There Will Be Blood

A Review:

Prior to getting to the diatribe of this most-anticipated film I'd like to mention a couple things - 1.) This is the first time Cinematic Arena has delved into a strictly dramatic film, so God help us all. 2.) This is the first time probably since Rory the Movie Idiot and I slung popcorn at the infamous Wynnsong 16 movie theater many years ago that we watched a movie together. Luckily, there was no fist-fight. At least not yet.

Paul Thomas Anderson's newest film, set at the turn of the century and eventually a little later on, detailing one man's rise and fall inside the oil industry, returns to the form you may recall from "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia", which is to say it's drawn on a monumental canvas and reaches for the moon. He's got a lot to say, and says a lot of it well, but all of it? That's why Cinematic Arena exists, friends, to help you work through this as we work through it ourselves.

Daniel Day Lewis is Daniel Planview. The first time we see him he is alone and mining for silver. The fact that he is alone is key, as he is alone through the whole film even if there are other people at his side. He breaks his leg, pulls himself out from below ground, and before long we see he has returned to his work - this time digging for oil. He strikes it big, though another tragedy occurs as a man dies leaving his son orphaned. Daniel takes in the son and next time we see him he as essentially become what we'll call an oil tycoon.

Then the quietly eerie Paul Sunday (Paul Dano) emerges and advises Daniel of potential oil in his tiny California town of Little Boston. (Notice the shot as Paul and Daniel first meet. You see just the two of them, Paul enters the room, sits, and only then are we shown that there is a third man in the room.) The two men talk, the audience is riveted, and Daniel agrees to head out to Little Boston.

Once there Daniel and his adopted son camp out on the land of Sunday family where it seems Paul has vanished and his twin brother Eli (also played by Dano) who runs the Little Boston church surfaces. When Daniel discovers the oil he covets, he buys up nearly the entire town, and sets about building an oil well. At a ceremony for the first well Eli asks Daniel if he can "bless" the well, Daniel says yes, but then when the ceremony comes he reneges and gives his own blessing. And so a battle between the two unlikely opponents begins.

Based in part on Upton Sinclair's novel "Oil!" there is so much more to this movie that an entire review could consist simply of re-telling plot and so I feel I must pull up short of giving things away.

But some more things will be given away as any discussion of this film (and you'll understand when you see it) must include some giving away. So if you're wary of any further spoilers get the hell outta' this review right now.

I'm not one for blathering on about a filmmaker's point when I would rather be focusing strictly on the characters and what they do and how their choices affect them but when a film is so huge it leaves the word epic in the dust, well, it becomes a bit obvious, I think, the filmmaker does possess some intention of saying something to us. But what? There is the issue of capitalism at work, though not as much I would have thought going in, and the issue of God and faith. One man who didn't have much faith to begin with and slowly rests whatever faith he did have.

In fact, there are two showdowns between Daniel and Eli - one at Eli's church, one at Daniel's home - that would appear to be the crux of the film. Daniel is essentially forced into a baptism at Eli's church so he can gain land he needs to create a pipeline for his oil and from this point forward Daniel's greed and, I suppose, madness only grows.

Daniel Day Lewis is remarkable but, as I often say in regards to him, that goes without saying. Yet - yet! - some of the performance here rubbed me the wrong way. At the outset where he's just acting, no dialogue, and even deep into the second act of the film - especially the aforementioned baptism scene (which is brilliant-beyond-metaphors, and a scene no other actor working today could have made work in the day he did) - he's still amazing. But into the third act, as he becomes more wretched, more evil, more, more, and more, I think he started going overboard. Maybe Anderson was pushing him in that direction but for the first time in my life I wanted to call out to the screen, "Dial it down, Daniel!" (I didn't, of course, because he probably would have broken character and come out of the movie screen and picked me up and thrown me out into the street but never mind). Toward the very end there's a bit of dialogue where he shouts with such force that spit dribbles out of his mouth but the spit just looked calculated. It looked as if they had to do several takes so they could get the spit in the shot. The performance at the point ceased to be a performance. They were turning screws on us.

Paul Thomas Anderson has gone past over-the-top before and I haven't minded it. His biblical downpour of frogs in "Magnolia" to cleanse the streets of L.A. was capable of inspiring a "what the f---?" from the audience (I know because the person sitting one seat over from me said it) but it worked for me. Why? I never felt as if it was Paul Thomas Anderson up there in the heavens releasing these frogs to wrap up his sprawling film. The way everything had been established and set up it felt completely right.

The end is what will ceaselessly be discussed and, to be honest, this movie stopped working for me earlier than the end. (I didn't even mention Daniel's brother showing up, which felt like a contrivance necessary for Daniel to get a few words the script wanted him to say off his chest.) I felt like we were just watching a show. I felt like it was merely the director pulling his actors on strings from the scenes to get them to do what he wanted them to do to act out whatever it was he was trying to say. This end is made to divide people, and maybe saying what I've said will open me up to the proverbial "you didn't get it" blather, and that's just fine with me. Richard Schickel's review at Time Magazine has a completely different take on the end than me and since he writes for Time, well, he must know better than me. He called Lewis's work at the end "the most explosive and unforgettable 10 or 15 minutes of screen acting I have ever witnessed." I don't mind the hyperbole because I myself am prone to it and delight in it but I cannot agree, Mr. Schickel. I don't care what Anderson and Lewis are trying to say because the way they're saying it just seemed too in-your-face, too look at how craaaaazy we've gone! I liked some of the movie - I liked some of the movie a lot - but as a whole I was disappointed.

