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2008 Fall/Winter Movie Preview
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Movie Reviews There Will Be Blood: David | There Will Be Blood: David |
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| Written by David DiMichele | |
| Sunday, 20 January 2008 | |
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- - - Review by David DiMichele - - - The first fifteen minutes of Paul Thomas Anderson's widely controversial and thematically charged There Will Be Blood is silent, except for the haunting and harrowing score by Johnny Greenwood from Radiohead. The stark and dry landscapes of the west at the turn of the century (1898) show us a miner and a couple of his partners mining the dry grounds for silver. Anderson's choice in starting this sprawling epic in this odd manner testifies not only to his directing ability but also to his approach to a film which spans three decades. It reminded me of the first twenty minutes of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The apes are fussing around with what they have - bones and rocks. They amuse themselves while an eerie silence and some unnatural music emphasize the untouched territory of the stark and dry landscape that surrounds them. It's only when they wake up and find something they weren't looking for - a black rectangle - that the way the apes think and go about their everyday activities is altered. In There Will Be Blood we get the same exact set-up except with humans and a different kind of object. Here, Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) accidentally stumbles upon oil. Lots of it. This oil will not only change his life and bring him riches but will also bring him ambition, corruption, and extreme hatred. And let's not forget about the big one: greed. Plainview is bred differently to everyone else in the movie. He does whatever he wants, says whatever he wants, and acts in whatever way his darkened, black heart desires. Between 1898 and 1911, the transformation of Plainview is massive. Once digging for silver and minerals, he now finds himself ordering his men around, dealing with huge deadly machinery, setting up camp on family's properties, stealing from the communities, and becoming greedier by the minute. Now, his profession is an oil man and running a so-called "family" business with his 12-year-old son H.W. (Dillon Frasier). After being tipped off that there's an ocean of oil under the Sunday family ranch in Little Boston, California, he responds to the opportunity to capture the oil from the weakened family that owns it.
He plans a quail hunting trip with his son just to get inside of the Sunday ranch. When he gets in deep enough he strikes with an offer that has the feeble father of the ranch going ga-ga, while the son, estranged, extremist preacher Eli Sunday (Paul Dano) starts to question the offer. Knowing what's under their ground, Plainview begins to get hungry for oil and land. He says in his brooding and cocky voice to the town's real-estate agent: "Why don't I have this, or this?" Before you know it, Plainview becomes almost untouchable as he owns pretty much all the land in sight. Like a snake charmer, Plainview charms the citizens of Little Boston and promises great turnarounds in their community and in other communities that have felt his wrath, but when he feels comfortable around people he lets them know: "I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people." Most people include his son, step-brother, all the town of Little Boston, and maybe even himself.
There's one theme in particular that Anderson explores here and it really struck me the way a drill bit strikes oil. It's the church that Eli Sunday runs. It's often said that the people who act religious really aren't. They're just false prophets. I see this trait in Eli. Anderson shows him as an over-the-top, freakishly scary, evil kind of cult preacher. His congregation seems to be full of lost souls attending his services because they think it's the right thing to do. He has his hands wrapped around them and around the rest of the town. When Plainview arrives, he literally makes an ass out of Eli. The two form a heated rivalry that results in both of them making asses out of each other. Money and power are what fuel both of these men's lives.
With few ties to Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel Oil!, Anderson shapes a movie that is full to the brim with ambition - it's a film that's beyond epic proportions: it's monumental. He locks in on one specific matter and one specific person and the vise that binds the two never loosens it grip. The land that cinematographer Robert Elswit captures and the scary-real sets that production designer Jack Fisk creates show us a world of man devouring man. We see what happens to the weak and the faint of heart. Anderson doesn't acknowledge any women in the movie because he knows that they're not significant in this world. In particular, the relationship between father and son resonates with very deep meaning.
The film contains elements from such classic films as Chinatown (John Huston's character), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (Fred C. Dobbs doesn't trust anyone with his gold findings) and of course Citizen Kane (Charles Foster Kane buying everything he can, resulting in him walking like a zombie through his enormous mansion). Kane looked back on "rosebud" and dwells on the lost innocence, Plainview, on the other hand, remembers the huge house that he loved to look at and hoped to live in it, but now, older and greedier, he looks back on it and it makes him sick. The music that runs through the entire film seems to fuse each scene together at such a level of intensity that it feels like we're waiting for something to explode and finally, we get that in the "classic-in-the-making" climax. Paul Thomas Anderson has delivered the year's best movie and Day-Lewis easily delivers the best performance in his portrayal of a vicious, venial, egotistical, yet charismatic mad man. There Will Be Blood is based on issues of the past but don't overlook the fact that it rings true in today's day and age where everyone is simply out for themselves.
Film Rating: **** out of **** Official [ Movie Site ]
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Brilliant
What a classic, classic movie. Daniel Day-Lewis was sooo good in this movie. You bring up some points I didn't even consider - the score was almost a character in the movie itself, to me.
It makes you wonder, had he not accidentally stumbled onto the oil, what else would he have done? So many elements to consider. Great review, my friend. I KNEW you'd love this movie!
,
January 20, 2008
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Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano 
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