Licorice Pizza - SPOILERS!

Started by wilberfan, November 05, 2021, 08:30:50 PM

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Jeremy Blackman

There seems to be two divergent interpretations of the way this story concludes:

A) Relax, Alana is basically a child anyway. Age is just a number. They're meant to be together, and their relationship could sort of work in a funny messed up way.

B) The ending is sad and dark for both of them. Alana is pathetic. She almost turned her life around but relapsed. Gary doesn't know any better. It's never going to work.

I would normally say the truth may lie somewhere in the middle, but that final scene is so powerfully cathartic and euphoric that I don't see much meaningful space for ambiguity that could be supported by "the text." Either the end of this movie is striking a note of sarcasm and depicting Alana & Gary's delusion, or it celebrates them finally overcoming the "obstacle" that Paul identifies in this interview. My take after one viewing is that it's the latter.

RudyBlatnoyd

Quote from: Drenk on January 05, 2022, 04:08:39 PM
It's just another character designed to lead to a punchline around character whose dynamics are undercooked/make no sense (the Haim family). He's Jewish. His atheism isn't hidden.

Only Sean Penn and Bradley Cooper act like horny, childish, drugged assholes with Alana. I'm sorry, but Wachs is not a disappointment. He's trusting Alana at the end with very sensible information. What? He's bad because Alana has a crush with every man in the movie? And once again, PTA is writing these characters, he's deliberately using them as plot devices to unite Alana with Gary at the end after establishing that adults aren't as different as children. Wach's homosexuality is actually used to make a parallel between his relationship and Alana being in love with a teenager. One is valid, yet tragically repressed, and therefore so is the other, thinks Licorice Pizza. If that doesn't make you raise multiple eyebrows...Homosexuality as the road to pedophilia...

It sounds insane. But the movie is very straightforward about all this. You can argue that PTA pandering backfired at the end, but how does he revise the script without considering all this?

I'd say Wachs is very definitely a disappointment for Alana: he calls her over under false pretences, when really he just wants to use her to conceal his identity and further his career. Yes, one feels for him too in the situation, because of the homophobia he's having to deal with, but that doesn't excuse his behaviour. It is another moment of disillusionment for her.

As for the 'homosexuality is the road to paedophilia' thing that you say the film is implying, I'm sorry, but that is really reaching.

The idea that because an ending presents as 'euphoric' it is necessarily endorsing the outcome is highly questionable. There is such a thing as the contrapuntal in art, where the style of presentation is in ironic counterpoint with the underlying impression. After two hours of witnessing Alana pinball through a succession of dysfunctional relationships and poor decisions, I really can't see how at the end we're supposed to think 'Ah, thank goodness, a happy ending. No potential problems or pitfalls here!' You can't take the ending in isolation, guys, our response to it is surely coloured by what has come before i.e. the volatile character trajectory of Alana through the whole film!

Drenk

The rest of the movie where Gary is presented as her "savior" from all the shitty men, the "nice guy" she's denying herself? The woman he can't grope in her sleep? Their age difference in the movie is a tragedy/an obstacle, and the whole narrative of the movie is about surmounting it. She is finally surmounting the age gap at the end to find her true soulmate.

So it doesn't matter if you're telling me: "Oh, but in two weeks, they'll break up! She'll find a seventeen years old lover!" The movie is clear about how sad it is that Alana and Gary can't be together, and it ends that way to grant them a victory.

Where is the irony at the end? Because that sounds to me like the people saying "I was being ironic" in bad faith to defend an argument. You're talking about what's theoretically possible. Tell me about what's ironic in the ending.

I'm not reaching about Wachs. His love life being repressed by society is what inspires Alana to finally accept her love for Gary, something else society deems inappropriate. The parallel is there. It's straightforward, stupid, rushed. It's didactic in a way Paul Thomas Anderson usually avoid to be. It's also ironic, I suppose?
Ascension.

