The Career of Paul Thomas Anderson in Five Shots

Originally published in Sight & Sound, November 2012

This video essay uses mapping techniques to examine signature tracking shots from each of Paul Thomas Anderson’s first five features, showing how each epitomizes an evolving cinematographic approach, from the flashiness of his earlier films to a more subtle approach that favors composition over movement.

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“I celebrate DIY as an aesthetic identity for those who work from the position of disadvantage, and who must rely on what limited tool set he or she has at their disposal. In this sense, the Anderson video isn’t just a reverential appraisal of an auteur (as so many video essays are, perhaps too many), but an articulation of one viewer’s conflicted relationship to that auteur’s work (and the industrialized filmmaking apparatus he has at his disposal) and in doing so establishes its own aesthetic ethos. This aesthetic position is directly linked to one’s position within film culture, informed by specific economic, social and even political relations (in regards to the film industry’s power over cinephiles as a kind of political power).

- From The Audiovisual Essay