3. Taking Chances
All good directors take chances. That is what makes them good, and it is what makes some great. Aronofsky is constantly testing the waters of endurance in his audience, and Cronenberg pushes buttons each time out. But even their daring moves seem to function within the framework or tone of their films. Anderson started small with the chances he took in Boogie Nights. The film was intense in the end, but he showed the confidence he had as a director in his extended close up of Mark Wahlberg's Dirk Diggler as he sees his life and hope crumbling around him. Punch Drunk Love took a chance on Adam Sandler, but the dreamlike quality of the entire film was juxtaposed to his central character, a lonely man prone to outbursts of violent behavior. There was the milkshake scene in There Will Be Blood, endlessly parodied over the years. But the scene works. In the framework of a serious film, here is Daniel Day-Lewis' Daniel Plainview, mocking Eli Sunday with a ludicrous and condescending speech full of fury. It generates laughter, but the laughs are uncertain, nervous of what might happen, which is why it is so effective. But Anderson's most daring and awe-inspiring moment exists in his melodramatic epic, Magnolia. A serious film about the damage of fathers and children floats along one day of despair in Los Angeles. And then, in the third act, Anderson incorporates a musical number where each of the central characters sings an Aimee Mann song. The song is an immediate departure from the melodrama of the film, and a moment which 99% of directors would never even consider let alone put in their film. Anderson went for it, and the result is a stunning moment of calm and clarity amid the chaos of these characters' lives. And on top of everything, after the musical number, it rains frogs. And, alas, it works. Big surprise.