THERE WILL BE BLOOD>Everything else
by: bamf 6 months, 3 weeks, 18 hours, 44 minutes ago
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Bamf here rematerializing from the void..
Writing about There Will Be Blood feels like a worthless task to me. Once you have seen it for yourself, it is easy to understand why it will be considered the best film of 2007. This film is a watershed moment in Paul Thomas Anderson’s career. This magnum opus of art and cinema will leave the patient theater goers spell bound from his creation. Will the average film patron be able to handle a two hour and forty five minute run time? I say yes, all because of one Daniel Day-Lewis.
Day-Lewis is why this film is great. The script alone is a fine work of structure and movement, however if the lead is wrong it could all easily fall in upon its self. Day-Lewis creates such a rich, compelling, charming and ferocious character that any screen time spent away from him makes me feel like an addict wanting another fix. His is the greatest performance of this year, the past ten years and possibly the past two decades. I have been combing over my DVD library, studying over past Academy nominees lists and generally raking over my memory trying to fill the question I left the theater with. Has anyone ever been better than this? When I consider what a great performance entails I look to the transformation born on screen. It is rare to find a performance that transcends just the words on page. Day-Lewis is larger then life on screen—he is the bellows on white hot coals devastating what you once thought he was capable of. That is to say, we know he is one of the greats of our day; he just lets Daniel Plainview tell you exactly why. While I like his role as The Butcher in Scorcese’s Gangs of New York, Plainview is so much more. The Butcher fell short for me because it felt too much like a gimmick. It was something to chew on, but meager just the same. If in any award show this year another actor is chosen over Day-Lewis they should be well minded enough to say the man’s name, and leave the trophy on the stage.
There is plenty left to be said about this cultural allegory of the world we live in today. Maybe ten years ago we wouldn’t think twice about seeing oil gushing, spilling across the Earth. Today though, I think we see a finite product going to waste first, and then the consideration of environmental damage second. Oil is the drug we are addicted too; and while a pyre of petroleum burns over the night sky I cannot help but feel anxious and uneasy, as if watching a stoner on screen lose his pot down a drainage grate.
In Anderson’s film I see a conflict of capitalistic ideals with similar ends. On one hand we have Daniel Plainview on a feverish pace to obtain the prize, while God’s man Eli Sunday (Paul Dano) is in the business of acquiring souls. The quiet irony of these two is how both endeavors decussate towards the same means, wealth. As cynical as it may be, I find truth in the notion that opportunity can bring the dregs out of any Earthly person be it Mother, sinner, or nun.
I find a great deal to think about after leaving a film like this. This year has had its share of enigmatic tales that said one thing, but meant another. I see echoes of our public psyche being reflected back in the stories of the day. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford reminds me of the fatalistic mind set our culture has moved closer towards with its rich imagery of death. War is here, the planet is dying, and never could there be a finer time to go into debt because we will not be around to pay it! Anderson gives a stellar portrayal of the check this nation wrote over a century ago for oil, and now it’s time for it to clear the bank. In Daniel Plainview’s last words of the picture I found all sorts of ways to read into its possible double meaning. Oil is done, if we aren’t well weaned off it in the next ten years I would be somewhat shocked. Keep in mind though, with alternative energy comes alternative resources, and when the world moves its standard there will be blood again.