Running on Empty
Film history is the story of films constantly building on one another. If one contemporary director knows this, it’s Paul Thomas Anderson, PTA for professional purposes. In PTA & HIS MASTERS we take a look at the unofficial filmic predecessors of Paul Thomas Anderson. We place the director – arguably one of the most important directors of his generation – next to the influences he unabashedly cites in his work. In PTA & HIS MASTERS we link ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER to Sidney Lumet’s RUNNING ON EMPTY.
RUNNING ON EMPTY is a hidden gem by Hollywood veteran Sidney Lumet, that earned actor River Phoenix an Oscar nomination for his role as eldest son of a family on the run from the authorities. Not only PTA was inspired by this lesser known Lumet film, but coincidentally enough another one of PTA’s filmic idols, Japanese director Akira Kurosawa (SEVEN SAMURAI, RASHOMON) also named the film as one of his favourites. Directors Kurosawa and Lumet were dear friends. Lumet admired Kurosawa as “the Beethoven of movie directors” and Kurosawa praised Lumet’s gift of expressing human problems in a very naturalistic way. According to Kurosawa that was the reason way Lumet’s films are so fascinating. In that last remark, we read the reason why Kurosawa chose RUNNING ON EMPTY as one of his 100 Favourite Films, and not titles such as 12 ANGRY MEN or SERPICO, also part of Lumet’s rich oeuvre. Kurosawa resolutely picked Lumet’s most emotional work, not his most critically acclaimed.
RUNNING ON EMPTY was written by Naomi Foner (mother of Maggie and Jake Gyllenhaal), who was rewarded with an Oscar nomination for her work on the film just like Phoenix. After the bombing of a napalm laboratory, during which a janitor was severely injured, anti-war protesters Arthur and Annie Pope go on the run with their two-year-old son Danny. Years later we meet Danny as a teenager, with his younger brother Harry. The Popes are still hunted down by the authorities and can never stay in one place for long. Life on the run weighs heavily on Danny as he wants to lead his own life. But that would mean making an impossible choice: risking the safety of his parents or never seeing them again.
In RUNNING ON EMPTY the radical act that the Popes committed in their fight against the Vietnam War casts a shadow over their family life and their future. Just like PTA’s ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER the movie chronicles the consequences of revolution and the price you pay for fighting the system. In this film, the revolutionary ideas of the parents are countered by the coming-of-age story of the son. In both movies the children pay for the choices of their parents with their freedom. The difference is that Danny can return to a normal world in RUNNING ON EMPTY, while that world no longer exists in ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER. That’s the reason why Willa Ferguson, the daughter in ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER, is more likely to tread in her parents’ footsteps. In the world of leaders such as Donald Trump, Willa’s existence – especially as a biracial young woman – is threatened either way, even without her parents’ past.
