Movie Review: There Will Be Blood
Published March 02, 2008
All this sets up what I thought was going to be the real story here. I imagined the moral conflict that would play out between Plainview’s cynical manipulation of almost everyone in the story, all for the purpose of defeating them, and his obvious love for the boy H.W. Plainview says at one point, “I’ve got competition in me,” and this drive pushes him to remarkable feats of lying, self-aggrandizement and cheating — even murder. Yet he embraces the boy and loves him.
When the accident that deafens H.W. takes place, I thought that Plainview was going to have to find special ways to succor the boy, to save him, to bring him up in a soulful manner. The battle between the two internal expressions — of savage emotional manipulation and singular love --was going to be a great one, filled, I imagined, with conflict and moral difficulties, failure and grudging acceptance of fate, of battling against fate.
But no such things happened. Once Plainview’s oil holdings begin to multiply exponentially, the boy’s injured presence becomes too much for him to bear, and he sends him off to some sort of school for the deaf. The boy plays little further part in his life until many, many years later, after the boy’s marriage, when he finally is able to confront the now emotionally destroyed older man.
It is the decision by screenwriter/director Paul Thomas Anderson to get rid of the boy that ruins the film.
H.W. is taken away about halfway through it. From this point on, Plainview descends into simple, murderous evil. So inexorable in his single-minded grubbing for every inch of land and every drop of oil, he becomes a tycoon, a profoundly compromised liar, a drunk, a deadbeat father, and a murderer.
Day-Lewis is up to most of this. His portrayal of this megalomaniac criminal is itself megalomaniac, and for a good part of the movie he’s quite effective. The fault in the film lies not with his performance (except in a few important scenes — see below). We’re watching a consummate actor here, one who can breathe profound nuance into small and large scenes, and Day-Lewis almost always succeeds with breathtaking brio. He’s playing what at first appears to be an amazing character, and he embodies Plainview in a way that I’ve seldom seen in film or on stage.
- Movie Review: There Will Be Blood
- Published: March 02, 2008
- Type: Review
- Section: Video
- Filed Under: Video: Drama
- Writer: Terence Clarke
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finally got around to watching the infamous There Will Be Blood... Daniel-Day Lewis' performance was top-notch. He takes well to the overbearing, violent father-figure role -- he also did this in Gangs of New York.
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Well that was a nice review of the film. Thank goodness this reviewer chose not to compare the film to one of Kubrick's films. I think it's a bit of a stretch to compare this film with the works of S. Kubrick but it does indeed attempt to approach it. I must clearly state however, that it's attempted style-copy fails in each attempt. I'm going to blame its failure on the editing and mismatched musical soundtrack.
The editing of the film usually done these days under strict control of the director, almost seemed to intend on lengthening the runtime just for the sake of being able to add the word "epic" to the list of adjectives used for it's description.
The scoring for the film I contend was an attempt to rip off the production company by producing "loops" of percussion and noise that didn't sync to anything other than the composer's mood or "feeling" established at the beginning 3 or 5 seconds of each scene. That there are many 2 to 4 minute scenes speaks to the amount nauseating repetition within each scene and occasionally these "loop-tracks" would span several scenes without any changes. So the composer spent about one one-hundredth of the time and effort that would normally be required to produce a typically "good" scoring of a film of this length.
As is I can produce all these scores myself on my computer at home in a $5,000 studio in about 2 weeks time. Many of the "loops" additionally contained recognizable sound effects from very inexpensive instrument and effects CDs available on the web for well under $100.
Either problem if remedied would bring the quality of this film indeed much closer to a Kubrick level of standards. If the scenes were edited down to a more reasonable length the soundtrack would require less repair as a result and if even only the soundtrack were scored professionally the scenes might not cause the tedium that had me wanting to walk out of the theater on many occasions.
Additionally, reviewers of this film could add interest and intrigue by mentioning the real world counterpart that the Daniel Plainfield character was indeed based on. Of course that would require them to do a bit of research - gawd forbid.