dir: Paul Thomas Anderson
2007
Oh, there most definitely will be blood. But the blood will be pouring
from the eyes and ears of the audience members at the horror
perpetrated by the ending of this movie.
For the majority of the flick's length, I was pretty sure it was a
masterpiece, even if the persistently annoying score was getting on my
nerves with how busy it was. But about twenty minutes from the end it
completely, gut-wrenchingly falls apart. It's one of those endings
that's so awful that it makes you feel like having watched the
preceding two and a half hours of film was a total waste of your
goddamn time.
But still, I should give it credit for what it does achieve up until
then. Loosely adapted from the novel Oil! By Upton Sinclair, There
Will Be Blood starts off at the beginning of the 20th century and
concerns itself with the origins of the oil industry in America.
Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) is a very determined, very driven
man. We watch him prospecting for gold and doing it the hard way, the
hardest way it can be. Even a broken leg can't stop him from getting
his few lumps of gold to the surveyor's office.
Soon his minor gold mine appears to be filling up with a black liquid
bubbling up from beneath, and you realise that in place of gold he's
accidentally discovered something that will fuel the coming century,
and make him a very powerful man.
This opening part of the film is remarkably well done. It tells its
story slowly, painstakingly, in a beautifully filmed way, and in a
manner that really shows instead of tells how this industry and how
this moustachioed character started off.
In a lesser flick, that whole first half-hour or so would have been
dealt with using an obnoxious narrator. Maybe they would have used
John Hurt, or Sir Ian McKellen. Or maybe Bobcat Goldthwait. What about
Gilbert Gottfried? No, maybe The Nanny Fran Drescher? Imagine how many
awards the film would have won if that was the case.
Oodles of them, fucking oodles.
PT Anderson went a different way. Plainview is accompanied everywhere
by his son, H.W, who puts a pleasant, angelic face on his father's
wheelings and dealings. Observing him, he seems to be a very
controlled and careful man, whose vision of how things will be is
strong enough to coerce reality itself to adapt closer to his vision.
There's nothing wrong with that, you tell yourself. Men like this
built America, built the Hoover Dam, the railroads, put a man on the
moon. Men of drive, ambition; of vision. And Daniel Plainview believes
himself to be such a man.
Out of nowhere he is approached by someone with an indication that
there's oil in them there hills of a non-descript town called Little
Boston in California. This oddball called Paul (Paul Dano) advises
Daniel that there's oil on his family property, and wants to get paid
for the tip. Daniel is always on the lookout for more oil, because
making $5000 a day back in 1911 just isn't enough for a man who wants
to build an empire.
He travels with his son and finds what his heart desires most, and
starts taking over the town in bits and pieces. As he rises, so too
does the Church of the New Revelation, led by Paul's twin brother Eli
(Paul Dano), who seems to be something of a nutjob. But the townsfolk
believe both in Plainview's plain view of the money that they will all
bathe in, and in Eli's claims of divine revelation.
The world around them is changing, Henry Ford's invention is making
its impact felt on the world, and Plainview barely has any room in his
thoughts for anything else apart from following his ambition, which
amounts to finding oil and destroying his competitors. He dreams of a
pipeline to the coast which would mean he would no longer be at the
mercy of the railroads, which are controlled by his competitors in
Standard Oil.
The initial strike comes with a price, as does almost anything in this
life, as Plainview (not literally) makes unintentional sacrifices with
each further step that he takes. His son is harmed severely; at
another time the pipeline he desires requires another blood sacrifice.
Every step of the oil mining process requires death or harm. Are you
getting the symbolism, or do we need to be beaten around the head with
it a bit more?
Each step is apparently supposed to take him further and further away
from his humanity, or perhaps further illustrating how the wheels of
capitalism are oiled with the blood of the worker, or something
similarly Workers Unite! Steinbeckian pinko commie kind of stuff. But
the truth is, I'm not sure how much humanity Daniel Plainview had to
start off with.
A man appears, again out of nowhere, indicating that he is Daniel's
long lost brother from another mother, Harold (Kevin J. O'Connor), and
he represents one link with Plainview's past back in Wisconsin (I
think). Through him, to him, Daniel reveals more of his thoughts on
life to this gentle, quietly-spoken man, despite his past. He tells
Daniel at one point that he has done some things so terrible that they
shouldn't be ever mentioned.
For Daniel that's the opportunity to tell someone just how much hatred
he has, not only for anyone he perceives as a competitor, but for most
if not all of humanity. It's quite chilling. It's a chilling scene
coming from a film chock full of chilling scenes. Daniel Day-Lewis has
since won a myriad of awards, including the Oscar, for his performance
here, but all the man has to do is turn up and fart in a film and
critics tend to go ballistic.
Everyone agreed that his scenery-fucking Bill the Butcher performance
in Gangs of New York was the only thing worthwhile or even memorable
about the film, and in this instance, donning another suitably
frightening moustache, Lewis again embodies, inhabits and lives a
character who is disturbingly larger than life.
And he fixes shoes, too. Is there anything the man can't do?
It is a stunning performance in what should have been a transcendent
film. Everyone, from the actors, the cinematographer, to the key grips
and caterers, does a remarkable job. As gimmicky as I thought Anderson
was for his flicks Boogie Nights, Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love, he
really has put together a sweeping epic here that never loses focus on
its own greatness. And it really manages to take you along and compel
you to marvel/dread the success of a man like Plainview.
Or at least it has that effect on me. Two different sets of oldies
sitting near me (I was the youngest person in the cinema by about 30
years) fell asleep and snored throughout the flick. It does have long
takes and exquisite photography, and very controlled, sustained
scenes, which, for some people trained on the more recent rapid
editing of television and stuff like contemporary action movies find
to be a better sleeping pill than the ones Heath Ledger had in his
system when he died.
So I definitely enjoyed it more than some of the oldies I saw it with,
who did not hide their disgust as they left the theatre.
That is until it gets to that wretched ending. The ending could have
occurred when a particular character says the words "And I thank God
that there is none of you in me." It should have ended there. It
wouldn't have been a great ending, it would have been pretty anti-
climactic. But it wouldn't have made blood pour from my eyes.
Instead it keeps going, and produces an ending so awful that I wanted
to punch myself in the head, giving myself concussion, so that there
was the possibility that my short term memory was deleted and I forgot
that I'd watched the film entirely with its sheer awfulness.
Of course, once I came out of my coma, I could still remember Daniel
Plainview bellowing "DRAINAGE!!!!" and "I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE!!" at
the top of his overacting lungs. Oh, that ending undid so much of my
goodwill for the preceding two and a half fucking hours, it really
did.
It's a long arse film, there's no doubt about that. And as good as a
lot of people claim it is, I have to wonder why that ending had me
laughing in derisive contempt, yet struck them as a powerful and
thematically perfect way to end this fucked up story. I could not
believe what was happening. It entirely shattered my suspended
disbelief and made me think that the director finally decided to show
his contempt for the audience.
The only way it could have been more ridiculous was if Orson Welles
himself appeared dressed as evil corporate clown Ronald McDonald and
bellowing "I'll get you, you bimbo" whilst thwacking Marlon Brando,
who's screaming "Rosebud" at the same time in the nuts with a rolled-
up newspaper.
Most of the film is great. The last chapter is wretched. I cannot
recommend it to anyone.
Sandro - 7 reasons I wish I'd never heard of Daniel Day-Lewis out of
10
--
"Do you think God is going to come down here and save you for being
stupid? He doesn't save stupid people, Abel." - There Will Be Blood.
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