The one actor Paul Thomas Anderson called the best special effect in the business
Plenty of filmmakers are eventually lured in by the promise of massive budgets, sweeping spectacle, and oodles of CGI, but Paul Thomas Anderson has never been that sort of auteur.
Of course, it helps that his filmography has notched so much acclaim that he’s one of the few directors who enjoys almost limitless creative freedom without having to bow to the whims of a major studio, even if that elusive Academy Award remains out of reach following 11 unsuccessful nominations.
It is not that any filmmaker’s standing, status, or reputation is defined by trophies, though, with Anderson being one of the leading examples. His cabinet lays relatively bare compared to many of his contemporaries, but nobody in their right mind would ever consider calling him anything other than one of modern cinema’s leading lights.
That doesn’t mean he can’t enjoy empty-headed and action-packed spectacles as a viewer, with Anderson known to have a soft spot for a mindless blockbuster or two. As a creative, CGI has never interested him unless the imagery he’s devised in his head can’t be realised without it, and he’s such an actor-driven director that he views his performers as being more valuable than any amount of pixellated window dressing.
For many, 2007’s masterpiece There Will Be Blood will remain his magnum opus, and it wasn’t immune from a digital touch-up or two. The spectacular oil fire may have largely been achieved through practical means, but it looked as stunning onscreen as it did because the effects wizards were drafted in to enhance his composition, not swamp it in a sea of CGI nonsense.
He made similar comparisons when discussing what Samuel L Jackson and Jennifer Jason Leigh brought to the table in Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, but for Anderson’s money, there’s only one actor in the business who exists on an island by themself as the single greatest special effect Hollywood has to offer.
“I remember talking with Jack Fisk on There Will Be Blood about needing money to do special effects,” he recalled to Filmmaker Magazine. “And he said, ‘We’ve got the best special effect there is, we’ve got Daniel Day-Lewis!’ And he was right. A nice two-shot with two actors performing great dialogue, that’s a staple of the movies that I love the most.”
Having started at the bottom of the budgetary ladder, Anderson realised early on that even though he “didn’t have any money and I was telling a small story,” one thing that definitely was to his advantage was the cast he surrounded himself with, “which ended up being the most important thing you could have.”
As one of the greatest actors of all time, Day-Lewis was more valuable and important to what Anderson wanted to achieve than any amount of money, and There Will Be Blood was evidence enough that he could dominate a frame to a much greater extent than any CGI-assisted explosion could ever dream of.
