There Will Be Blood Review

"There Will Be Blood" reviews

Movie

There Will Be Blood

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2009-06-16 00:03:43

Rating

4/5

Provider

CinemaSource

Review

Art was a dying form in movies prior to Paul Thomas Anderson's bold epic There Will Be Blood, a must-miss for most moviegoers but a truly unforgettable experience for the rest--try as they might to forget it.

Story

For the first several minutes of There Will Be Blood--just a small portion of its 160--there is no dialogue. Then Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) strikes oil. The year is 1898, and as time jumps ahead, Plainview is soon no longer struggling to make ends meet. By the turn of the 20th century, the oil prospector is something of a traveling salesman in California, getting local farmers to give up their land so he can drill, with his young adopted son/gimmick (Dillon Freasier) in tow. Until, that is, he stumbles upon a goldmine: a rural farm teeming with oil just beneath it. He promises to make the landowners, the Sunday family, as rich as he himself will become as a result. But the landowner's teenage son Eli (Paul Dano), a highly religious evangelist, doesn't much care for money. In fact, he doesn't much care for Daniel, his motives, or his ungodliness, and looks to cure him of these ills, at which Daniel scoffs. The two clash on more than one occasion before not seeing each other for a while. At the end of the movie, the year is 1927. Daniel is now a madman oil tycoon/recluse living off of his riches and exploitations, stumbling about his oil-made mansion with alcohol in hand. He's a shred of his former self, only much wealthier. In walks his old buddy/adversary Eli, who sobers him right up.

Acting

As complicated a thespian god as Daniel Day-Lewis has always been in his career, his acting skill has been consistently and easily the best. Every performance of his is great to the same degree, and Daniel Plainview, a character unlike any he has ever played, is no exception. The actor, known for his long breaks between movies and his Method-like transformations, is so powerful here that his performance is as responsible for the tone as any of director Paul Thomas Anderson's work. Day-Lewis can often be heard delivering diatribes on humanity in There Will Be Blood, typically while sporting a devilish grin more disturbing than the film's most violent scenes. It makes you wonder: Who would even want to go so deep into a character so dark? But the minutiae of Plainview--the walk, the demeanor, the misanthropy--round out Day-Lewis' incredible performance more than the spoken words. Young actor Paul Dano (Little Miss Sunshine) is equally intense as Plainview's pious opponent/lightning rod, and maybe more--maybe, just maybe, his innermost demon. It's a performance worthy of a Supporting Actor nod, but ultimately, this is Day-Lewis' show.

Direction

There Will Be Blood is the cliché of an auteur fighting for his art, as evidenced by its length and obtuseness; otherwise, though, it is the anti-cliché (and anti-crowd pleaser). For that we can thank--yes, thank--Paul Thomas Anderson, who, as his three other well-known films (Boogie Nights, Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love) hinted, was probably dying for a film of this limitless grandeur. While Anderson's adaptation of Upton Sinclair's Oil! could be seen as a veiled allegorical wink to modernism, it's really a story about an oilman, the money that his oil hath wrought, and the demons that swirl around him and his religious detractors. Anderson, the genius writer, has conjured up a tale of evil, family and greed as well as a religiosity/secularism push/pull that is at once opaque and crystal clear. Anderson, the genius director, frames a story that is beautiful and horrifying, neither of which is ever mutually exclusive. The highly deliberate writer-director clearly values quality over quantity, and he got both out of this movie, an epic masterpiece in a career so young. There Will Be Blood also has this year's far-and-away best score, from Radiohead guitarist/electronics mastermind Jonny Greenwood, which fills in any empty spots of weirdness and/or tension left vacant by Anderson, and maximizes such spots elsewhere. Anderson now has shot to the No. 1 spot on the Hollywood-outlaw list with this absolute non-adventure of epic proportions. He is utterly unconcerned with any sort of expectations--from audiences or studios. Hell, you could even call it a bit of a f-you to everyone except his fans and cinephiles. Congrats, PTA!

Bottom Line

Hollywood.com rated this film 4 stars.

Movie

There Will Be Blood

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2008-02-01 19:42:45

Provider

MRIB

Review

Set in the early 19th century Daniel Day-Lewis plays Daniel Plainview, an ambitious man who, after discovering oil in his mine, decides to travel through New Mexico buying drilling rights to private property.

It's during this time that he meets a young preacher (Paul Dano), who has the the perfect land that Plainview has been looking for to start an oil business. What develops is mesmerising tale of greed, obsession and ultimately loneliness.

Paul Thomas Anderson has crafted an epic slice of cinema, harking back to the sweepingly assured films of old. If Boogie Nights was inspired by Martin Scorsese films and Magnolia was a love letter to Robert Altman, then There Will Be Blood is his nod of the cap to John Ford movies.

It's a handsomely shot film, with some jaw dropping vistas. Add in Radiohead's Johnny Greenwood who provides the haunting score and the only thing that could ruin the show is the performances.

Lucky then that the film rests on the shoulders of Day-Lewis. It's an immaculate performance by Lewis and is being rightly praised as his best one yet. It's a powerhouse showcase of a man driven by greed and hatred. As he says in the film "I have a competition in me. I don't want anyone else to succeed".

The film itself is probably twenty minutes long, but whenever Lewis is on screen you won't find much else to complain about. Spellbinding stuff.

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