There Will Be Blood (B+ or 3.5/4 stars)
'There Will Be Blood', based on the 1927 Upton Sinclair book, Oil, is a drama directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. The 1st 15 minutes of the film are brilliantly shot, & with no dialogue. It's 1898, and upon mining for silver, Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) happens upon oil, instead. The film then jumps to 1902 to 1912 and then 1927; where we find that Plainview has become a rich, wise, & shrewd oil/business man. Constantly wrestling his demons, he goes from town to town, formulaically swindling (what he thinks are) naïve, lazy people by using their land for profit. He's not a decent man, but he's a hard worker who appears to love his adoptive son, H.W. (Dillon Freasier). When greedy Daniel gets a tip that the Texan town of Little Boston has an 'ocean of oil' oozing from the earth, he heads there with his son to take his chances on amassing a fortune.
Before he arrived, the only excitement that town had ever generated came from Holy Roller church preacher, Eli Sunday (Paul Dano). So Plainview strikes success. But it's only a matter of time before conflicts abound. Plainview strongly dislikes the preacher, Eli, 1) because he's a man of God and Plainview is an atheist, & 2) because he's insistent on Daniel to donate $10,000 for use of the land. To Eli, the townsfolk deserve it, and his growing church could use the $$, too. Plainview's values of humanity, family, religious belief, & ambition are thrown off course, first by Eli ... and then snowballing with corruption, deceit, & maniacal hatred. Slowly, quietly, & frequently, these men start to pick at each other's brains. Though Plainview tries to steamroll the Eli issue (through hard work), you can tell that he's starting to lose his mind.
His inner demons surface, even though he tries to stifle them. Plainview is quite the ambiguous character. He's oddly charming, but also snakelike. He can be easygoing, and then a switch is flipped & a violent side rears its head. Daniel harbors a myriad of emotions & characteristics: hatred, love, drive, determination, passion, jealousy, fear ... the list goes on forever. And unfortunately, all these feelings/traits start running into one another (inside his paranoid head) as the film dragggs itself into the climax. How will he have treated his paeans (including an underused Ciaran Hinds)? How does he treat his young son after an explosion deafens him? More importantly, how does he treat him as an adult? The fates of both Daniel & Eli unfold in a ferocious, unintentionally comical way. The ending (along with No Country for Old Men's) is one of the most talked about of the year.
'TWBB' is successful on so many levels, yet is also a maddening example of a movie that tries to make something epic & meaningful out of little content. Coming in at 158 minutes (yet using only 150 pages of Upton Sinclair's book), too much of the running time involves elongated scenes where characters are: driving in cars, drilling, or sitting in stagnant contemplation. It's a relentlessly languid movie; uncluttered; as barren as its Midwest setting. At the 87 min. mark, I looked at my watch & realized that aside from a magnificent oil explosion, little else had even happened. So much of the film focuses on the mechanics of finding oil, the processing of it & the politics surrounding its use ... one can only look at drudged oil for so long. To be fair, while it's a long, bizarre film, it does have its fair share of impressive scenes. In particular, the movie shines any time Daniel converses with his young son.
Day-Lewis is a superb thespian; lending another eye-popping performance. He may win another Oscar; though - in my mind - other actors have executed deeper material this year. I did like the scene in which Daniel agrees to get baptized. It serves dual purposes: 1) close a business deal with Eli, & 2) see if religion catches fire in his belly; redemption for his sins. This moment offers Plainview the complexity that he lacks for a good part of the film. Most of the rest of the time his character decays into a sort of circus show. I admire Robert Elswit's stunning cinematography, the authentic period details, & Jonny Greenwood's bold, evocative music score. But what starts as ethereal segues into over-the-top ghastliness; from sublime to ridiculous. Sitting during the end credits I thought, 'Where was any real character development or drama?' Some critics call this an enthralling masterpiece of American history. Yes, there is great merit & majesty to much of this movie. But its' scintillating individual parts prove to be greater than the whole, for me.
Before he arrived, the only excitement that town had ever generated came from Holy Roller church preacher, Eli Sunday (Paul Dano). So Plainview strikes success. But it's only a matter of time before conflicts abound. Plainview strongly dislikes the preacher, Eli, 1) because he's a man of God and Plainview is an atheist, & 2) because he's insistent on Daniel to donate $10,000 for use of the land. To Eli, the townsfolk deserve it, and his growing church could use the $$, too. Plainview's values of humanity, family, religious belief, & ambition are thrown off course, first by Eli ... and then snowballing with corruption, deceit, & maniacal hatred. Slowly, quietly, & frequently, these men start to pick at each other's brains. Though Plainview tries to steamroll the Eli issue (through hard work), you can tell that he's starting to lose his mind.
His inner demons surface, even though he tries to stifle them. Plainview is quite the ambiguous character. He's oddly charming, but also snakelike. He can be easygoing, and then a switch is flipped & a violent side rears its head. Daniel harbors a myriad of emotions & characteristics: hatred, love, drive, determination, passion, jealousy, fear ... the list goes on forever. And unfortunately, all these feelings/traits start running into one another (inside his paranoid head) as the film dragggs itself into the climax. How will he have treated his paeans (including an underused Ciaran Hinds)? How does he treat his young son after an explosion deafens him? More importantly, how does he treat him as an adult? The fates of both Daniel & Eli unfold in a ferocious, unintentionally comical way. The ending (along with No Country for Old Men's) is one of the most talked about of the year.
'TWBB' is successful on so many levels, yet is also a maddening example of a movie that tries to make something epic & meaningful out of little content. Coming in at 158 minutes (yet using only 150 pages of Upton Sinclair's book), too much of the running time involves elongated scenes where characters are: driving in cars, drilling, or sitting in stagnant contemplation. It's a relentlessly languid movie; uncluttered; as barren as its Midwest setting. At the 87 min. mark, I looked at my watch & realized that aside from a magnificent oil explosion, little else had even happened. So much of the film focuses on the mechanics of finding oil, the processing of it & the politics surrounding its use ... one can only look at drudged oil for so long. To be fair, while it's a long, bizarre film, it does have its fair share of impressive scenes. In particular, the movie shines any time Daniel converses with his young son.
Day-Lewis is a superb thespian; lending another eye-popping performance. He may win another Oscar; though - in my mind - other actors have executed deeper material this year. I did like the scene in which Daniel agrees to get baptized. It serves dual purposes: 1) close a business deal with Eli, & 2) see if religion catches fire in his belly; redemption for his sins. This moment offers Plainview the complexity that he lacks for a good part of the film. Most of the rest of the time his character decays into a sort of circus show. I admire Robert Elswit's stunning cinematography, the authentic period details, & Jonny Greenwood's bold, evocative music score. But what starts as ethereal segues into over-the-top ghastliness; from sublime to ridiculous. Sitting during the end credits I thought, 'Where was any real character development or drama?' Some critics call this an enthralling masterpiece of American history. Yes, there is great merit & majesty to much of this movie. But its' scintillating individual parts prove to be greater than the whole, for me.