hard eight (paul thomas anderson, 1996)
Saturday, October 05, 2024
This is the fifth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2024-25", a "33-week-long community challenge" where "you must watch one previously unseen film that fits the criteria of the theme for the week." This is the 10th annual challenge, and my sixth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", "2022-23", and 2023-24). Week 5 is called "Anders(s)on Week":
If I were in charge of Oscar nominations for 2014 films, my best director lineup would have included Wes Anderson (The Grand Budapest Hotel), Paul Thomas Anderson (Inherent Vice), and Roy Andersson (A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence). Continuing our recurring theme of similarly named movie people, this year we honor the Anders(s)ons. In addition to the three mentioned above, there's also Brad Anderson and cult favorite Paul W.S. Anderson. There should be plenty of films to choose from with those five, but if there are other Anderson directors out there we'll allow it.
This week's challenge is to watch a previously unseen film by Roy Andersson or Paul, Wes, Paul W.S., or Brad Anderson.
The only thing I was sure of was that I wasn't going to watch a Wes Anderson movie. I opted for PT. I've seen most of his features and liked them ... I liked Magnolia more than a little, didn't like There Will Be Blood, but in general, I consistently found his movies worthwhile. Hard Eight was Anderson's first feature, and it took a while to get it released, although he is said to be happy with the final result. The cast is strong ... it seems even more so in retrospect, names like Gwyneth Paltrow (her Oscar was a few years away, to say nothing of Pepper Potts) and Philip Seymour Hoffman weren't as well known at the time. Samuel L. Jackson had already been in a billion movies, of course. John C. Reilly is probably better known today, although he wasn't a nonentity in 1996. Meanwhile, Philip Baker Hall, who plays the main character, Sydney, was never properly recognized for his excellence.
Hall inhabits his character, a somewhat mysterious gambler, keeping his thoughts to himself, and the film spends much of its time as a character study. Near the end, we learn some of Sydney's past, and some mysteries are exposed, but the film plays better in that character mode than it does as a kind of neo-noir. Throughout, Anderson works with confidence, and there's no sign this is his debut.
Everything is low-key, and Hard Eight rarely knocks you out, but on its own level, it's engrossing. Philip Seymour Hoffman only has one scene, which he apparently improvised ... he is not low-key: