It's hard to be wholly objective when one looks at the latest film from your favourite director. So I'm not gonna be! Get ready for a love letter, this review is a rave in the absolutely core of its being and is the longest review I’ve ever written. Paul Thomas Anderson has frequently given us over the past three decades some of the most entertaining, darkly dramatic and compelling films of the era and with his advanced nature with balancing genres and tones within one film, he has firmly placed himself atop my list of favourite directors.
The joy of Anderson of course over the past decade has been his dark and contemplative dramas following acute characters in specific settings struggling through intense physiological narratives, and all that's great and those have been some of my favourite films in recent memory, but one can never forget the frenetic, frantic and thrilling fun and looseness of his original ventures (even with Magnolia, we are dealing with so many characters and plots that a looseness is the only escape from structural implosion, which of course that film also joyously leans into repeatedly). I bring this up for Anderson's latest filmic effort, the delightful, joyous and at times even transcendent Liqcorice Pizza delves more so into the world of an early Anderson, albeit punctuated by an older and more mature sensibility when it comes to matters of nostalgia and the darker undercurrents of that period of life. Anderson and co-cinematographer Michael Bauman bring us into the San Fernando Valley of the seventies that somehow manages to straddle an intense grit and realism with an almost memory faded blurry nostalgia, names are not quite right (although that's undoubtedly just for legal reasons), films aren't named what we know them as (again, most likely legal matters, but I'm ruining the films gorgeous sensibility, so I'll just stop). Anderson's script and direction once again reeks of a true master, delivering yet another perfectly crafted farce of comedy and drama, all underpinned with a haunting truth of the matter. Anderson's screenplay in particular here flits from sequence to sequence, with two leads leading us, but still with a buoyant sense of wackiness and improbability that does echo in many ways his contempary Tarantino's similarly absurdist, similarly absurdly real Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Whereas the story-tellers nature of that film only compounded the haunting quality of a time soon to be over, here it’s all in aim of presenting an aimless period in two people’s lives. Those two people are of course the biggest reason this film works at all. One can extol the impeccable and constantly incredible virtues of Anderson as a creative until the poets run out of rhymes, however if it were not for Cooper Hoffman and Alana Haim, two of the most revelatory and astounding acting discoveries of my lifetime watching films thus far, then Licorice Pizza could very well have been as aimless a beast as the motivations of its female lead character.
Let’s first discuss
Cooper Hoffman as Gary Valentine, the enterprising entrepreneur who dazzles
everybody as he moves from the world of child acting, first into a water-bed
enterprise and then into pinball palaces. Valentine is not the first
enterprising and suave, but a touch dumb and naive, go-getter in Anderson’s
oeuvre, watching all the films in sequence you can find an awful lot of them.
However here Hoffman’s Gary is perhaps the most pure, he’s certainly the
youngest, and though he is certainly mature beyond his years, he is still a
little green, and that really is in so many ways what makes the character as
interesting and successful as he is in the film. Haim however eventually finds
herself at the centre of the film as it goes along, it’s a fun narrative tactic
to have us ultimately move from Gary to Alana as the film goes on. It perfectly
befits the films looseness and somewhat manic style and also of course gives us
chances for further set pieces aside from the world of Gary. One really can’t
extol the incredible talents of Haim in this film enough. She’s a lightning bolt
of pure joy and bliss, ever so funny and ever so delightful, constantly fizzing
with a mania that quickly brings us into the world of the film. Aswell as for
me giving us the single best line reading of the year with a simple high
pitched utterance of a certain stars surname (aside from perhaps in the best
line rankings, a Bradley Cooper “tail” comment or a Sean Penn recitation on
“the jungle”, but we’ll get there in just a moment). I can now say that I have
had the experience that so many film critics before me have had and discuss how
revelatory a moment something like this. With Alana Haim in this film, I
understand sitting in a room and watch for the first time the likes of
Katherine Ross in The Graduate, or
Tatum O Neil in Paper Moon (who
actually gets a name drop in this film in another hilarious scene).
