Paul Thomas Anderson
Licorice Pizza

A dream of youth.

A dream. A song to youth.

"What is youth? A dream. What is love? The content of the dream." This quote from Kierkegaard opened Another Round, one of the most beautiful films of last year. But if there’s a film for which it’s perfect, it’s absolutely the latest by Paul Thomas Anderson. We waited so long for it and now, finally, after the initial release scheduled for February and then postponed, we can see it in theaters.

"Why have times degenerated to this point? Why have youth, ambition, and simplicity declined, and the world become so blameworthy?“ Spring Snow, Yukio Mishima.

Licorice Pizza is a film whose sense of wonder grows over time. And the hours, the day, the days after, it is destined to grow more and more. You feel that kind of pleasant sensation of gratitude and happiness for having seen a film that fills the heart and mind.

After such an intense, peculiar, and unimaginably perfect masterpiece as Phantom Thread, Paul Thomas Anderson seems to want to return to a relatively lighter and more melancholy dimension. Just as he did for the first time after the monumental Magnolia, which was followed by an extraordinarily romantic and special gem like Punch Drunk Love.

But Anderson already liked to surprise at that time, so when he announced that after the colossal and ambitious end-of-millennium film lasting three hours and a cast of superstars, he would be making "a romantic comedy with Adam Sandler," the press didn’t know how to react. The result was another wonderful and unforgettable work.

Now, after other works of immense artistic scope, which have effectively consecrated Anderson as a kind of modern-day Kubrick, his new work is out. And it is indeed a return to lightness, which once again takes the form of a new time travel - which Anderson, after all, has already practiced several times, from Boogie Nights to The Master to Inherent Vice, from There Will Be Blood to Phantom Thread itself. Through the only real time machine we have: cinema.

Licorice Pizza refers to the golden age of vinyl. In fact, the "licorice pizzas" are the vinyl records. And it was the name of a famous chain of record stores in the American '70s. The years, of course, of Vietnam, of post-'68 disillusionment. The years of David Bowie and so much more. The years of this great author's childhood. The favorite destination of the traveler Anderson.

Licorice Pizza is the reassertion on screen of a world from the past, a world of feelings that can arise and develop through time and mutual attachment, the gradual awareness of an affection and an indispensable bond. It is an analog world, brought back to images in our digital world. It is two people chasing after one another, always seeking and finding each other. Up to a symbolic ending that’s worth all the wonder that cinema knows how to cyclically renew and propose.

The art in which beauty of human sentiment is reproduced, filtered. Finally returned to us in its purest essence as unreal yet capable of leaving a veil of emotion and dreamlike idealization. Of positivity.

Paul Thomas Anderson means Cinema. And even if this is perhaps not his greatest film, it is yet another piece of a work unparalleled in contemporary cinema for variety and perfection.

The film cost 40 million dollars and features two debuting actors: few could afford something like this. But Anderson can do anything and gifts us with the presence of the late and never forgotten Philip Seymour Hoffman's son - his favorite actor since his debut with Sydney -, who makes a splendid impression. Alongside a debuting Alana Haim - also making her first cinematic appearance - who is herself brilliant and displays overflowing sensuality. Extraordinary is the brief appearance of Sean Penn and memorable the cameo of Tom Waits. Just like that of DiCaprio Sr. And especially remarkable is the minor role of Bradley Cooper, as producer John Peters, which adds a touch of madness and reality. As Tarantino managed to do with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Creating a short circuit between fiction and reality, memories and dreams.

Various moments recall previous images carved on film by Anderson in the past. It is a film that bears the mark of its author in every frame.

Stunning.