A mysterious older man named Sydney (Philip Baker Hall) takes a young man (John C. Reilly) under his wing and helps him to get on his feet. Why is he doing this? You'll have to watch to find out.
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Stories don’t have endings. Fades to black, curtain calls and last pages may give us a sense of closure, but the story does not stop there. That’s just the moment where the author decided to stop following those particular characters. When Superman and Zod knock down a building, it is filled with people who have lives and families. Actions have consequences and the best films have consequences that continue to echo long after the screen has read, “The End”. Though not preceded by any particular film, Paul Thomas Anderson’s feature debut is a story about what happens after that final reel. It’s a sequel without a prequel.
While nowhere near as flashy as Anderson’s later films, Sydney (the director's preferred title) ably casts a spell on you with its floating camera and dreamlike score as it unravels its haunting yarn about guilt, family, secrets and the awful things one will do to keep those secrets. Things that cannot be simply erased by a cut to black. A cut to black merely sweeps bad things under the rug for a while where they can lie in wait. As many characters in one of Anderson’s later films state: "We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us."
While nowhere near as flashy as Anderson’s later films, Sydney (the director's preferred title) ably casts a spell on you with its floating camera and dreamlike score as it unravels its haunting yarn about guilt, family, secrets and the awful things one will do to keep those secrets. Things that cannot be simply erased by a cut to black. A cut to black merely sweeps bad things under the rug for a while where they can lie in wait. As many characters in one of Anderson’s later films state: "We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us."
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