Mar 17, 2008 06:43 PM
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With a title like “There will be Blood", this is not some balls-to-the-wall slasher-flick. This one is an epic movie simply perfect in every way, every scene are spot on. PT Anderson delivers perhaps his best work with "There Will Be Blood". Unlike "Magnolia", the film's daunting runtime is not very daunting whilst watching it. "There Will Be Blood" opens with stillness and ends with a bang. It speaks not with words but bombastic images and sounds, flashes of countryside and jolts of strings(composed by the master Radiohead guitarist Johnny Greenwood). In the most complete way I can and want to summarize it, the film tells the tale of an Oil-prospector and the those he forms relationships(if one can call them that) in the Southwest from the early 1900's to the late 20's.
Daniel Plainview(Daniel Day Lewis), an obsessive hard working miner learns and rises to become shrewd oil extracting businessperson – when he is approached by a poor Sunday family with a prospect of selling their oil-filled Texas rural hinterland to him. Daniel presents himself as a social family man by projecting a boy HW(Dillon Freasier) - he has adopted from a dying miner – as his own son. There is Paul Sunday(Paul Dano), an aspiring boy wanting to become a prophet – who wants his vested interest of building a church fulfilled by the richness of Daniel who is using their land. Daniel despises Paul's religiosity. In an accident HW loses his hearing and that presents subtle changes in Daniel's personality of father and businessman. . Unable to oversee his oil wells and care for his son, he sends him to a school for the deaf in San Francisco without even saying goodbye. He is at first taken in by a stranger Henry(Kevin J. O'Connor), purporting to be his long lost brother but when his true identity is discovered, turns on him with a vengeance. This leads to an ending that is both a brilliant tour de force and surprisingly comedic.
This is the “Citizen Kane” of this decade and director Paul Thomas Anderson here has crafted what everyone everywhere seems to be raving about; a Kubrickian-style influenced, relevant, symbolic, hard-to-watch yet hard-to-look-away-from masterpiece.
The use of music in the film is unnerving and compelling. Anderson has gotten a fantastic soundtrack from Johnny Greenwood. It was a shame that it was ineligible for the Oscars as it's one of the best scores of the past few years .Joining Day-Lewis is Paul Dano as Eli Sunday. Dano balances out his character appropriately, giving Sunday the calm and silent demeanor that stands in sharp contrast to his passion for religion. The rest of the cast simply takes a supporting role amidst this struggle.
Now to the master, to call Daniel Day-Lewis phenomenal would be to insult him; it is quite possibly the greatest acting achievement of the decade. Though it is very similar to the character Bill'The Butcher' Cutting he played in Gangs of New York, this role has more depth and the transformation of the character was shocking. The incredible thing of all of Day-Lewis's performances is how much he embodies the character. Watch him as opens up to his stepbrother, or the scene where he is baptized or the “I drink your milkshake” scene which itself has become a catchphrase.
Anyone who loves movies owes it to themselves to see this piece of brilliance. You won't be disappointed if you look hard enough.
