Paul Thomas Anderson’s single favourite film of all time: “All of life’s questions are in it”
Like Robert Altman with his penchant for ensemble casts, Paul Thomas Anderson has gathered some of the greatest actors in recent cinema history for his silver screen visions, which often exude timelessness in a way that makes you wonder if he was just born a little too late.
Getting his start in filmmaking with the 1996 feature Hard Eight, Anderson soon hit the big time with Boogie Nights the following year, which saw iconic names like Burt Reynolds appear alongside considerably more unexpected actors, like Mark Wahlberg. In fact, Anderson’s casting choices are often ballsy (see Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love), but if anyone’s going to pull off such bravery, it’s PTA.
With movies like There Will Be Blood and Phantom Thread crowned as some of the greatest films of the 21st century, he’s seen as a genius behind his camera, approaching his films as an artist would a canvas, carefully placing each stroke of his brush to create a vivid and complex world.
For this, Anderson has learned from the best, studying his favourite movies over and over to understand the secrets of filmmaking, and thus, in essence, life. But what is the one movie that he comes back to the most, holding it above everything else? Talking to The New York Times, the director revealed his “favourite movie”, explaining, “All of life’s questions and answers are in The Treasure of Sierra Madre“.
It’s not hard to see why he loves John Huston’s film so much when he explains the themes that stick out to him the most. Continuing to discuss his love for the movie, he added, “It’s about greed and ambition and paranoia and looking at the worst parts of yourself”.
Doesn’t that sound familiar? Anderson’s There Will Be Blood is an epic tale of capitalistic greed and the inevitable destruction of community and kindness in the quest for wealth and personal fulfilment. It makes sense, then, that Huston’s film became a vital frame of reference while he was making his period drama, which starred Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano in two incredible performances.
“When I was writing There Will Be Blood, I would put The Treasure of the Sierra Madre on before I went to bed at night, just to fall asleep to it,” Anderson revealed. Those films that become so familiar that you can just let them play in the background, as though they’re as comforting as being in the presence of an old friend that you don’t even have to interact with—you can just sit in each other’s company—are a real treat to discover.
Like There Will Be Blood, the 1948 Humphrey Bogart film sees two men search for gold during the 1920s, hoping to make a fortune and achieve the American Dream, and while the parallels are clear, Anderson is no fool. There Will Be Blood isn’t a mere copy of Huston’s film, but rather, it sowed the seeds in his imagination to bring such an ambitious narrative about American greed to life.