Jeremy Blackman

Quote from: RudyBlatnoyd on January 06, 2022, 05:09:37 AMThe idea that because an ending presents as 'euphoric' it is necessarily endorsing the outcome is highly questionable. There is such a thing as the contrapuntal in art, where the style of presentation is in ironic counterpoint with the underlying impression. After two hours of witnessing Alana pinball through a succession of dysfunctional relationships and poor decisions, I really can't see how at the end we're supposed to think 'Ah, thank goodness, a happy ending. No potential problems or pitfalls here!' You can't take the ending in isolation, guys, our response to it is surely coloured by what has come before i.e. the volatile character trajectory of Alana through the whole film!

The idea that the ending is contrapuntal or sarcastic is quite a stretch in my opinion.

Clearly the film is aware of the pitfalls of their relationship, and that they're a bit mismatched. That's supposed to be the charm of the whole thing. The mission of the narrative is to help these two lovebirds work through and overcome enough of those obstacles, such that they can finally profess their love and enjoy being together like a normal couple (not an adult/child couple).

Ending on a euphoric note is not about saying everything is 100% perfect. It's about emotion. It's about expressing the essential wholesomeness and goodness of their connection. If you interpret the ending as dark, more power to you, but I just don't see it.

RudyBlatnoyd

Quote from: Jeremy Blackman on January 06, 2022, 12:13:47 PM
Quote from: RudyBlatnoyd on January 06, 2022, 05:09:37 AMThe idea that because an ending presents as 'euphoric' it is necessarily endorsing the outcome is highly questionable. There is such a thing as the contrapuntal in art, where the style of presentation is in ironic counterpoint with the underlying impression. After two hours of witnessing Alana pinball through a succession of dysfunctional relationships and poor decisions, I really can't see how at the end we're supposed to think 'Ah, thank goodness, a happy ending. No potential problems or pitfalls here!' You can't take the ending in isolation, guys, our response to it is surely coloured by what has come before i.e. the volatile character trajectory of Alana through the whole film!

The idea that the ending is contrapuntal or sarcastic is quite a stretch in my opinion.

Clearly the film is aware of the pitfalls of their relationship, and that they're a bit mismatched. That's supposed to be the charm of the whole thing. The mission of the narrative is to help these two lovebirds work through and overcome enough of those obstacles, such that they can finally profess their love and enjoy being together like a normal couple (not an adult/child couple).

Ending on a euphoric note is not about saying everything is 100% perfect. It's about emotion. It's about expressing the essential wholesomeness and goodness of their connection. If you interpret the ending as dark, more power to you, but I just don't see it.

I'm not trying to make out that I think the ending is as dark and despairing as something like There Will Be Blood. I'm just saying that it's of a piece with the whole film and with PTA's filmography as a whole: the exploration of a messy, dysfunctional and ambiguous relationship whose ultimate fate remains unknown. Sure, in that moment at the end, Alana and Gary seem happy, but a large question mark remains over their future and their suitability, because of everything that we've seen prior to this moment and as far as I can see the film supports this interpretation at every turn. I don't buy that the 'mission of the narrative' is anything as contrived as simply engineering a situation whereby their relationship can be legitimated; I find it to be a much more nuanced and intelligent film than that, alive to its characters as three-dimensional, flawed human beings, not instruments to convey some corny 'love conquers all' message.

I don't accept Drenk's assertion that Gary is presented as Alana's 'saviour': is he her saviour when he goes off with another girl at the waterbed company launch, humiliating her; or when he gets her into a hazardous situation with Jon Peters, which he keeps on escalating; or when he uses insider knowledge to launch a pinball company, despite the professional embarrassment it might cause her? Neither am I saying he's a villain, just a messy, complicated person.

Anyway, there's not much point in harping on the same points again and again. If you don't see it, you don't see it, and that's fine. Maybe I'm wrong. From reading other reviews / responses, I know some people agree with me at least, so I'm pretty sure I'm not crazy.

