| Posted by: Monotreme at February 17, 2008, 5:09 pm | | Topic: There Will Be Blood Forum: JoBlo | | (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007) Many filmmakers over the years have made astounding and sudden leaps in their filmmaking styles; whether it is a change of crew, a change of scope or a change of technique, the history of film is bountiful with examples of such departure from what is normally expected from a certain director. After introverted, personal, subtle, in-the-streets films such as Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, Martin Scorsese’s follow-up project was a big, grand, glossy throwback to the big-budgeted musicals of the Golden Age in New York, New York. Later, after a “return to form” from the director in dark, star-studded projects like Goodfellas, Cape Fear and Casino, Scorsese went to Tibet and shot Kundun with a cast of unknowns and telling a story I don’t think anybody thought Scorsese would want to tell. After securing his rank as Hollywood’s prominent director of big-budget sci-fi and fantasy crowd-pleasers from Jaws and Indiana Jones to Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. When it was announced that he would direct the big-screen adaptation of The Color Purple, I’m sure that many people were in a stir. Which is why his success in tackling the real-life historic drama was even more surprising. David Lynch, the undeniable king of weird cinema, followed up a disturbing, other-worldly filmography including Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks and Lost Highway with a film so astray from his usual style, those unfamiliar with Lynchw ould never link the two. A more recent example is Darren Aronofsky, who went from directing gritty, seedy, contemporary bottom-of-the-barrel dramas to helming a majestic science fiction epic. A less successful example includes Robert Altman, deriving from his signature multi-character mesh dramas by directing the musical family film Popeye. Now, in There Will Be Blood, we have one of the most prominent transformations of a film style in recent memory. It is also an unprecedented masterpiece and one of the best films of recent years. Before delivering this new opus, Paul Thomas Anderson was already, in my book at least, one of the greatest contemporary filmmakers and certainly one of the best to grow and flourish out of the independent film scene and Sundance Film Festival. His films were unique in their style and scope even though Anderson didn’t even try to hide his cinematic references; he openly discussed influences from Robert Altman and Martin Scorsese, and these influences were more than prominent in his films, especially his two oeuvres, Boogie Nights and Magnolia, both of whom characterized with an ensnaring sense of visual style with dizzying, ever-flowing camerawork and featuring broad, multi-character palettes. Punch-Drunk Love was a deviation from his previous films in that its scope was notably smaller, but Anderson’s visual style and “indie” film quirkiness were prominently front-and-center. It seems that the 4-year break since his last film have changed the director, who returns in There Will Be Blood with what is his most mature, epic and self-fulfilling work to date. Stripping himself of his Altman and Scorsese influences, this time around Anderson provides us not with a sprawling mesh of multiple characters or quirky dramas, but rather a singular, monolith character study perhaps most easily comparable to Citizen Kane; There Will Be Blood is, first and foremost, an utterly full and complete dissection of its main character, Daniel Plainview. It is a haunting, mesmerizing depiction of a man so hateful of all of mankind; his own self-hatred eventually leads to his monumental self de-construction. In our initial introduction to Daniel Plainview, we see him digging for silver alone in a claustrophobic mine shaft; when he takes a fall and breaks his leg, he is fully capable and willing to drag himself out, involving as little people in his life as possible and doing whatever he can on his own. Plainview is a master of deception, and his calm demeanor and tendency to serenely agree with everything even manages to trick us, the audience, until his eventual unraveling as the film progresses. By the end of the film, as Plainview floats like a ghost through his massive, dark, abandoned mansion, he has reached the rock-bottom of his own self-destruction and comes clean to all those who considered Plainview close in their lives. After viewing the film I tried to imagine another actor portraying the main role, but came out empty handed. Half of what makes the character of Plainview is Daniel Day-Lewis’ proficient, spellbinding, grand performance. His turn in this film has prompted me to go back and seek out all of Day-Lewis’ previous films in an attempt to take in all of his film roles, and as I see more and more of him it is becoming my opinion that he is the single greatest actor working today, and perhaps who has ever worked. His ability to completely and utterly disappear into his roles; the wide variety of roles he has played – going from a gentle aristocrat in The Age of Innocence to an insane and viciously violent gang boss in Gangs of New York to a real-life quadriplegic artist in My Left Foot. The