Oh, but the music's really, really good.

-Nick

A Response:

With the exception of Gone Baby Gone this was my most highly anticipated movie of the year. With Affleck's film it had a wide release and I managed to resist my Friday morning routine of reading every review I can get my hands on. There Will Be Blood was more problematic. Once reviews started popping up from the likes of David Denby and others, I couldn't resist reading. I read a lot of reviews, all glowing, many perplexed by the end. I also read a lot of interviews with Day Lewis and P.T. Anderson and generally gobbled up any information to do with this film. Oh and I probably watched the trailer at least once a week for a solid ten weeks.

So the excitement I had as Nick and I stood in a long line at the theater was almost un-containable. So much that I did not care that the film was nearly sold out. We were seeing this movie. This resulted in us being in the second row, approximately 2.5 feet from the screen. The only way i could see the screen properly was to scoot out to the edge of the seat, my knees crushed against the seat in front of me, my neck tilted sideways and pressed into the back of the seat cushion. Suffice to say taking in the full scope of the cinematography would be difficult. And at over two and half hours, my body was going to be put to the test.

Eager anticipation and bodily pain were the emotion and sensation I had when the film started. Could any film live up to that kind of pressure? This one started out with potential to do so. The first half hour of watching Day Lewis' Plainview work in silver mine with no dialog just the soundtrack and the sounds of work were just about as mesmerizing as it gets. And after a short stint showing Plainview striking it rich, we jump ahead to 1911 and to the real meat of the story. The smooth talking affecting Plainview was the perfect follow-up to the isolation I was left with after those opening scenes.

I'm generally not one for giving kudos to child actors but damn if there haven't been some fine performances by young thespians this year. Saoirse Ronan was the best part of Atonement and There Will Be Blood gives us a wonderful performance by Dillon Freasier. Half of my enjoyment of watching Day Lewis was actually in watching Freasier react along side him. An orphan who looks on with adoration at his father but still has that innocence of youth. And he seems to play the key role in the degeneration of Plainview from humanity.

I have to disagree with you Nick that the capitalism isn't as prevalent as one might think. It's practically smothering. Plainview is competition. Granted he reflect more the modern notions of capitalism than say capitalistic thought in 1911 but in the end I think Anderson is really making a film about today, even if its set 70 to 90 years in the past. The other prevalent ideology is radical religious fervor. Again more like a reflection of the time we live in. The problem is, and its the problem with any film that reduces a character to a symbol is it gets very tiresome, very fast. And these ideologies so heavy handed began to drain my energy.

At first the confrontations between Paul Dano and Day Lewis were riveting. Watching the two smash metaphorical heads like two rutting deer. But as their antagonism drags on and on and their extremism increases, it becomes a little stale. I actually wasn't that impressed with the baptism scene, Nick. It just felt flat. Not to mention that whole thing was set up very early and the payoff comes too late. And the brother subplot. It's utterly useless. It doesn't even make sense given the path the character has taken.

And that is really too bad because it is in this subplot that my favorite line from the trailer occurs. And what seemed like the center of a powerful scene was actually the center of an arbitrary and trite scene. And then there is what critics are calling the film's coda. Leaping ahead to 1927, Plainview now a Citizen Cane type recluse sits alone in a cavernous mansion. I can't even begin to figure out what that final scene between Dano and Day Lewis is about. I've heard it praised and perplexed. I've read it excused away and not one of those answers is satisfying. I've been thinking on it for a week and I can't find anything that is satisfying.

Still I agree with Nick, I lost interest long before the end so the fact that it was disappointing doesn't bother me too much. Still the idea that you could end the film with Plainview losing all his wealth in say the Stock Market Crash of 1929 seems like it would be fitting for his character. Oh well, you can't regret an end that wasn't made. Or can you?

-Rory

A Follow-Up:

Rory, you make an interesting point. Did we build this movie up too much? I confessed to you as we set for the theater how excited I was and I'd been waiting for it since the moment I read Lewis and Anderson had joined forces. But then I've built up other movies to colossal proportions and a good number of them not only met those expectations but also surpassed them. So, speaking only for myself, I don't think the hype inside my own mind caused it to stink any worse than it did.

I do have to give credit to Paul Thomas Anderson for making a film divisive enough that it will probably be poured over and argued about for years and years. Upon seeing it and thinking about it I had to turn to some other reviewers to see what sense they were able to make of the film, most especially in regards to the conclusion.

(Listen, people, you've got to see this movie if for no other reason than to see the end. No one, no matter how articulate, no matter how talented with the written word, could ever describe it in print. It must be witnessed, for better or worse.)

You either love it or hate it. It's such a generic saying but, man, I just don't believe there's any other way to put it. No one alive could possibly get to the conclusion of this film and merely say, "That was fun" or "I got my money's worth on that one."

In school I was terrible at algebra. Absolutely terrible. None of it made any sense to me. It still doesn't. I'd sit and stare at one algebraic equation for hours, trying to decipher how to solve it, and come up empty every time. No matter if someone explained it to me or not I'd just scratch my head, confused, realizing this subject of algebra was something I could not grasp and didn't really care to grasp.

"There Will Be Blood" is an algebraic equation.

- Onward & Upward, Nick