[DVD REVIEW (R1)] THERE WILL BE BLOOD
Coming this late to the ‘game’ in reviewing Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest opus, is there anything left for me to say about There Will Be Blood? Leaving my thoughts until in the wake of its Region 1 DVD release means I’m bringing them to the table under the weight of two Academy Awards (Actor, Cinematography) and some of the most stellar critical acclaim in recent times. Should I have any reason to criticise the film, it’d probably feel as if I’d be sleeping with Floyd Mayweather’s mother, taking a dump on her whilst she slept afterwards then spray-painting the words “Floyd Is A Bum-Bandit!” on the outside of his house.
There’s no disputing that There Will Be Blood is an outright masterpiece. A modern classic in every sense. It reeks class from its masterful, wordless opening fifteen minutes through to its polarising drenched-in-insanity final scenes. It almost seems as if the film exists only to show once and for all that Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the most insanely talented directors alive today. One wonders whether Terence Malick, Robert Altman, William Friedkin, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Michael Mann, John Carpenter, Oliver Stone, Spike Lee and The Coen Brothers didn’t meet secretly many decades ago to wank into a test tube, mix the junk up and pour it into Mrs Anderson’s cooch, with the resulting baby popping out nine months later and growing up to hand us masterpiece after masterpiece.
For those not in the know, There Will Be Blood is Anderson’s presentation of a living nightmare, following Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day Lewis) and his ‘son’, independent oil men at the turn of the 20th Century, who go looking for prospects in California only to end up challenged every step of the way by Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), a preacher whose ambition and drive is every bit the equal of Plainview Snr.
What surprised me most about watching There Will Be Blood in the wake of all the “hype” wasn’t just how well it held up in the face of it all, but what an enormously comedic sensibility it held throughout. The film isn’t a comedy, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not as poe-faced as you’d think it to be considering the themes on offer. Another thing that amazed me was some of the shots within the film. Now I know Paul Thomas Anderson is a fantastic director and there really should be no surprise in that he managed to achieve what he has achieved with this film, but it knocked me for six at just how gorgeous some of the shots in this film are. I cannot believe I’m admitting this but some of his compositions were just so goddamn gorgeous that they nigh on moved me to tears. Any moment in this film could be frozen, printed and framed and it would rival some of the most grandiose and respected pieces of art in history. I’m not kidding.
The only analogy I can think of in order to discuss Anderson’s ‘consummate work of art’, as Manohla Dargis at The New York Times rightly refers to it, as a film in its entirety though is to go down the whole “David versus Goliath” or “Champion versus Underdog” route. In my humble opinion, there was never any shadow of a doubt that this film would be nothing less than sublime. Paul Thomas Anderson has turned to ‘gold’ every single cinematic property he has touched. Daniel Day Lewis has never, and I mean seriously never, given a bad performance in his career. His choice of project and what he invests in it is flawless to say the least. This was as about as certain as it gets for a film to be delivered to the screens as a ready-made masterpiece that would live and breath as an iconic property for decades to come. And of course, on delivery, that is exactly what it is. So having ‘underdog’ sensibilities myself, I backed those films more deserving of being championed, like Gone Baby Gone, In The Valley of Elah and Michael Clayton, not to mention Before The Devil Knows Your Dead more recently!
When the Academy awarded Best Picture and Best Director to No Country For Old Men I think they were acknowledging the “underdog” mentality in going with a film that was no certainty for success; three leading roles cast with a character actor not used to heading up a picture (Josh Brolin), an under-appreciated ‘old guard’ (Tommy Lee Jones) and a respected – but foreign – actor with no commercial reputation (Jarvier Bardem), directed by people who many had considered to have long lost their way. No Country For Old Men was the film that many considered to be The Coen Brothers going against the odds and delivering a masterpiece in the process.
You could say Anderson and company were flying in the face of it too in making a “period” movie of epic length and scope with a hardly A-list cast and a storyline that, whichever way you manhandle it, is a skewering, left of centre, darkly comic study of man’s descent into madness through his greed for power. But word and trust was a lot stronger with this particular project. It was, going into awards season, Apollo Creed to every other movie on the planet’s Rocky Balboa.
Like Anderson’s directing, Daniel Day Lewis is unarguably fantastic in the role of Daniel Plainview but is there any surprise in that? As I said, he won’t commit to anything unless he can perform with clarity, realism, passion and truth. Every performance he gives is either majestic or a mini-study in pitch-perfect performance. That’s why the underdog mentality in me rooted for Tommy Lee Jones in In The Valley of Elah. Day Lewis could’ve given this performance in his sleep if he wanted to. Jones actually found vulnerability within himself that he very rarely let’s the public see and gave a performance that probably shook DeNiro and Pacino from their “phoning-it-in-for-the-cheque” slumber and made them question whether they should fire their agents.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that There Will Be Blood is every bit as good as you’ve heard it to be but is there any surprise there? Did any of you ever really doubt that it would be anything less than the masterful, sublime, awe-inspiring, transcendent, magnificent, strikingly beautiful piece of cinema that it is?
Having experienced Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch Drunk Love and now this (Hard Eight aka Sidney is a film I’ve finding it ridiculously difficult to get a hold of!) all I can say is I cannot wait to see what Paul Thomas Anderson gifts me with next.
*****
(That’s, of course, Five “Popcorns”)
Credit Counseling - Credit Consolidation - Debt Consolidation - Phoenix Landscaping
One Response to “[DVD REVIEW (R1)] THERE WILL BE BLOOD”
It is a GORGEOUS movie. That shot of HW and Daniel on the floor, covered in oil….the shot of the burning oil well and Daniel standing there watching…the whole thing is a gorgeous work of art. And it’s redundant at this point to talk about how awesome DDL is. It’s even more mind-boggling when I hear him speak in his normal voice. The man is so quiet! How the hell did Plainview come out of THAT guy?
Trackbacks
What's Your Opinion?