man is a truly a mystery; reclusive, managing to be perhaps the only actor working today who is selective about his film roles and seemingly refuses to act in something “just for the money” as many of the great actors have had to do over the years – it’s no coincidence that he has done only 12 movies in 20 years; 4 of them in the last 10 years. After Gangs of New York he swore to never act again, instead focusing on his hobby of shoe-making – but I can’t seem to express my thankfulness that first his director-wife Rebecca Miller and now Paul Thomas Anderson have managed to coax him back into the profession. His recluse is a curse for movie-lovers, and it is simply unfair to us movie-lovers, not to mention unfortunate, that perhaps the most talented actor of all time denies us his genius. His climactic performance in There Will Be Blood is not only a career best, but is also, in my humble opinion, a top contender for the single greatest film performance of all time. Again deriving from his usual style, Anderson has stripped himself of his extensive troupe of famous regulars and populates his film mostly with unknowns and non-actors, although he does provide us with one more familiar face in the cast, the young Paul Dano. Although the young actor has previously had small, supporting roles in television and some lowbrow movies, last year he wowed us with his poignant turn in Little Miss Sunshine. If that increase in quality projects was any indication, his gripping, powerful turn in There Will Be Blood assures that his career is heading in the right direction. It is an incredibly skillful performance, least of all just because of its impressive ability to riff off of and play against the freight train that is Daniel Day-Lewis. It is a performance that deserves a lot more praise than it gets – people no doubt distracted by Day-Lewis’ dominating role, but I’ll have Dano know that I’m rooting for him, if that’s any consolation. Although the film is prominently an epic character study of Daniel Plainview, not much less important are Plainview’s dynamics and interactions with Eli Sunday. The yin to Plainview’s yang, Sunday seems at once like the polar opposite of Plainview and at the same time like his soul mate. The negating relationship between their characters is even more interesting when noticing how similar the two are: Eli only initially embraces Plainview out of his own greedy intentions of building his evangelist church; like Plainview, Eli antagonizes all those who surround him, including his own family and father; also like Plainview, Eli seems to get pure satisfaction out of humiliating his opposite. Their dynamic, although prominently featured throughout the film in various scenes of conflict, reaches a peak in the film’s hypnotic, mind-blowing cumulative finale; a final scene so mesmerizing, so foundation-shattering, so intense that it left me physically shaking as the credits began to roll. Indeed, Anderson deserves endless commemoration and praise not only for his achievement in writing one of the most epic, rounded, captivating character studies of all time, but also for the incredible directorial abilities he demonstrates throughout the film. Indeed the film, which works so incredibly as a whole, also features a nearly endless arsenal of effective, mesmerizing scenes that work all on their own. From the opening scenes depicting Plainview’s initial discovery of oil and gradual building of his enterprise to his speech selling his proposal to the townsfolk to the bursting of the well in Little Boston to his confrontation with Eli to the restaurant scene to the baptism; the film is absolutely filled to the brim with these incredible, astounding dramatic peaks and scenes that are marvelously thrilling without Anderson even once requiring to include elements more thrilling than the simple straight-forwardness of Plainview’s character and the oil business. Just watching Plainview discuss the logistics of the oil business with his son or other prospectors is fascinating and captivating; I don’t know how he did it, but Anderson has managed to create a movie that lures and captures so effectively, one doesn’t even notice its near 3-hour runtime and is left thirsty for more. Aside from being a directorial triumph, the film is also an impeccably successful technical accomplishment. Uncharacteristic of such a drastic change in tone and style, Anderson has retained some of his regular production crew, in particular cinematographer Robert Elswit, who has accompanied him since his directorial debut and has always delivered outstanding work that truly reaches a peak in this film, where he captures the barren desert landscape with impeccable style and shoots the claustrophobic interiors with adept skill. His use of darkness in the frame is incomparable – just look at how sparsely he lights the scenes set in Plainview’s grand mansion at the end of the film. Another regular collaborator is editor Dylan Tichenor, who garnered a much-deserved Oscar nomination for his incredible work on this film but whom has always handled Anderson’s long, sprawling works with incredible pacing and flow. Also worth mentioning is the spine-chilling, majestic original score by Radiohead guitarist Johnny Greenwood, whose violent crescendos and drum beats