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Haim and Hoffman
are of course only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the wealth of
astounding performances in this film, with absolutely every turn minor or
major, glorified cameo or extended supporting role, being just as incredibly
humorous, honest and bizarre as the next, leading overall to a collage of chaos
exemplifying perfectly this bygone era. The film flits as I’ve already stated
from scene to scene, sequence to sequence, making it perfect undoubtedly in the
future for YouTube scene watches and TV channel surfing. This isn’t to say that
the whole film doesn’t flow, build and feel narrativley secure, but it does
have a looseness to it that is undeniable, but also entirely works. I bring
this notion up once more to comment about the films many excellent supporting
performances that come in and out of the world of Gary and Alana. Part of the
implicit joy of the films nature is not only seeing Hoffman and Haim, two
acting debuts, go up against incredibly tenured actors of both stage and
screen, but also in many cases to see these legendary actors take on the
classic and iconic personas of those that in many ways they are the modern
equivalent of (Cooper as Peters outstanding). I must stress that there isn’t
one singe performance that doesn’t strive for absolute excellence and achieve
it. Christine Ebersole as Lucy Doolittle, a blurry version of Lucille Ball,
comes in for only a few moments early on into the film and is a perfect jolt of
mania to send us on our way and telegraph to us how this film is gonna work
when it comes to characters coming in and out. The standouts are clear however
and I will pare them down to just five, for word count reasons (yes, sometimes
I do think about a word count). Harriet Sansom Harris, as a fiery agent may
very well be the best in the entire film with quite literally every single line
reading in her one scene being something entirely different, but no less
extraordinary composed than the last, and again so very funny. Benny Safdie and
Joseph Cross appear later in the film and deliver a painfully tender and
beautifully heartbreaking scene that is certainly the film’s most touching
sequence, with the two of them doing stunningly composed and deliberate work.
But one just can’t get away from Sean Penn and Bradley Cooper, both clearly
having the time of their lives. In both cases we hear the voices before we see
the faces and already we understand were in for a treat. The oak like power and
drive of Penn’s Holden, punctuated later by a childlike sense of showmanship.
The absolute fireball energy of Cooper’s Peters, driven the whole time by a
fuel of also insane proportions. Both of these performances especially are
enjoyable, but overall without Haim and Hoffman leading us through as a direct
through line, the film may vary well have gone untethered and floated into the
ether.
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A 10//10 stone cold masterpiece. An elegy to a bygone era, a specific and complicated tale of undeniable romantic connection, a hilarious hangout comedy, but overall a stunning further exemplification of the skills and impeccable talents of one of one of our incest living directors. Pizza is by far the film of the year for my money. Brilliant? Certainly. Biased? Possibly. This is by far my longest review (postscripts naturally included) and although one could easily pass it off perhaps as a loose and funny little hang-out comedy, something that certainly it is and revels in being, it is also so much more, it really does contain many manic multitudes.
Below you will find some of my longest postscripts notes yet…
P.S. Comparison is often a fruitless form of criticism in my eyes, however as aforementioned one cannot distance Hollywood from one’s mind when watching. Perhaps it's because it's my favourite film in some time and the most recently released feature to crack my all time top 30. Although I would hazard to say following three initial viewings of Pizza, that Hollywood may be a superior and more assured piece. I do see them both as companion pieces of contemporaries sharing a similar lens looking at a similar world, with both two different end goals. One of fundamentally telling a tale of romance, and another a fairy-tale tragedy. But either way you cut it, it's two of our finest living film-makers giving us two masterpieces of modern cinema. Yes, I'm calling Pizza just that, already. I mean I have seen it three times. So far.
P.P.S. In so many ways the film biggest flaw is the fact that it gives us one of the best and most fleshed out female characters of the year and frankly sometime. If Haim’s character of Alana was more of a perfect stereotype than a lot of the discourse around the age-gap at the heart of the film could be passed off by people stating that the film is simply a babysitter romance fantasy playing out before our eyes from Gary’s point of view. It’s a typical case of you a filmmaker telling an acute story and not being able to do right for doing wrong, a catch 22. Have Alana be a symbol rather than a character and you can call Anderson a sexist. Instead Anderson is as truthful and nuanced in his depiction of Alana as he is the rest of the characters he has created in this film and the rest of his career. Your problem with age-gap romances is in real life, Anderson is depicting real life things that have happened before and will happen again, good or bad. I promised myself I wouldn’t discuss the discourse, but yet here I am.
P.P.P.S And when it comes to the matter of the film being ‘racist’, we enter once again into the age-old discourse in media of whether or not a film displaying racist attitudes is itself racist. It’s case by case, but here every time I have seen those scenes with the character of Jerry Frick and his multiple Japanese wives, the joke has always been on this absolute stupid white man, never his wives. In fact the way the scene is presented, written and performed every time gives the wives (portrayed respectively by Yumi Mizui and Megumi Anjo) the time and comedic beat to give a ten yard stare at their idiotic husband. For me personally the scenes were both hilarious and Mizui and Anjo had the power in the scene. All I can say is my opinion, yes, a white man’s opinion, but I’m not gonna feign virtue signalling and pretend that myself and everybody else in my three screenings of the film weren’t laughing heartily at this very funny couple of scenes. I wish this review didn’t have to end on a note of defence, however such is the case.
-Thomas Carruthers
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