Drama
American
2012 · Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson · 137 min
America, just after World War II. A restless, damaged Navy veteran drifts from job to job until he meets Lancaster Dodd, a magnetic writer and thinker who is gathering followers around a new system of belief. The film is a slow, intense study of two very different men and the pull between them.
Why it matters in cinema history
A defining American art film of the early 2010s. It carried the ambition and character-driven seriousness of 1970s New Hollywood into the digital era, and it kept large-format film photography in use.
Watch with intention
Watch it as a relationship drama between two men, not as a film about a religion.
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