Jeremy Blackman

I don't even disagree too strongly with that. As you say, the film does explore problems with their relationship. The difference is that I view the ending as much more of a resolution and a victory for them. The story is largely the process of Alana ironing out her hangups and realizing that she can find joy in this romance with a boy. The end is letting them have that, and letting us enjoy them having that, at least for a little while.

It very much reminds me of the Breaking Bad series finale. That ending was not right for the characters and betrayed much of the moral complexity that the show had been building. It deserved something darker, but, as Vince Gilligan has alluded to interviews, the urge to give people a crowd-pleasing ending was just too powerful.

Paul loves Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman. In no universe was he going to write a movie where she's any sort of predator and he's any sort of victim. The urge to make a sweet love story was always going to win out and sweep away most of the moral complexity. Paul talks about this pretty openly in the interviews. But the homework that he does to overcome those obstacles seems pretty surface-level to me. PTA just doesn't have the tools or the actual interest to deal with it in a serious way.

Drenk

Bad conscience is their (well, mostly Alana’s) problem in the movie. After the (false) arrest, the movie unfolds twenty minutes of sexual tension. They talk about fucking, they touch legs, they look at each other like rabbits ready to copulate, but the tragedy is that Alana refuses to. So Gary gets a girlfriend his age for some action in the bathroom. So Alana tries to find an adult. But no: Gary and Alana are made for each other. Proof enough: he helps her stand up and they get to (water)bed somehow. But our savior can’t touch her breasts. There’s a shield. How do they overcome the shield? Well: a repressed gay couple opens Alana's mind. But Alana can run. You need to accept love if it is self-evident, even if it is a sixteen years old kid who can barely drive. Then the movie ends because they’re probably gonna fuck. There's even the less than subtle image with Beard Man looking like he's humping a doll on the left corner of the screener in the pinball palace when Alana is looking for Gary.

Her thirty years old sisters who live at home for some reason are also very happy to help whenever they can.

Great mise en scène. A lot of quirky details and moody, atmospheric sequences, too. Too bad about the rest, which in our case means: a movie about the physical yearning of a twenty eight years old woman for a teenager and the very contrived ways it legitimates and downplays it. Everything revolves around this.
Ascension.

WorldForgot

Quote from: Drenk on January 06, 2022, 04:52:06 PM
There's even the less than subtle image with Beard Man looking like he's humping a doll on the left corner of the screener in the pinball palace when Alana is looking for Gary.

I think it's legit some woman, lol. He's humping her and motioning as if teaching her how to tilt.

Drenk

Yep, it's a real woman. It's an intentional trick of perspective, actually. But my initial thought was that he had brought his doll to the Palace!
Ascension.

ono

Funnier still is the woman isn't there at first.  The greaseball is alone at the machine.  Alana comes up, asks where Gary is, and the woman is revealed after she leaves.

pynchonikon

#385
You can accuse Anderson for being morally/socially irresponsible (if you do believe in such thing) for choosing the taboo and provocative -by the real life's standards- interaction between a 25y.o. and a 15y.o. in order to subvert/have fun of the motives and the cliches of a typical 30's-40's old-school classic Hollywood screwball romantic comedy, but he's totally honest about the type of story you are about to witness right from the first sequence in the high school, right from the first shot and the first (the apparent rip off from American Graffiti) of the huge amount of cinematic references that are about to be used as (some more inconspicuous and some so obvious that you can't but smile when you notice them) alienation effects (the film never really forgets that it's... a film), until the very end where for the first time in his career he's showing the film's main characters along with the actors that portrayed them (the beginning and the ending of the film are almost identical on how they let cinema interfere into the "reality" - which by definition is never the reality since everything you see is an act of trickery, what you watch as reality is what the movie is presenting you as reality).

