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There Will Be Blood - Chris’ Review
I have long been a fan of Paul Thomas Anderson. His latest, There Will Be Blood, has been hyped for quite a while and my expectations were very high. Perhaps too high.
I preface this by saying the film visually is stunning. It could be studied in film schools along side many of the other classics as text book examples of cinematography, editing, lighting, etc. However, it is the unraveling of story that ultimately costs the film a place in history.
There Will Be Blood is the story of Daniel Plainview(Daniel Day-Lewis), an oil man who sets out with his adopted son, H.W., to crush the competition in turn of the century California. As the son of a ranch owner, Paul Sunday, tips Plainview of his families land where the oil rises to the surface. Daniel acts quickly and buys the ranch and surrounding land with “second son” and local preacher Eli driving the hard bargain on behalf of the family. A deal is struck, workers are brought in, and the milking of the land begins.
The performance by Daniel Day-Lewis in the first half of the film is some of the best acting I have seen in a long time. He gives Plainview a commanding presence. He creates a salesman that is so convincing he could sell you a furnace in Hell. Less convincing is Paul Dano, who plays both ”brothers,” Paul and Eli. (I emphasise the role of Paul because, though it is never clarified in the film, I believe Paul and Eli are simply two different sides of the same person.) Dano never matches the realism that Day-Lewis offers. He only provides us with a caricature of the preacher role.
The story which is based on Upton Siclair’s Oil, seems to have very little to do with the original novel. It is much more about the current state of affairs concerning the United States and the Middle East. Plainview is very much the American bully selling, if not forcing, his expertise upon ignorant communities. Eli is Saudi Arabia (and perhaps a few other nations) cursing the American for its actions out of one side of its mouth, while gladly comprimising its beliefs for their own personal gain out of the other. The frame of the film shown above should look very familiar, and I am sure that it is no coincidence that Plainviews son’s name is H.W.
The parallels are quite obvious and that, in my opinion, is why the ending misses in the way it does. An ending has not yet been written concerning American relations with the Middle East and its continued conquest for oil. Yet Anderson has to end the film. In doing so he makes Daniel out to be a drunken madman, though no sign was previously given that these tendencies existed at all. You have spent nearly all of the film respecting this man and at the turn of a dime you can’t relate to him at all. (This why referred earlier to only the first half of the performance.) The antagonist Eli, still looking out for his own gain, pays the price he is supposed to pay, but because the Plainview character is so unrelatable it feels as if nothing has been accomplished. And that is where Anderson leaves us.
I understand that he is trying to leave us with questions that we have to answer by looking at our own world, but this is a story that requires a conclusion. I wish Anderson would have shown us his true feelings on the matter through these characters. I wish he would shown us how he thought this all might end. Instead he leaves it vague and lifeless. It is a true pity because the first part of this film is masterful and it deserves better.
Last 5 posts by Chris
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5 Responses to “There Will Be Blood - Chris’ Review”
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Excellent review, Chris. While I am not sure that the US/Middle East connection is as strong as you do, I think you really hit on the problem underlying the film.
So, so close to brilliance.
That is the beauty of great film. It can be interpreted in so many ways.
So … are you now saying it is a great film??
The narrative is not perfect, but cinematically it is a great film. So I am torn. I choose to remember this film for the first half and say that it was great. When reccomending it though, the will always be that asterisk(*) of the second half kind of falls apart.
I can forgive it for its faults, because I don’t think they are deathly to the film. They merely hold it back from greatness. We site many other examples like that, but the films still hold up.
The truth is, this is the hardest review I have written because it tears me in both directions. I want to talk bad about it, but something keeps me from doing so. Does that not make it great? I don’t know. But I haven’t stopped thinking about it since we saw it. That has to count for something.