Reviews

There Will Be Blood — Snark Review

So, I finally got my butt around to seeing this film. Hey, a movie is close to three hours long, I need to make very specific plans about when I can attend. (Actually, I think it clocks in at around 2:45, but still.) There’s also been a tremendous amount of buzz surrounding the film, and I did see it before it got it’s gazillion Academy Award nominations, and I wanted to see it because of that specifically. I was curious. However, I was kind of dreading the experience because I haven’t liked one frame of Paul Thomas Anderson’s work since Boogie Nights, which really just constitutes Magnolia and Punch Drunk Love. But I didn’t like them and both of them were highly praised, too.

But nothing, pretty much could prepare by how blown away I was by There Will Be Blood. Plus, the opening 20 minutes or so, which plays out without any dialogue whatsoever and chronicles the early tribulations of Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) digging out his first oil well is perhaps the best opening to any film I’ve seen in years. You don’t know who this guy is or what his story is, but those opening scenes just grip you with their sheer power and you’re in the Daniel camp — no matter what horrible, disgusting, rotten things he does — until the bitter end. Yes, I was serious above about finding the time to see the film, but while I was watching it, it was over in a flash it seemed and I was emotionally drained by the time the final credits came up.

It’s an extraordinarily complex film with a simple premise, which is basically a war of commerce over religion, both of which are presented as scams. On the commerce side, there’s Daniel Plainview, an unethical oil baron who will do and say anything — and seem completely sincere about it — to get his precious oil. On the God side, there’s Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), a preacher in the small town where Plainview wants to drill. Plainview promises all kinds of good stuff to Eli and the town, talking about the prosperity that will follow when black gold erupts from the ground. Of course, the only prosperity he cares about is in his own pockets.

But that doesn’t set up Sunday as the “good” guy. All he says he wants is money to grow his church, but he’s after a lot more than he lets on, too. His preacher is addicted to the power that leading a congregation brings. He’s not quite after money, but he’s after respectability at least. His preaching is the typical charlatan “drive the devil out” type of nonsense you hear from religious con artists. Sunday doesn’t want people to fall to their knees to praise God. He wants them to fall down to praise him.

Sunday and Plainview’s war is the central conceit of the film, but the story is really all about Daniel Plainview. He’s a tricky character. He’s so used to lying to get his way, he seems to lose sight of what he actually believes in. He’s fighting Sunday, but for what? And while Sunday is the main adversary, the core relationship of the film belongs to Plainview and his son H.W. (played for the majority of the film by Dillon Freasier). H.W. isn’t Daniel’s real son although the oil baron adopts him as a baby and treats him as nothing less than his own flesh and blood — although Daniel pretty much treats everyone like scum. Just as Daniel and Sunday war back and forth, Daniel and H.W.’s relationship travels on a rocky terrain. It’s not clear — both to the audience and within Daniel’s own heart — whether the father’s care is genuine or if it’s all just another con. A scene near the end of the film would seem to definitively answer that question, but Daniel has fed so much b-s through his life, how can one trust anything the man says?

Although the film is concerned with the ugly things that man does to one another, it’s really a beautiful movie with fantastic camera work by cinematographer Robert Elswit, who actually shot two Oscar-nominated films this year, both this and Michael Clayton. (Elswit’s nominated for just Blood, though.) The opening sequence is visually very claustrophobic and tense, while when the story eventually opens up, we get really gorgeous shots of the American plains.

Paul Thomas Anderson seems like he really challenged himself to break out of his comfortable milieu and he’s crafted an extraordinarily challenging film.

© 2008 Cinema Snark.