He's both the literal (since he's the writer, it's him who wrote them) and the metaphorical (since he's the director, it's him who directs them) father of these two cinematic characters, and he chooses to give birth to them by putting them talking about movies and movie stars, with Lila Simmon's "July Tree" on the background (the film almost plays out like a musical on how spot-on the use of the songs is), presenting you the screwball obstacle (the age gap) and the main central theme of the story (will they ever be able to be together?), and literally finishing the sequence with the photographer slapping Alana's ass. So he practically not only introduces us to this universe in just about 10 minutes, but he practically establishes it: here are these two virgin (i just gave birth to them - but i also define their sexuality status since this is my universe [Alana is a straight young woman that lacks sexual desire -she's established as too immature and innocent to try or want to fuck- and I tried as much as I could to see her in other way than that without success]) cinematic characters who will be the stars of their own romance, the one wants to lose his virginity(=sexual innocence) because he wants to grow up as soon as possible and the other wants to keep her virginity because she wants to remain a child for as long as possible, and they will try to make it through this world of adult creepiness.

In the ending scene we practically meet them in the same position as we firstly met them, Gary still being incapable of entering the world of adults (he's trying unsuccessfully to control the adult guy in the pinball machine who's doing the move that ressembles sex), Alana still being incapable of letting the child inncocence behind her. And cinema will help (they meet each other in front of a cinema, the cinematic kiss - which can be read on at least three different ways and none of them is that this fictional work endorces pedophilia) to surpass reality and make this type of relationship work. They love each other for different reasons, cause they need each other for different reasons. He still wants to lose his virginity in order to grow up, she still wants to keep hers in order to remain child for ever, the screwball paradox of this twisted cinematic fairy tale that is destined to keep going for ever (the out-of-nowhere scene in the beginning when Gary tells his brother that he just met the girl he wants to marry to get his aloof response, is mirroring to the line delivery in the end when he's calling her mrs Valentine and she answers "idiot" with the annoyed look).

You have certainly the right to feel confused or disappointed for this film being the follow-up to Phantom Thread, a film that also made a romantic story plausible but was essentially a romantic story which had response in real life's human romantic relationships.

Licorice Pizza on the other hand can be read as the response to OUaTiH, if QT's film showed the power of cinema to interfere into real human history and change its outcome (even if once the end credits stop rolling we are still back into the painful reality), PTA's film shows the power of cinema to make the most impossible love story plausible (even if once the end credits stop rolling, this kind of interaction which is used as the main premise will still be wrong, creepy, immoral, whatever, and Anderson clearly knows that). But apart from the romantic aspect (which is the surface-level of the film), LP also talks about youthful escapism and the desire to remain child forever (and since adult PTA -the film can also be read as his open discussion with his younger self and the early part of his body of work- certainly feels more related to Alana than Gary, because he shares the same anxiety about getting physically older, i do understand why this is essentially Alana's story and why it's she who says the final voice-over line "I love you").

I don't claim that this is THE right interpretation of the film (since art is and will always be subjective), you have every right to dismiss it as naive or simplistic (but yet the whole film IS seen through their eyes so the young naivety and simplicity becomes instantly part of the film's nature!), but I do believe it works this way (how successfully/unsuccessfully is again subjective) and I do have the feel that this is the story that Anderson always had in mind when he wrote this, based alone on the first ten minutes of the movie - but yet not only them. You're free to believe that it is what you think it is, as he himself practically says through Danielle's mouth in one of the many (they are really so many that it could definitely be called a deliberate artistic choice) fourth-wall breaking moments in the film. He certainly knows what shit he got himself into, he doesn't need a pleader.

Jeremy Blackman

I added paragraph breaks to your post, but feel free to re-edit if I messed anything up.

WorldForgot

Quote from: pynchonikon on January 07, 2022, 03:01:25 AM
You're free to believe that it is what you think it is, as he himself practically says through Danielle's mouth in one of the many (they are really so many that it could definitely be called a deliberate artistic choice) fourth-wall breaking moments in the film. He certainly knows what shit he got himself into, he doesn't need a pleader.