give the film an eerie, otherworldly and absolutely spellbinding atmosphere. Anderson combines this compelling score with some non-original classical compositions, adding a new, Kubrick-esque twist to his impeccable use of non-original music in Boogie Nights. Like the great auteurs of film, Anderson has a series of recurring themes that come up in one way or another in his works. Although Anderson frequently (and understandably) cites major influences from Martin Scorsese and Robert Altman, in terms of themes he owes a lot more to none other than Steven Spielberg. Broken families and specifically father-son relationships is a theme that appears almost constantly throughout all of Spielberg’s works, and similarly, Anderson also seems occupied with issues of family and specifically father-son relations. From lonely young isolated characters finding surrogate fathers in Sydney (John and Sydney) and Boogie Nights (Dirk and Jack) to full-fledged father-son crises in Magnolia (Frank and Earl, Claudia and Jimmy, Stanley and his father, Donnie and his parents); from Boogie Nights’ porn industry community serving as a surrogate family to protagonist Dirk Diggler to Barry’s family oppression in Punch-Drunk Love, Anderson has long been dealing with these issues and themes which can also be found in There Will Be Blood, taking the form of Daniel’s broken, ambivalent, dishonest relationship with his unofficially adopted son that, like the other themes of the film, comes full circle in its thrilling finale. As epic and engrossing as the prominent Daniel Plainview character study is, the true sensation of the film and the monument of Anderson’s achievement is just how many other layers he has managed to give the film. It’s not just an epic character study; it is far more than that. First and foremost, Anderson provides us with an epically tragic depiction of the American Dream gone wrong. Plainview seems to be the zenith of the principals of the American Dream: he is self-made, he doesn’t bend to others’ wills, and he goes at it and makes it to the top alone and by his own power. But where can a line be drawn between the pursuit of prosperity and full-out greed? He single-handedly provides utilities, schools, jobs, development, agriculture, and prosperity for the small community he chooses as his drilling site. But he states from the start that these will only be side effects of his own personal greed. Delving further into this theme, perhaps Little Boston can be seen as a sort of micro-cosmos of America, its turn-of-the-century West American Frontier setting serving as the definitive example of an ever-evolving society. Plainview’s arrival, encompassing purchase of the land and effective enslavement of the community to his industrialist ambitions is an extremely effective small-scale parallel to the overall industrialist revolution that occurred in turn-of-the-century America. Anderson further embellishes his themes and message with the inclusion of the church’s aspiration to similarly enslave the innocent community and bend it to its own objectives, much like the industrialism. Anderson succeeds even further in delivering, surprisingly enough, an all-out contemporary message film. One of the most prominent subjects today’s global politics deal with is the oil crisis, many global conflicts including the United States’ two skirmishes in Iraq blamed directly on corporate greed for oil and the need for a foothold in the oil-rich Middle East. The subject has been handled in many contemporary geo-political message films, namely the recent Syriana, but Anderson succeeds the near impossible and manages to deliver a similar message of geo-politics and corporate greed, revolving around oil – despite his film being set a century before our modern-day crisis. Paul Thomas Anderson never ceases to amaze me. Two of his previous four movies are, in my opinion, unprecedented masterpieces, both have garnered 10/10 ratings from me, and both are very high up on my top 100 movies list. I thought that contemporary cinema couldn’t get much better than Boogie Nights and Magnolia. But Anderson has succeeded in proving his true worth by delivering something that is at once entirely different from his previous two masterpieces but also an unparalleled modern masterpiece of its own. I feel torn because after viewing this year’s other neo-Western masterpiece, No Country for Old Men, I was sure that this was the Coen Brothers’ year, but after being absolutely blown away by Anderson’s opus, my initial opinion is challenged. Masterpiece doesn’t even seem fitting enough a word for this unbelievable, indescribable work. Anderson creates such thrilling scenes that my heart was frantically pounding throughout most of the film, reaching a peak in one of the most absolutely, downright incredible scenes in recent motion picture history, the now infamous bowling alley scene. This movie literally blew me away; it shook me to the bone. With There Will Be Blood, Anderson has crafted a technical, directorial and thematic masterwork, reinforced by an inexpressibly remarkable performance by Daniel Day-Lewis, and delivers the best movie of 2007 and one of the single greatest modern classics of contemporary cinema. RATING: 10/10. |
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