Time Capsule Review: "There Will Be Blood"

I recently stumbled upon some reviews I did back in college for the La Salle Collegian. In the interest of condensing all of my reviews on this site, I've decided to upload them sporadically throughout the next few weeks. I've chosen not to update them, mostly because I like the concept of reviews as time capsules for how we feel about movies at the time we first see them.

Below is a review of There Will Be Blood, which I originally reviewed in January of 2008. It’s a masterful film with a towering performance and a number of memorable scenes and quotes. Reading the review now, it’s hard to believe I made no mention of milkshakes.

There Will Be Blood is a gorgeously shot film.

Paul Thomas Anderson loves to dazzle. As a director, he usually accomplishes this feat with interesting color saturations and long tracking shots. As a writer, he calls upon fantastic moments (i.e. frogs raining from the sky) or odd deus ex machina (i.e. little pianos). However, with There Will Be Blood, Anderson has turned a corner. Although he’s still a dazzler, the writer-director has (mostly) abandoned his parlor tricks, limiting himself to the bare essentials in creating a mesmerizing character study that ranks alongside Citizen Kane in terms of pure ambition and scope.

Interestingly enough, Anderson opens the film with his lone embellishment—a nearly wordless 15-minute stretch in which he convincingly establishes the turn of the century setting and the fervor for oil. Functioning as the movie’s prologue, the sequence introduces Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) and surveys his ascent to success, so that by the time dialogue sets in and he proclaims, “Ladies and gentlemen, I am an oilman,” we know he’s not kidding.

Accompanied by his adopted son H.W. (Dillon Freasier), Plainview addresses these statements to a community that has discovered oil in its area. In trying to gain the people’s trust, Plainview realizes they have become too excitable, and he abandons them; they’re all wolves out for their fair share, and Plainview’s looking to deal with sheep.

By this point, Plainview is a successful man, with one strong strike paying him $5,000 a week and several other promising wells to boot. But it’s not enough for him, because he’s got a competition in him. He disdains paying for shipping and begrudges Standard Oil. He’s looking for a big score that will enable him to create his own oil empire so that he can, we later learn, retire from the society he hates with such fervor.

He eventually finds the ideal situation—an “ocean of oil” underneath the home of a bunch of sheep—but complications keep getting in the way. Some come on the business end—setbacks at the well and the invasive presence of Standard Oil—while others are more personal, like an accident at the oil field that leaves H.W. deaf or the arrival of long-lost brother Henry (Kevin J. O’Connor).

Despite all this, the biggest thorn in Plainview’s side continues to be the preacher Eli Sunday (an excellent Paul Dano), a self-righteous con-man who presents himself as a pious prophet. The interplay between these two emerges as a strong plot element, and also conjures themes of capitalism vs. religion.

However, through it all the backbone of the story remains that of a father and his son. Many critics are referring to Plainview as evil incarnate, and although I see the logic in this, I don’t buy it. The character that Day-Lewis and Anderson have created is too layered to be classified so easily. Plainview is a downright nasty guy, but he’s definitely more complex than the film’s most ardent critics are suggesting.

At times, he is shown to be tender with H.W. and then outright malicious; regretful for wrong treatment, while displaying a refusal to change. The relationship is drawn obtusely, and is left open to interpretation. My belief is that Plainview has feelings for H.W., but that he’s too emotionally retarded to act appropriately. The drive inside of him, the overwhelming hate he possesses, makes it impossible for him to do so. However, his desire for family (as seen in Plainview’s conversation with Henry) is evident.

For his part, Day-Lewis nails the intricacies of the role. Taking his memorable Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York to the next stage, Day-Lewis disappears into the character to deliver one of the best performances of the decade. Whatever your feelings on the film, it’s hard to deny he’s a powerhouse. Although the film's perfect from top to bottom, Anderson’s greatest masterstroke was to get Day-Lewis into th role.