Definitely! This iz not merely "something that happens"

Bumping up previous posts of mine cuz they're buried in the 'ye olde times of November when it was legit on two screens. This iz in the hopes of further discussion that wrestles with the film's thematic intent through the lens that the problem is what they want. And that PTA gladly complicates our relationship to the characters by giving it to them.

Personally, I can't vibe with seeing Alana as lacking sexual desire as pynchonikon has suggested. It seems to me that she is being mature about her libido in that it ought not be directed toward Gary; 'til the end, where I totally agree with JB. We cannot be naive to assume it'll stop at one kiss if she loves him (and he's gotten handjobs from Buzzy Lee.



Quote from: WorldForgot on November 18, 2021, 06:18:45 PM

i can hear you breathing


Not just a love story, not just an ambition tale, when Gary or Alana approaches they advance. And others trespass too, but more often on Alana than Gary. If the Japanese jokes are to be understood the context makes it quite clear what the film displays against where the character sits. If you cannot abide trespasses, then do not enter. Because all of these characters are splintered .

Our entanglements will undo us. I liked the short shrift of the Wachs plotline for coloring parallel thematic tracks in terms of unspoken betrayals and the impositions on another side of the glass.

But Gary and Alana aren't where that plot is, they're nigh near honeymoon. Their dance you cannot disbelieve. If the audiences judge it it reflects back on what they know to be real. Yes this feels real, in the matter that we toy with others. But did we feel like toys ourselves when we did? There's neat constellations of performance and adopting roles throughout.

The men in this film orbit Alana Kane, but they might not be planets to her sun.
Spoiler: ShowHide
Which one's the one that doesn't crater? Dang did I fear that the film would sour and that impact would happen at the end of any setpiece.
Nah, what it is iz that Gary and Alana ache for that gravity and our supporting cast can all feel it.

A competitive paramour, with wax on top.

Quote from: WorldForgot on November 22, 2021, 11:02:09 AM

Spoiler: ShowHide
As I've written about a few times on the forum now, to a degree this film isn't even shy about it being about hustle and unsettled exploitation. Just cause Alana Kane and Gary Valentine don't get toxic-toxic, they are manipulative and playing a psychological game. We can find them endearing while acknowledging that.

Shouldn't have to spell out the profit thing, that part's even highlighted in the trailer, you know? But they aren't doing so by losing their hearts. In fact, they both want their dream with their hearts in tact and that's part of the what conjures the gravity of their orbits. But there's plenty of cash exchanged hands. And to be sure, Gary meets Alana at a gig and gets her one under him.

Add that to the swirling framing devices of other LA/Valley ambitions bound to couplings ( racist restauranteur // Wach's storyline // George DiCaprio's Mr Jack and Iyana Halley's assistant Brenda // Jon Peters & Streisand // even Waits' commanding drunkard director could be seen in this light). You can see that these people enter the relationship, but it doesn't mean there aren't ends of profit therein.

Quote from: WorldForgot on November 22, 2021, 11:51:07 AM
Good post, I dont think you're missing any points - it's a story that's going to hit diff people differently!

Spoiler: ShowHide
As for you asking where the distinction between your anecdote lies, Drenk has illustrated it more than once I think by highlighting that it's not precisely the gap that's the issue (we've seen Alma and Woodock), but closer to your spoilerized allusion of H&M. It's not the quite gap that's in question, but the particular phases of life they're both in, a valid angle being that Gary has no inkling of really being an adult, is very much still a child. Alana having lived that already and knowing what it must be like in particular because men are still objectifying her in numerous scenes (as they must have in HS too). She objectifies herself too, though, as Gary objectifies himself and we all do but that's even another branch.


