demonstrate how The Master (2012) is one of his best, but it could not be less alike with his earlier work like Boogie Nights (1997) or Magnolia (1999). It's hard to talk about Phantom Thread (2017) and Licorice Pizza (2022) in the same sentence. I’d sooner talk about Punch Drunk Love (2002) in reference to Licorice Pizza, but there is two decades between them. Oh, what an ordeal!

    This is all because Anderson lives outside the limits of his own trends.  

    It would be easier to recommend someone like Andrei Tarkovsky, because at least I can vomit buzzwords about his craft (Russian! Purist! Existentialist!). But it seems that buzzwords don’t cut it for Anderson, and There Will be Blood (2007) could be the reason for that. 

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One of the forefathers of the writer-director brand was the acclaimed and celebrated Federico Fellini. Known as Il Maestro, he had a whole new word to describe his surreal sensibilities: Fellini-esque. 

FELLINI-ESQUE:

Adjective: fantastic, bizarre, lavish, and extravagant. 

    However, those familiar with Fellini would notice that his breakout film, I’vitelloni (1953), a neo-realistic look at Italian adolescence, isn’t very Fellini-esque. La Strada (1954) is kind of Fellini-esque. And Nights of Cabiria (1957) is Fellini-ish. But the distinction comes, not in the creation of his lavish and bizarre 8 1/2 (1963), but in the wake of his decision to double down on those sensibilities for the back-half of his career. 

    Fellini’s brand didn’t come from one film, but from his consistent and linear march toward that of the fantastical in his art. 

    His detractors have since labelled his later work as worn-out and dated, but without all that which followed 8 1/2, he would never have been associated with a brand as ironclad as that of author Franz Kafka (and his Kafka-esque stories). 

    Talking about Paul Thomas Anderson in such distinctions feels like a box he is too big to fit in. But is his lack of a brand the reason he isn’t a household name? Is there a world where something is Anderson-esque without being… quirky and symmetrical. 

    What if after 8 1/2, Fellini turned his attention away from the dream-like and lucid to test his hand somewhere else? Hell, he could have even ran the market on Italian mob movies before The Godfather (1972) and Mean Streets (1973) (which Scorsese claims is inspired by Fellini’s I’vitelloni). But what would have come of Fellini-esque? Without his later work, which crescendo’ed in 1973 with Amarcord, the term wouldn’t hold much water. Whether or not his career would have benefited from it, his brand would have suffered in its inversions and oddities, in its inconsistencies. Just like we see with Paul Thomas Anderson. 

    In fact, Anderson even had a streak not dissimilar to that of Fellini in his earlier work. Hard Eight (1996) is grounded in realism and themes of transition like I’vitelloni. Boogie Nights swims in the currents of a sensational hyper-realism like La Strada and Nights of Cabiria. Magnolia traverses the fragments of life like La Dolce Vita (1960). And Punch Drunk Love stretches and shatters one man’s view of reality like 8 1/2. Yet there is no Juliet of the Spirits (1965) or Fellini's Satyricon (1969). Anderson’s next film isn’t an extension of the narrative and aesthetic foundations set in Punch Drunk Love. His next film, There Will Be Blood, made it so there could be no Anderson-esque. 

    What we have in There Will Be Blood is not a renovation of Anderson’s directorial wheelhouse but a full on reinvention. Without doubt, there are shards of his former self and sensibilities. But what was once water is now oil. Anderson shattered the chance of a brand that could be used to surmise his career as a whole. There is no qualifier for what he did between his forth and fifth films. No word can describe the distance - in score, in tone, theme, structure, in all heard and seen. There is no word. 

    

    But for Paul Thomas Anderson, there doesn’t need to be a word. He will never be known for one thing. He won’t be the realist or the surrealist. He won’t become one of the Fellini’s of the world, but instead one of the Wilder’s or Kubrick’s. One of the anomalies of the art.

    Now, with Licorice Pizza on the horizon, we see Anderson in another (maybe final) battle with his brand. With his run of There Will Be Blood, The Master, Inherent Vice (2014), and Phantom Thread, we had almost ascended to a vision of Anderson as an elitist in his field. Between his consistent collaborations with a Daniel Day-Lewis, Joaquin Phoenix and Johnny Greenwood, to his decision to take on two of the worlds most convoluted works of fiction (sorry Scientology), it seemed that Anderson had become fit for a new box that would divide his career into two halves. On one side of his career, a man of tenderness and sorrow toward his characters and stories, and in the other half, a man of almost forensic damnation toward his creations. 

    But no. 

    As of writing this, Licorice Pizza looks like a honest take on the lives of kids in their late adolescence with two debutants in star roles. Once more, Anderson creates an insurmountable distance between two of his films. Phantom Thread and Licorice Pizza could not be less alike. Just like Punch Drunk Love and There Will Be Blood, Anderson has killed the label before it had time to stick. 

    But I do wonder, did Anderson miss his second chance at a real brand of filmmaking with this decision? He could have been The Real American Elitist (circa 2007-). But alas, once more, the shoe doesn’t fit. Paul Thomas Anderson is not a Cinderella story.

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The late Federico Fellini lived out his career on a continuum from the real to the bizarre, but Anderson remains off in the distance, free of constraints on his art. Yet, Licorice Pizza feels almost too akin to his earlier work. I fear we will never see Anderson reach the likes of Stanley Kubrick in his ability to channel his talents between stories of such different look and feel and tone with effortless ease.  I would like to see Anderson’s next film shatter his current trends further, to reveal a new brand as a master of all forms. But, to his credit, and such to his lack of brand, I wouldn’t have a clue what Paul Thomas Anderson will make next.