Paul Thomas Anderson

Two of Paul Thomas Anderson's eleven directing credits here fall inside a single year, 1997. Magnolia runs past three hours, and Leslie Dick's piece sets that length against the film before it, Boogie Nights having been nearly as long. What holds the film together, she writes, is the radical work of the cinematographer Robert Elswit together with Anderson's nerve, and nothing at this length is too much for his design. Her objection lies elsewhere: she takes him to have wanted a vein of pure sentiment woven into the film, and holds that it does not come off. Magnolia won the Golden Bear in 2000 and There Will Be Blood the directing Silver Bear in 2008, both at the Berlinale. He appears on Film Independent's 1998 list of nominees in the first screenplay category, with Hard Eight.