Axel Foley
Posts: 731
Joined: 15/10/2005
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I’ve not been on these forums for a while, so there’s quite a bit of reviewing to catch up on. There Will Be Blood is owed particular attention by me though I don’t have enough time to do it justice.
First off I must say congratulations to Helen on her review. Credit where it’s due and her review does the film the justice it is due.
The film? Well it’s epic yet personal and easy on the eye yet so harsh and gritty. Paul Thomas Anderson manages to cover a great amount ground and take the viewer through so many extremes that the film quite felt like nothing else I’ve seen. Yes there are elements of Treasure of Sierra Madre and also the lesser-known James Stewart vehicle Thunder Bay, but as many have already noted, There Will be Blood is unlike anything to have gone before.
As a play on greed and the corrupting influence of money and power it has few rivals. Day Lewis’s larger than life performance, moreover, is subtler than some would believe. Yes he spits out dialogue as though a landowner blocking his path, but watch how he nurtures and looks on in adoration at young H.W. Is it genuine love? His intelligent portrayal poses such questions to the viewer: this isn’t a film you can forget in a hurry.
Hell I’m writing this almost two months since I saw it and those subtleties stick in my mind as much as the milkshake analogies, blazing rigs or indeed the sonorous strings and percussion of the score. There Will Be Blood is rightly being hailed as one of the decade’s great films and in time will be regarded as one of the greats period. Can’t wait to see it again.
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ORIGINAL: shadow
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ORIGINAL: richardpettet
Acts one and two are great, the third, however, descends into Daniel Day Lewis doing his best Al PAcino impersonation. That's to say scenery chewing showboating. I couldn't disagree more strongly with Empire's assessment that "it finishes with a scene that seems tonally so at odds with everything that has gone before, jars so horribly, that you're afraid it's scuppered the entire thing - until you go home, think about it for a day or two, and realise that it's perfect." It's not perfect, it's hilariously mis-judged. People were actually laughing as though it were a Farrelly film. Day Lewis is the best thing about the first half of the movie and easily the worst thing about the second half.
Spoilers herein, possibly:
I loved the ending. When I saw it I thought "what were they talking about? This is brilliant!" I didn't feel it was "tonally so at odds with everything that has gone before" but rather a cathartic explosion of all the muted anger that had been boiling inside Daniel Plainview, and therefor inside me, throughout the film. I felt it fit perfectly.
It was, in a way, what I had been increasingly waiting to happen for the film's duration. And I could and did identify with Plainview. Maybe that's because I too hate most people and want to get away from everyone. So, I don't know, maybe I'm alone here, but I felt his pain and madness take over a bit in the same vain as they are taking over me in real life. So the ending was good -- both purgative, and a grim view into the future, into the end, of someone who has become drunk with power and anger.
It's a grand finale, yes, and the fact that it may cause some people to laugh -- it made me smile for sure -- is not a bad thing at all.
Agree with that (well apart from wanting to do a Plainview that it is). There was complete silence in the auditorium I was sat in, so clearly different audiences see it differently. I think if it did make me smile, it was down to Eli’s complete naivety. He thinks Plainview is a friend after he helped him get permission to stick a pipeline through the land. He’s like a child coming round to play, but this is a man’s world and one in which the weak get squashed, something Plainview delights in. We’ve already seen a hint of his sociopathic nature in dealing with the oilmen after they innocently enough give him some guidance on parenting. He’d have killed them under different circumstances and the Anderson puts that thought into the viewer’s mind right there: there will be blood.
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