But as with Harold & Maude- how do we learn if not by living?

pynchonikon

I believe Pynchon's influence on Licorice Pizza isn't just superficial (Inherent Vice's stylistic and artistic similarities are more than apparent), but also crucial into the writing of the script. Anderson uses four of Pynchon's common writing techniques into this film:

1)big ensemble of characters, most of them appear for only 2-3 scenes and then disappear
2)huge amount of cultural references (cinematic and musical, amongst others)
3)mix of real persons/events and fiction
4)treatment of the characters not as real human beings, but essentially as symbols in order to make his point/statement (this technique especially provides a completely new reading of the film, from a political/social perspective, that is actually very powerful, *more details on that soon*).

Achpi

My thoughts on a first viewings of a PTA movie are always very blurry. I don't want to fell obliged to love them, i don't want to convince myself that i persuade myself that i love them, i also don't want to not trust my love for them as being a fan convicing himself... They're always so rich, i always feel how complex they are on the inside and that i could watch them 20 times and still net entirely get how amazing it is on the outside. Anyway, i get out of the first viewings with feelings more than anything.

His first three movies, i feel, were very emotional. When he became a dad and stopped doing coke, he then became very intellectual. This new movie, i feel, is his first "organic" one. There's life everywhere, love, energy, the writing doesn't seem to come out of his guts, or of his brain, but from his life. Everything seems way less controled, throught, rehearsed. He let life come into his work. The bad side of this is that is writing is way less impressive that it was before, from structure to dialogue to the way characters and themes are explored. The good side of this is that a lot of this feels new (which is exciting after a 25 years career), and his mind blowing camera work doesn't suffer from it at all.

I watched a q&a with cooper and alana and he really loves them so them so much. I do feel he is kind of blinded by his love for the HAIM sisters that are not as amazing as he seems to believe. And i fell in love with him as he made me discover fiona apple or aimee mann and yeah, they're not playing in the same league. But as i watched the movie, his love for them transpired. As did his love for that time period, that city. There's just so much love all around in this movie, it feels great.

It can also be misleading. i read several reviews that said it was nostalgic, or that you wanted to jump into the movie and never leave it. But one thing i loved is that this feeling is actually an illusion. I felt that, mostly, all relationships in the movie were toxic, he's actually very aware of how fucked up the LA world is. i don't think it's a matter of adults being awful as a way to say alana is more comfortable with teenagers, i think it's a matter that LA is full of insane things and insane people, in which beautiful things might eventually happen.

That may be the main thing i love across all pta movies, fucked up people having fucked up relationship that, in the end, are kind of beautiful and ease the soul of the protagonists. Gary and Alana are charming and cute, but they ARE fucked up. Alana has no idea what to do with her life, her family life seems very toxic, she falls for mostly any man entering her life, and she has a crush on a 15 years old. Gary is a former child actor who is basicaly told that his is old and fat when he has an audition, his mother doesn't take care of him, it feels like he's been deprived of being a teenager and acts and behaves like an adult at 15, and we know how that usually ends. This relationship is weird, just as Julianne Moore and Mark Whalberg in BN, just as Joaquin et PSH in The master, not to mention the Woodcock couple. The weird, twisted beauty that arises in unhealthy, unusual, unorthodox relationaships is, i feel, one of his most recurring and beautiful themes and this is no exception.

a thing i've been surprised not to read more often his how 'similar' the movie is to almost famous, way more than to fast times at ridgemont high. William Miller and Gary are pretty similar characters (William is "uncool" and Gary is Cool, but they both are equally charming and precautious and 15yo and thrown in a world of adults and fans of art). The feelings of the 70s, the script as a recollection of anecdotes and small stories, crazy celebrities encounters and of course the Penny Lane / Alana character, as the older crush, the iconic girl whose life is actually a mess but works as a fantasy for the 15yo character and the 45yo director. The "i'll never forget you, just as you'll never forget me" really made me think of the William Miller / Penny Lane relationship.

The 70mm print looked great, this really felt, visually, like a movie straight out of the 70s and it was very impressive.

ps : excuse the english mistakes, not my first language !