Phantom Thread totally fits with this. Cyril is Reynolds’ master and Alma is his Lena. Great video.

Not gonna lie, this is one of the most insightful essays into a filmmaker's oeuvre I've ever seen. I've always appreciated PTA for his subtle mastery but I've never truly understood him. And with this essay, which expands to horizons beyond technical and storytelling analysis, I think we can finally see what is going on through PTA's mind. Excellent, excellent, excellent.

"Suddenly, his world is changed by an angel..." I cried there.

The world is a better place with this video existing. thank you.

This needs more views. Best video essay on KZfaq.

R.I.P. Phillip Seymour Hoffman seriously one of the greatest actors of our time.

Main goal as an actor is to star in a PTA movie. What a thoughtful, fearless, creative and bold storyteller.

Paul Thomas Anderson truly is... The Master Director.

The way you use Magnolia's music in here is absolutely spot on insane. Thumbs up, fantastic video.

Very enjoyable video. PTA is probably my favourite, living director.

Thank you for placing this out there in the world.

I usually never comment on the videos and i particularly hate video essays but man, this is a great comment over the work of one my favorite directors. Great video dude.

This is so goddamn awesome. You manage to tell a story while also giving me more insight than any other video essay on Paul Thomas Anderson, possibly my favorite director. I had been struggling to find some kind of over-arcing meaning to his work but just couldn't find it. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for this video. Probably my favorite video on the internet right now

This is a wonderful video essay, really interesting.

It's unbelievable 3 years passed since this video uploaded. The style, contents, editing, storytelling.. everything about this masterpiece is just great. Wish we had more videos about director like this, like Alfonso Cuaron or Yorgos Lanthimos. I'll give a toast to your talent, Jeremy.

I spent so much time with Magnolia, and it seems really fitting that it's almost a blossoming of PTA's work, even in this arrangement.

This is the greatest video essay on KZfaq, and I’m mad not more people have seen it.

This is unbelievable. Do this full-time, please.

PTA is for sure my favourite filmmaker. I've seen all his films other than Hard Eight and I love all of them, and I like that each of his films are different from the last but you can't imagine one being made before the other. Like you can't imagine The Master being made before There Will Be Blood, or TWBB being made before Punch-Drunk Love because most of his movies feel like they kind of evolved from the previous one

The score in punch drunk love + a small bowl makes my anxiety go through the roof.

Dear sir, this video was magnificent. Thank you for your wonderful analysis of such beautiful direction. Paul Thomas Anderson films make me happy, as does your analysis of him.

Man oh man is my love for PTA growing and growing. Brilliant work done here, just brilliant!

Few directors have this strange ability to mesmerize us with such powerful and meaningful images. Great to see this homage to PTA.

PTA is my master

A very insightful video and beautifully edited, thank you. Two points I'd like to make: I felt that the song Dodd sings to Freddie at the end of The Master was actually deeply aggressive and was basically a call to a duel that we see for example at the end of There Will Be Blood. It's a challenge for masculine dominance Freddie doesn't take up for the first time, suggesting his shift. I'm not saying I disagree with your reading, I just think it's a deliberately ambiguous scene. Second thing, sorry to be that guy, but at 7:17 you say "1998" when I think you mean "1898". Great work!

What a fantastic video one possibly one of the best directors working today. Loved it

Beautiful. Very, very beautiful. From the outsider, the loner to the centre of a family and the revered, adored child. I felt like crying. Beautiful 🌹

this made me cry

This was incredible! It gives me a whole new perspective on PTA. I really hope this gets a lot of views.

Outstanding video essay

As a huge fan of PTA, this was really interesting

Dude this is killer...The concept of the essay itself could be a theme that can be explored in a single movie. I'm sure it must have been done before. If not, someone should make that movie. Better even, PTA himself, like a movie that is brand new and original but a retrospect of his previous original characters and their landscapes and their timelines.

bless you, bless you, bless you i watch this video all the time and it breathes inspiration into me

Tank you so much. You got to the heart of it. I had tears in my eyes at the end.

This is absolutely brilliant. Kudos for an incredibly insightful essay.

A very insightful and interesting take. I've often thought of the films of Wes Anderson in a very similar way

Awesome Video Jeremy. Really ties all of PTA's amazing work together in a clear concise manner.

what a great work you made here in this video!

