Paul Thomas Anderson

A highly celebrated director among the newer generation of directors, Paul Thomas Anderson embodies the utmost essence of what a filmmaker fueled by the influence of Kubrick looks like. Films such as There Will Be Blood and The Master explore the darkness of human nature with ideas of greed, power, and downfalls into insanity in ways that echo the methodical structure originally forged by Kubrick. Particularly, Kubrick’s The Shining comes to mind specifically in the case of There Will Be Blood in the portrayal of Daniel Plainview’s fall from grace. Anderson also seems to pay homage to Kubrick through his unique visual style and ways of visual storytelling which seems to be a mix between Kubrick’s and his own (Bose).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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This visual style can be seen prominently climactic bowling alley scene at the end of There Will Be Blood, in which the red and white walls clearly echo the hallways and blood elevator of The Overlook in The Shining (Wickman).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Other visual references in Anderson’s film include 2001’s silent “Dawn of Man” opening scene, within the very similar-looking opening scene in which Daniel Plainview first discovers oil, the monolithic material “that will advance man into a new era and at the same time corrupt him” (Wickman).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Anderson’s use of music in his films also recalls back to the innovations of Kubrick, as Anderson puts it: “It’s so hard to do anything that doesn’t owe some kind of debt to what Stanley Kubrick did with music in movies. Inevitably, you’re going to end up doing something that he’s probably already done before. It can all seem like we’re falling behind whatever he came up with” (Bose). For example, There Will Be Blood’s score, composed by Johnny Greenwood “is largely a response to the work of Krzysztof Penderecki,” a composer whose music was used in Kubrick’s The Shining (Wickman). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anderson’s use of music also references Kubrick in a more obvious, in-your-face, and comedic way for the introduction of Tom Cruise’s bombastic character in his film Magnolia, further proving Anderson’s love for Kubrick’s films (Wickman). 

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