Everything about the film, from Anderson’s brilliant script to Robert Elswit’s photography, is spot on. That said, special mention should be made of Johnny Greenwood’s majestic score. Taking a break from his regular gig as lead guitarist for Radiohead, Greenwood has perfectly echoed Plainview’s soul with a score that is both classical in structure and yet refreshingly experimental and discordant.

There Will Be Blood is not for everyone. Although it’s far more accessible than some of the more recent big studio art films like Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain, it will undoubtedly irk conventional moviegoers who are looking for a light, fun night at the movies. A+

Polarizing "The Master" Doesn't Quite Connect

Following the most intense, emotionally cathartic scene in
the film,the two stars of this "love story" share a cigarette.
Insert comparison to sex here.

Half-way through Paul Thomas Anderson’s polarizing The Master, someone tells Freddie Quell (a transformative Joaquin Phoenix), our gnarled, disturbed and sex-obsessed protagonist, "He's making all this up as he goes along. You don't see that?"

This accusation is directed at Lancaster Dodd (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), the leader of The Cause, a fanatical cult that is fighting a trillion-year-old battle to purify and free the soul by submitting members to a process that addresses trauma from past lives. It suggests that this man has no answers, no specific insight. But, having seen the film and read just a few of the vast array of interpretations, it's hard for me not to infer an unintended meta commentary.

Here we have a film focused on a man looking for answers in post WWII America, willing to suffer extremes to find salvation. And so this man stumbles upon a charmingly playful and seemingly wise "Master" whose Cause many damaged souls have fully adopted, assumedly because they are captivated by his salesmanship and because they so desperately want to believe. All this, despite the fact that the Master himself is increasingly losing conviction in his own rhetoric, as evidenced by his being drawn to a primal silly animal and a late-in-the-game modification that suggests members "imagine" not "remember" prenatal past during processing sessions.

I would make the case those words of critique can be levied at the film itself. Like Dodd, the film is undeniably compelling as it suggests great truths can be found via submission to its all encompassing greatness. And it too seems to lose conviction as it embraces malleability in a catch-all attempt to maintain some sort of mythic status, while proving to be as hopelessly inquisitive as its titular character.

Extending the comparison, the film also has a number of ardent followers who claim to see deeper meanings beyond the showy surface. They’ll claim those who don’t see the genius aren’t paying close enough attention and argue for multiple viewings that would, I can only assume, beat enlightenment into someone the same way repeatedly walking from a window to a wall might.

Amy Adams gives a frightening and thought-
provoking performance as Peggy Dodd, wife 
and master of Master.

If the film is Dodd, viewers like me are like Freddy Quell. I too attempted to give myself over to uncover a deeper meaning. As a die-hard Anderson fan I wanted to see it, and I can’t deny I was enthralled by the style and the craft. But, in the end, I just couldn't buy into it.

Nevertheless, I can’t quite shake the film, and though I won’t submit, like Freddy, I am still drawn to it. I am in awe of the acting prowess on display and was left amazed at some of the shot compositions and long takes Anderson nestled into the film. I loved how Johnny Greenwood managed to build on his work in There Will Be Blood, offering up an alarming, percussive score that intrudes and unnerves in even the most mundane scenes.

And this thing has a number of indelible sequences, most obviously the don’t-blink examination between Dodd and Freddy, but also a plethora of ambiguous ones that have inspired so much thoughtful analysis from fans (both of Hoffman’s singing scenes, anything with Amy Adams as Dodd’s wife, and the sex scene at the end, to name a few). I like that and see value in it, but ultimately the film is entirely impressionistic, with no more definitive meaning than the Rorsarch inkblots Freddie keeps sexualizing.

If you squint and grit your teeth, you can see all sorts of deeper meanings in The Master. You can project thoughts of repressed homosexuality on the part of Dodd and suggest it’s all really a wonderfully complex super ego/id love story. And that’s all well and good, and I’m certainly intrigued to consider such interpretations, but to me those things aren’t so much remembered as they are imagined. A key difference, I think. B