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Notes from Underground

  And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which is better—cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?---Fyodor Dostoevsky ---Notes from Underground Fyodor Dostoevsky ---Notes from Underground Even now, so many years later, all this is somehow a very evil memory. I have many evil memories now, but ... hadn’t I better end my “Notes” here? I believe I made a mistake in beginning to write them, anyway I have felt ashamed all the time I’ve been writing this story; so it’s hardly literature so much as a corrective punishment.  Why, to tell long stories, showing how I have spoiled my life through morally rotting in my corner, through lack of fitting environment, through divorce from real life, and rankling spite in my underground world, would certainly not be interesting; a novel needs a hero, and all the traits for an anti-hero are expressly gathered together here, and what matters most, it all produces an unpleasant impression, for we are...
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Hope

To be human is to be a miracle of evolution conscious of its own miraculousness — a consciousness beautiful and bittersweet, for we have paid for it with a parallel awareness not only of our fundamental improbability but of our staggering fragility, of how physiologically precarious our survival is and how psychologically vulnerable our sanity. To make that awareness bearable, we have evolved a singular faculty that might just be the crowning miracle of our consciousness: hope.-- Erich Fromm


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There Will Be Blood (2007)






An Epic Struggle of Earth and Spirit

 Paul Thomas Anderson's 2007 masterpiece, a film that redefined the modern American epic. Daniel Plainview's descent into misanthropy, the clash between oil and the altar, and the technical brilliance that brought this desolate world to life in Marfa, Texas. 

“There Will Be Blood,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic American nightmare, arrives belching fire and brimstone and damnation to Hell."

The film  is loosely based on Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel “Oil!” 
Set against the backdrop of the Southern California oil boom of the late-19th and early-20th centuries, it tells a story of greed and envy , the story about descend  to madness of the main protagonist  Daniel Plainview, petroleum prospector, played by a monstrous and shattering Daniel Day-Lewis (Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role).
There is no God but money in this oil-rich desert and his messenger is Daniel Plainview.

"There Will Be Blood "is regraded by some to be the best American film of 21st century , certainly one of the two , the other one being "No Country for Old Men"

Anderson's character is a man who has no friends, no lovers, no real partners and an adopted son that he exploits mostly as a prop. Plainview comes from nowhere, stays in contact with no one, and when a man appears claiming to be his half-brother, it is not surprising that they have never met before. Plainview's only goal in life is to become enormously wealthy, and he does so, reminding me of "Citizen Kane" and Mr. Bernstein's observation, "It's easy to make a lot of money, if that's all you want to do is make a lot of money."





"There Will Be Blood" is no "Citizen Kane" however. Plainview lacks a "Rosebud." He regrets nothing, misses nothing, pities nothing, and when he falls down a mine shaft and cruelly breaks his leg, he hauls himself back up to the top and starts again.
He gets his break in life when a pudding-faced young man named Paul Sunday (Paul Dano) visits him and says he knows where oil is to be found, and will share this information for a price. The oil is to be found on the Sunday family ranch, where Standard Oil has already been sniffing around, and Plainview obtains the drilling rights cheaply from old man Sunday. There is another son, named Eli, who is also played by Paul Dano, and either Eli and Paul are identical twins or the story is up to something shifty, since we never see them both at once.
Eli is an evangelical preacher whose only goal is to extract money from Plainview to build his church, the Church of the Third Revelation.








Visual Ambition &
Human Connection

Widely regarded as one of the most influential filmmakers of his generation, Paul Thomas Anderson creates immersive, kinetic environments through mastery of the long take and deeply complex character studies.


Paul Thomas Anderson (PTA) stands as one of the most vital, fiercely independent voices in modern American cinema. Emerging in the 1990s as a self-taught prodigy heavily influenced by Robert Altman and Martin Scorsese, his style has continually evolved from hyper-kinetic, multi-character epics to austere, deeply idiosyncratic character studies of obsessed, deeply flawed loners.

