There Will Be Blood
(2007) dir. Paul Thomas Anderson
viewed: 01/10/07 at Century San Francisco Centre, SF, CA
Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film, There Will Be Blood, is either completely genius or at least a very good stab at it. Anderson hasn’t actually been a favorite of mine, though he’s been a critical darling largely. I’d liked Boogie Nights (1997) well enough, despised Magnolia (1999), and couldn’t bring myself to watch Punch Drunk Love (2002) (it’s the Adam Sandler factor there). But when I saw the trailer for There Will Be Blood, I was pretty awe-inspired.
The intensity of the trailer, of Daniel Day-Lewis’ address to the audience (of potential investors and the literal audience) both focusing on his face and his delivery, as well as the scenes of oil wells exploding as he runs drenched in oil,running as he is carrying the limp body of his son,…an immense amount of power is generated. The trailer was as good a trailer as I’d seen in some time, evoking a sense of the epic, the American, of capitalism, ruthlessness. Heck, even the title is pretty impressive, implying within itself the intensity therein.
(Of course, if this had been the title of a Herschell Gordon Lewis film, you’d shirk the intensity for its probably literalism).
That said, the movie is intense, from the opening sequence to the unrefutable ending. Scored by Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead, the film has a constant ringing of the noise of violins that one hears when (usually) some intense moment is about to happen in a horror film, or even the screeching of a noonday air raid siren, or at its mellowest, off-rhythmic plunking of piano keys and drums. I realized early on that the music was setting the tone (as it does in most films). But the opening sequence, largely wordless, of Day-Lewis’ Daniel Plainview raggedly mining for silver and gold, nearly getting killed, but demonstrating his ruthless striving for success, not just survival via hard, hard work.
In a sense, that’s what the film starts out with, a sort of American success story, or a good capitalist success story. Plainview has built himself from nothing, worked hard as hell to develop himself into the oil business, developing himself beyond being the man in the hole to being an “oil man”. He even shows sides of familial love, having adopted the son of a co-worked killed in a tragic accident (that also nearly killed him).
Of course, having seen the trailers, though they give nothing away per se of the story, we’ve heard the tone of his ominous voice, speaking to land owners who he is trying to get into business with (which is the first spoken words of the film, too), we kind of already know he has an oily disingenuousness, and a stern scarcely hidden brutality behind his voice. I’ve read a few critiques of Daniel Day-Lewis’ chosen accent for the film, but I find it pretty appropriate and significant, beyond that, almost impossible to think of Daniel Plainview without it.
The story is epic, from its historical scope to its emotional scope, heavy and brutal and unnerving throughout. While some might compare this narrative to something like Citizen Kane (1941), it actually struck me almost more like Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho. While Anderson does imbue Plainview with humanity, unlike Ellis’ serial killer, the metaphor is the story. This is about the oil industry, its ruthlessness, its heart. It’s a critique of unrelenting capitalism, the social Darwinist. Citizen Kane wasn’t so much about the journalism business as it was about its failed antihero. There Will Be Blood has so much embedded in its being, that it’s hard to separate out the narrative completely from the ideological and social commentary.
And I’d be willing to say that if I am not 100% sure what Anderson is saying about Plainview in regards to religion and hypocrisy, then I am willing to bet that a lot of other people aren’t necessarily sure what he is trying to do there either. That doesn’t bother me necessarily, but I haven’t been able to make it out.
As for the level of success in this incredibly ambitious film, I have to say that whether it is brilliant and classical and important and lasting, or simply a strong though flawed film from other perspectives, it is unlike anything else and its ambition and power are fully worth investing in. The intensity level is so heightened throughout, whether in epic sequences like the fire in the oil well (which is brilliantly staged and shot) or intensive one-on-one conversations in which Plainview speaks from his blackened soul, it’s heavy, heavy, heavy. There are no quiet, peaceful, happy times. Everything is imbued with danger, duplicitousness, betrayal, if not evil. I walked out of the theater kind of stressed out.
Stressed out, but pretty impressed.