"She was Jim Kurring" is a great line. Shows gender isn't a defining characteristic for PTA, which is great

This is one of the greatest video analysis' I've ever seen on P.T.A... It's Christmas 2015 right now when I'm typing this, and there's low morale around me with it not feeling like proper Christmas (no snow in MA); but this video has given me a beam of spirit and joy of my own... A great call/reminder of my cinematic love for Mr. Anderson... Thank you, Mr. Jeremy Ratzlaff...

Cool video! I love this way of looking at PTA's filmography!

So beautifully done. Much love for your work here. That was a truly great conceived piece.

This is a really interesting and fresh way of looking at a filmmaker’s work! Very well done!

This video essay made me go back and re-examine all of these films again, and while I think you're on the right path, could PTA also be designing characters in a psychoanalytic manner? For this examination I need to introduce the third driving character in each film to explain PTA's use of the Id, Eg, and Superego. In There Will Be Blood, Daniel Plainview is the id, ruled by his senses and animalistic, seen in how he beats Eli to death like the monkeys from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Eli is the Superego, ruled by order and tugging society in his own direction of morals. Which leaves HW(as a representation of humanity) as the Ego, torn between the vicious animal ways of his father and the righteous ways of the Sunday family, one of whom he marries. The Ego in psychoanalysis is pulled between Id and Superego, and is the dominant force of the conscious brain. In The Master, Freddie is immediately presented as the animalistic Id, shown in his smashing of the coconuts much like Daniel Plainview smashed a skull and in how the marines are presented once again like the monkeys in 2001, hollering around a fighting pit. Additionally, Joaquin Phoenix portrays this animalistic tendancy by never standing up straight throughout the entire film, harkening to the classic image of man's evolution. Peggy is the Superego, a silent hand controlling the actions of Dodd and the Cause seen in various moments, such as when she forces Dodd to dispel negative thoughts by giving him a hand job. And who is the Ego in the middle, torn between these savagery and morals? Lancaster Dodd, leader of the Cause, who instantly feels a connection to Freddie unlike any other, mainly because his Id was never fully activated by the people surrounding him. As said earlier, the Ego is pulled between the animalistic Id and the just Superego, but ultimately it is the Master(Ding Ding, key buzzword) of both. These are my two strongest examples, but I feel like the theme of Id, Ego and Superego manifests itself countless times in PTA's films, whether he is conscious of it or not. I would love to see someone such as yourself dive deeper into these ideas and present them in a video essay as marvelous as this one!

This is just too perfect of a video, honestly I've only ever felt this connection in PTA's film with punch drunk love, there will be blood, and the master, but you manage to connect it all beautifully, well done you've earned a subscription my friend

Thank you for making this.

Excellent video Jeremy! PTAs my favorite director and you did him justice.

What a fantastic essay, you deserve way more subscribers

Fantastic video and a fantastic analysis.

And now Lena is Alma back in the 50s ;). Love this video man.

Very cool. I loved this!

Bravo - very well articulated and executed.

A powerful video essay!!! Well done sir you just earned a subscriber!

This is so interesting! amazing video

what a beautiful tribute to a great director. amazing work, Jeremy.

You should make more of this. Your talent for storytelling is exceptional.

amazing job man, congratulations

Love this idea man

beautiful analysis

I am so glad I found this. It is insightful.

phantom thread fits right in!!

Very well done and interesting, great analysis

I'm crying, thank you

Great stuff sir!

This is really great.

Gran video mis felicitaciones gracias a ti ahora tengo ganas de darle un repaso a la filmografia de paul thomas

I agree that PTA's films are linked chronologically, but only through There Will Be Blood, The Master, and Punch Drunk love. All of his films share common themes, but only in those three is the character one in the same- in my opinion, nevertheless great video.

Solid stuff, man.

Top notch video essay You should make more

Amazing to see this essay still holds true with Phantom Thread, which would have tied in so well with this video. Cheers

10/10, Great job Jeremy

I love this. It makes his entire filmography feel necessary as a whole. Whereas watching the movies isolated for what value I perceive from them makes me prefer the latter half of his career. We can definitely make assumptions about Phantom Thread since it involves siblings and a spouse / muse / apprentice.

