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There Will Be an Amazing Film
Jan. 7th, 2008 09:28 pmOn Saturday night, Other Kenjari and I attended a late showing of There Will Be Blood. Do not miss this film - it is incredible. Loosely based on Upton Sinclair's novel Oil!, the movie is about Daniel Plainview, a ruthless and canny man who becomes an oil baron in southern California during the early 20th century. It's a vast epic that somehow manages an intimate feel. While the landscape is sprawling and stark, the struggles are herculean, and the stakes are very high, the story remains focused on a relatively small cast of characters. It's a rather challenging movie, with a great deal of complexity in the character interactions and without simple answers or explanations.
When I first read reviews of this movie, I thought perhaps some of the descriptions of Daniel Day-Lewis' performance might be a bit hyperbolic (one reviewer said that acting was an inadequate term for what he was doing), but now I see that there was no exaggeration. He is riveting and disappears into the role so completely that you forget you are watching someone play Daniel Plainview - you are simply watching Daniel Plainview. The rest of the cast is good, too. Especially Paul Dano, who plays Eli Sunday, a young evangelical preacher who is Plainview's rival for power. Sunday and Plainview constantly challenge each other for position and influence in a way that stays just under the surface, never spoken openly. Paul Thomas Andersen, the director, shows this struggle with a series of visual motifs that recur in the interactions between the two characters.
The score, by Johnny Greenwood, is incredible, too. It's the most modern-sounding film music I have heard in quite some time, showing the influence of Bartok, Crumb, and Schnittke. There are buzzing strings and a fair amount of stark dissonance. Yet it is completely appropriate and spectacularly effective. There's also a terrific stretch where Arvo Part's "Fratres" is used.
There Will Be Blood is a pretty long film - 2 hours and 38 minutes - but it's worth the time investment.
When I first read reviews of this movie, I thought perhaps some of the descriptions of Daniel Day-Lewis' performance might be a bit hyperbolic (one reviewer said that acting was an inadequate term for what he was doing), but now I see that there was no exaggeration. He is riveting and disappears into the role so completely that you forget you are watching someone play Daniel Plainview - you are simply watching Daniel Plainview. The rest of the cast is good, too. Especially Paul Dano, who plays Eli Sunday, a young evangelical preacher who is Plainview's rival for power. Sunday and Plainview constantly challenge each other for position and influence in a way that stays just under the surface, never spoken openly. Paul Thomas Andersen, the director, shows this struggle with a series of visual motifs that recur in the interactions between the two characters.
The score, by Johnny Greenwood, is incredible, too. It's the most modern-sounding film music I have heard in quite some time, showing the influence of Bartok, Crumb, and Schnittke. There are buzzing strings and a fair amount of stark dissonance. Yet it is completely appropriate and spectacularly effective. There's also a terrific stretch where Arvo Part's "Fratres" is used.
There Will Be Blood is a pretty long film - 2 hours and 38 minutes - but it's worth the time investment.