Core Thematic Obsessions

  • Surrogate Families & Fractured Legacies: His early work explicitly interrogates how broken individuals construct unconventional families, whether in the porn industry (Boogie Nights) or a mosaic of lonely souls in the San Fernando Valley (Magnolia).

  • The Myth of American Self-Reinvention: PTA frequently explores the dark underbelly of American ambition. His historical epics slice through the foundational myths of capital, faith, and progress, showing how charismatic megalomaniacs build empires out of sheer force of will—and destroy themselves in the process.

  • Dominant vs. Submissive Dynamics: His middle-to-late period shifted heavily into intense, borderline-symbiotic psychological duels between two strong-willed men or unconventional romantic partners (There Will Be Blood, The Master, Phantom Thread).

Formal Style & Collaborations

PTA’s cinema is heavily defined by a rigorous, tactile approach to filmmaking. He frequently operates as his own uncredited or credited cinematographer (Phantom Thread, Licorice Pizza), relying on texture, rich celluloid film grain, and intricate, deliberate camera movements.

His work is also inseparable from his creative shorthand with key artistic partners:

  • The Scores: Jonny Greenwood (of Radiohead) replaced the pop-heavy needle drops of PTA’s early career with tense, avant-garde, and orchestral compositions starting with There Will Be Blood, fundamentally shifting the atmosphere of his filmography.

  • The Actors: He famously coaxed monumental, career-defining performances from Philip Seymour Hoffman (a regular muse across five films), Daniel Day-Lewis, Tom Cruise, and Joaquin Phoenix.

The Filmography Landscape

EraKey FilmsAesthetic & Tone

The Kinetic Ensemble


(Late 1990s)

Hard Eight (1996)


Boogie Nights (1997)


Magnolia (1999)

Steadicam tracking shots, rapid pacing, massive ensemble casts, explicit nods to Altman and Scorsese.

The Formal Evolution


(2000s)

Punch-Drunk Love (2002)


There Will Be Blood (2007)

A shift toward structural experimentation, surrealism, and austere, larger-than-life character studies exploring greed and isolation.

The Intimate Duels


(2010s)

The Master (2012)


Inherent Vice (2014)


Phantom Thread (2017)

Dreamlike, drifting narrative structures. Highly textured cinematography, capturing intense psychological battles and toxic intimacy.

The Nostalgic Valley


(2020s–Present)

Licorice Pizza (2021)


The Battle of Baktan Cross (Upcoming)

A return to a looser, lighter, yet deeply specific look at 1970s California youth, mixed with a more relaxed narrative pacing.

The transition from the sprawling, multi-character mosaics of Boogie Nights and Magnolia to the razor-sharp, insular character studies of Punch-Drunk Love and There Will Be Blood represents one of the most drastic stylistic evolutions in modern cinema.

Paul Thomas Anderson essentially exhausted a specific mode of filmmaking at the turn of the millennium, choosing to trade the expansive outer world of an entire community for the volatile, vast inner world of a single psychological subject.


How Paul Thomas Anderson moved away from Robert Altman-style ensemble mosaics like Magnolia into more insular character studies

1. The Altman peak and structural exhaustion

By 1999, PTA had pushed the Robert Altman model (Nashville, Short Cuts) to its absolute formal limit with Magnolia. The film features nine distinct storylines interwoven via complex tracking shots, overlapping dialogue, a hyper-kinetic editing rhythm, and a literal cosmic intervention (the raining frogs).

But a storyteller cannot easily scale up from a three-hour mosaic that relies on divine intervention to resolve its characters' grief. PTA openly acknowledged that Magnolia felt like the ultimate expression of that specific, maximalist energy, leaving him with two choices: repeat himself or radically contract his scope.

2. The pivot point: Punch-Drunk Love (2002)

Instead of building another massive ensemble, PTA narrowed his focus down to a single protagonist: Barry Egan. Punch-Drunk Love serves as the perfect stylistic bridge. It retains the anxious, unpredictable kinetic energy of Magnolia, but traps it entirely inside the fragile, deeply repressed psyche of one man.