I would love to see a video essay from you that talks about Phantom Thread and where but more importantly how it fits in PTA's chronological timeline.

very interesting. Nice job.

Great insight…

I will say something to you that i hope will resonate. Something very simple yet precise... Thank you.

Man I need to watch the rest of PTA's filmography already

Do you think that, "Prospectors Arrive," was PTA reimplementing, "Clementine's Loop," on a more epic scale? They sound so similar! Great video by the way. It's an interesting way to connect his work.

Nice connections. Love PT Anderson

WELL DONE. YOU ARE a shining example of what youtube has to offer. P.T.A would be proud of you. If I was your father. I would be proud also. Thank you.

Delightful.

that was amazing... time for me to re-watch The Master.

Dude! You nailed it! I might now have to watch Inherent Vice again as i didn’t get it when i saw it. But other than that he is my favorite director. As, ironically, Phillip Seymour Hoffman was my very favorite actor who i first discovered in Boogey Nights.

I really wanted to like this and I did at first, But after thinking about it, you could find a variation of theses character archetypes in almost any film.

brilliant

This is such a good video wtf

beautiful

Absolute genius

Bravo!!

My favorite modern director. The Master is his best film followed closely by TWBB... Stunning masterpieces, he changed modern cinema.

This is good

Who knew Daniel Day-Lewis would be reincarnated as Adam Sandler

This is a great video! Congratulations and thank you. Although I must say I don't agree with the fact that PTA believes in the need for a Master or even in the importance of family. I think his films ask us questions about that without really giving any answers. For example, in Punch-Drunk Love, probably the only film of his in which the triumph of love is undeniable, there is no visible Master and it is only when Barry frees himself from the image of family (incarnated both by his sisters and by the extorsionist's brothers) that he arrives at Grace's (Lena) door. There is a lot of Foucault in PTA. The whole idea of knowledge=power, as demonstrated by Dodd, Jack, the Paul Dano carácter and even Bigfoot. Foucault always separated the desire for knowledge, which is a very innocent pursuit, from knowledge itself. All of those characters, Freddie, Dirk, Doc, are innocent, and when their films begin, they aren't a part of the world, of the modern world, if you will. Foucault brilliantly compares this phenomenon to the myth of the Minotaur; the Minotaur, at the center of the maze, being knowledge, the modern world, Lancaster Dodd, Jack and so on. I think PTA, like any great modern filmmaker and even artist (from Cervantes in Don Quixote to Alain Resnais in Last Year in Marienbad), shows us the structure of our world, always divided by the innocence and ingenuity of "clasicism" or the civilizations of "mythos" and the knowledge, the disinchantment of the modern world, the world of the discourse, of "logos" (that's why, for example, The Cause starts as an almost mythical movement and it transforms itself in a cult, a modern religion, when the past is disregarded and the question of the processing becomes "can you imagine?"). He doesn't say which is better, because there is no good and evil here, and that's what's so refreshing and certainly trascendental of PTA's oeuvre. Sorry, I went on and on. I really enjoyed your video!

I'm sure even PTA wouldn't be knowing this...🎬

Cool

I wonder where Phantom Thread would fit in with all of this. Is Alma Reynolds' master?

Awesome work, here. PTA has always been my favorite director since I first saw There Will be Blood. However, I feel I disagree with just one thing. I think the song that Dodd sings to Freddy at the end of The Master is more out of spite. Looking at the content of the song and PSH's face when singing it, it comes off as more of a fuck you. But that's my opinion.

7:16 1898*

Everything you said is really interesting but the chronological theory is silly because all he's doing is finding himself in these characters as all good writers do and that's why there's some vague similarity

Woth respct, as good as your presentation is, these points have all been covered before. Yes, similar themes are covered in all PTAs films, but it is clear that Freddy/Plainview and Barry Egan are all the same character depicted at different times during his spiritual/existential and emotional development. I think it is a stretch to suggest sll the characters in Magnolia are that character again. Respectfully, it feels as if you are evidence is sometimes a square peg trying to fit into a round hole (your hypothesis) . A very welll presented video and I can't have a real pop at you because you clearly love PTA, but the hypothesis is slightly unoriginal.