Sydney (PTA’s preferred title for this, his first feature) is a debonair old school gambler, played by Philip Baker Hall — reprising a character he played as a supporting turn in the movie Midnight Run. He’s also the first of Paul Thomas Anderson’s ambiguous father figures, who seemingly at random takes a down on his luck homeless man (played by John C Reilly) under his wing, mentoring him in the art of craps, and looking out for him when he becomes involved with a Reno hostess, Clementine (Gwyneth Paltrow).
A neo-noir character piece set in motel rooms, cafes and casinos, Hard Eight now looks like Anderson’s most modest and unassuming film — it’s the kind of film you make when you are starting out and can’t command much money — but it was enough to get Film Comment magazine to nominate him the most promising young director of the year, and watching it now, it embodies much of what’s most valuable about Anderson’s movies: stripped of the flash and grandiosity, they’re all fundamentally about characters seeking connection, but most often forfeiting through their own flaws.
There turns out to be some kind of plot […] But the movie isn’t about a plot. It’s about these specific people in this place and time, and that’s why it’s so good: It listens and sees. It observes, and in that it takes its lead from Sydney, who is a student of human nature and plays the cards of life very, very close to his vest.
Roger Ebert
Beautifully controlled… This is a film in which every beat of dialogue, every camera angle and every note of slinky background lounge music has been calculated to create a mood of faintly sleazy cool.
Stephen Holden, New York Times
Paul Thomas Anderson
Philip Baker Hall, John C Reilly, Gywneth Paltrow, Samuel L Jackson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Melora Walters
USA
1996
English
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Credits
Executive Producer
Hans Brockmann, François Duplat
Producer
Robert Jones, John Lyons
Screenwriter
Paul Thomas Anderson
Cinematography
Robert Elswit
Editor
Barbara Tulliver
Original Music
Jon Brion, Michael Penn
Production Design
Nancy Deren
Also in This Series
Paul Thomas Anderson’s is a risky, unorthodox cinema, flexing between grand gestures and hidden depths, but to rewatch his films is always to discover that fleeting, elusive but profound possibility of connection.
Hard Eight
Anderson's debut is a deceptively modest character piece about a veteran gambler (Philip Baker Hall) who takes a much younger man under his wing and teaches him how to play the system and win. Until things take a darker turn...
Magnolia
This deeply personal 1999 California opus is ripe for rediscovery. Mapping the emotional traumas of half-a-dozen major characters as they criss-cross the San Fernando Valley in search of either recognition or reconciliation, it's PTA's riskiest gamble.
There Will Be Blood
Paul Thomas Anderson's lacerating epic about the birth of the oil age: Daniel Day-Lewis is extraordinary as the prospector entirely consumed with his own enterprise, a Trumpian figure of naked self-assertion; Paul Dano the evangelist who may be his nemesis.
Licorice Pizza
PTA's oddball courtship comedy takes us to the San Fernando Valley in 1973. 15-year-old aspiring actor Gary Valentine has the hots for 25 year-old Alana. She's bemused but admires his self confidence. It's quirky, meandering, but it sneaks up on you.