Rather than cross-cutting between different families to show a shared societal malaise, the film uses surrealism, expressionistic color blocks, and a dissonant harmonium score to make the audience feel Barry’s internal isolation and sudden bursts of rage. It was a declaration that an individual's internal landscape could be just as chaotic and overwhelming as a multi-narrative epic.

3. The full transformation: There Will Be Blood (2007)

If Punch-Drunk Love was the pivot, There Will Be Blood was the complete reinvention. PTA traded the Steadicam-driven, Scorsese-and-Altman-inspired pop energy of the 1990s for an austere, monumental classicism heavily influenced by John Huston’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

The contrast in narrative architecture shows a complete inversion of his early style:

MetricThe Early Ensemble (Magnolia)The Insular Study (There Will Be Blood)
Narrative ScopeHorizontal (Broad, sweeping across a massive web of interconnected lives).Vertical (Deep, drilling relentlessly into the soul of a single monstrous tycoon).
Pacing & CameraHyper-kinetic, rapid cutting, restless tracking shots tracking multiple targets.Deliberate, hypnotic, long takes that force the camera to sit with a character's silence.
Audio LandscapePop needle-drops and Aimee Mann lyrics acting as a unifying emotional chorus.Jonny Greenwood’s avant-garde, discordant orchestral score emphasizing profound isolation.

4. The legacy of the shift: The Intimate Duels

This evolution ultimately paved the way for his 2010s output (The Master and Phantom Thread). Having moved away from the community mosaic, PTA didn't just stay trapped inside a single character's head; instead, he began structuring his films around intense, symbiotic relationships between two isolated individuals.

The sprawling ensembles of the Valley were replaced by claustrophobic psychological battlegrounds—Freddie Quell and Lancaster Dodd locked in an ideological wrestling match, or Reynolds Woodcock and Alma playing a toxic game of marital chess. The world around them disappears, leaving only the friction between two deeply eccentric minds.




Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and loosely based on Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel Oil!, There Will Be Blood is widely regarded as one of the greatest films of the 21st century. It is a sprawling, dark character study that explores the intersection of burgeoning capitalism and religious fervor at the turn of the 20th century.



The story follows Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), a silver miner turned ruthless oil prospector. The film begins with a nearly wordless sequence tracking Plainview's grueling rise from a lone laborer to a successful independent oilman. After hearing of oil "oozing out of the ground" in the town of Little Boston, California, he travels there with his adopted son, H.W. (Dillon Freasier).

In Little Boston, Plainview encounters Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), a young, charismatic preacher who leads the "Church of the Third Revelation." The film chronicles the decades-long feud between the two men—one driven by material greed, the other by spiritual manipulation—culminating in a violent, unforgettable confrontation in a private bowling alley.



Direction and Cinematography

Paul Thomas Anderson and cinematographer Robert Elswit (who won an Oscar for his work) used a stark, minimalist visual style. The film features long takes and wide vistas of the Texas desert (standing in for California), emphasizing the scale of the oil derricks against the natural landscape.

The Score

Jonny Greenwood (of Radiohead) composed a dissonant, avant-garde score that serves as a primary source of tension. Eschewing traditional "Western" motifs, the music uses strings and percussion to create an atmosphere of impending doom and industrial grinding.



The "Milkshake" Scene and Its Origins

The film’s climax in the bowling alley features the iconic "I drink your milkshake" monologue. While often viewed as a moment of pure madness, the dialogue has a historical basis. Paul Thomas Anderson found the phrase in transcripts from the 1924 Teapot Dome Scandal (a bribery scandal involving oil reserves). Senator Albert Fall used the "milkshake" metaphor to explain "drainage"—the process by which one can extract oil from a neighbor's property through a straw-like pipe system.



Legacy and Awards

The film received eight Academy Award nominations, winning two:

  • Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis (his second of three wins).

  • Best Cinematography: Robert Elswit.

It is frequently cited in "Best of" lists for the 2000s, often noted for its final line—"I’m finished!"—which carries a double meaning: Daniel has finished his bowling game, but he has also finished his moral descent, leaving himself with nothing but his wealth.


"I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people." — Daniel Plainview


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