{"id":13,"date":"2008-01-04T22:10:07","date_gmt":"2008-01-05T02:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.jonesing4movies.com\/?p=13"},"modified":"2009-09-09T19:43:46","modified_gmt":"2009-09-09T23:43:46","slug":"example-draft-blog-entry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/?p=13","title":{"rendered":"There Will Be Blood (2007) – Movie Review"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Daniel<\/h1>\n

Daniel Day-Lewis, with son Dillon Freasier in tow, fires up the screen in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood”<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

Full of Fire and Music and Whatnot<\/span><\/em><\/h1>\n

[xrr rating=4.5\/5]<\/p>\n

There Will Be Blood.<\/em> Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Martin Stringer, Kevin J. O\u2019Connor, Jacob Stringer, Matthew Braden Stringer, Ciar\u00e1n Hinds, Dillon Freasier, Joseph Mussey, Barry Del Sherman, Russell Harvard, Harrison Taylor, Stockton Taylor, Colleen Foy , Paul F. Tompkins, and Kevin Breznahan. Original music by Jonny Greenwood. Cinematography by Robert Elswit, A.S.C. Production design by Jack Fisk. Costume design by Mark Bridges. Edited by Dylan Tichenor, A.C.E. Based on the novel\u00a0Oil!<\/em>\u00a0by Upton Sinclair. Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. (Paramount Vantage\/Miramax Films, 2007, color, 158 minutes. MPAA rating: R.)<\/strong><\/p>\n

You could tell when Richard Nixon was lying. Sweat would bead on his quivering upper lip, as Hunter S. Thompson used to note.<\/p>\n

Oil magnate Daniel Plainview doesn\u2019t have that problem. As he methodically cons backwater rubes out of their land by promising a foursquare deal and a share-the-wealth scheme in exchange for drilling rights, his bushy brown mustache conceals that part of his anatomy. It wouldn\u2019t matter anyways: Plainview\u2019s poker face, topped by his furrowed brow and piercing green eyes, reveals nothing to tip off prospects to his ulterior motives. That\u2019s because he\u2019s a man utterly devoid of conscience.<\/p>\n

In an intensely focused performance, actor Daniel Day-Lewis is a shoe-in for his second best-actor Oscar trophy for one of the grimmest protagonists ever to burst onto the big screen. His portrayal of robber baron Plainview is a character study of an \u201cunbridled individualist\u201d whose greed for extracting oil from the ground is surpassed only by his shocking misanthropy. He regards with suspicion all of humanity. \u201cI have a competition in me,\u201d he confesses to a drifter who has become his confidant. \u201cI want no one else to succeed. I hate most people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Plainview well knows the meaning of an honest day\u2019s pay for a hard day\u2019s work during the turn of the twentieth century. The movie opens to find him in a literal hole, swinging a pickax to bust out silver ore from a rocky ledge. After breaking his leg in a mishap, he splints it and drags himself away from the mine. Cut to the assayer\u2019s office: Plainview apparently has dragged himself across miles of craggy badlands to cash in his meager claim. This is one tough bastard, all grit, nothing soft or weak about him.<\/p>\n

Cut again. A decade later, Plainview is now a wealthy man. He carries himself with an absolute air of authority akin to an immutable force of nature, which intimidates people into acquiescing to his will. He speaks in forthright but measured tones, in a gentle brogue that sounds like Sean Connery imitating John Huston. Knowing that he can count on the greed of penniless ranchers and small-time merchants who\u2019ve suddenly found oil seeping up from their otherwise worthless land, he makes his case for paying pennies on the dollar sound like the height of sound and prudent economics. And all the while, Plainview\u2019s young adopted son, H.W. (Dillon Freasier), stands silently by his side as evidence that he\u2019s also a family man and therefore of solid moral character.<\/p>\n

Although he\u2019s meant to be a symbol of avarice, Plainview is hardly ostentatious. He\u2019s well-dressed, but the dried salt on his hatband gives silent witness to his assertion of being \u201cjust an oilman\u201d who still works with his hands alongside his crew. He sleeps on a hardwood floor without a pillow, even once he\u2019s settled into a plush mansion. His whole\u00a0raison d\u2019<\/em>\u00eatre<\/em>\u00a0is wrapped up in his tireless ambition. Daniel Plainview isn\u2019t so much a prince of capitalist plunder as he is capitalism\u2019s ascetic monk.<\/p>\n

One evening, a young man named Paul Sunday (Paul Dano) appears in Plainview\u2019s office, offering to sell his family\u2019s tract of land outside the California town of Little Boston. In their dealings, we begin to see the veneer peel away to reveal Plainview\u2019s underhanded methods. He induces Paul to divulge the location of his father\u2019s goat ranch for $500, then he high-tails it out to the ranch.<\/p>\n

Once there, Plainview introduces himself to Paul\u2019s father as a sportsman bringing his boy along for a father-son quail hunt. Plainview then tries to con the Sundays into selling their land, under the guise of setting up a hunting camp. But Paul\u2019s twin brother Eli, a young preacher (also played by Dano), senses something off, remarking that the presence of oil makes their land eminently valuable. However, father Abel (David Willis), a simple, pious man, agrees to sell the land for $5,000 cash and the promise of another five grand to build a church for Eli.<\/p>\n

Although Eli objects at first, wanting his share up-front, he gives in when Plainview promises that he will be given the honor of blessing the oil well that\u2019s soon to change everybody\u2019s lives. But Plainview reneges on the pledge. The animosity between the two men escalates to a violent feud that haunts both to its bitter, sanguinary end.<\/p>\n

Daniel Day-Lewis\u2019s performance is larger-than-life in the broadest sense of the term, reminding us, through the sheer forcefulness of his ability to project obsessive mania, that the one thing immutably larger-than-life is\u00a0death<\/em>. Paul Dano gives an equally impressive performance as Eli, a fundamentalist preacher as venal as Plainview is vicious. A master manipulator, Eli is a physical weakling who channels his aggression through his passive station in life, flaunting his piety before his flock. But his talents never reach beyond the dolts in his tiny ranching hamlet. He is irrevocably small-time, which is the source of his resentment of Plainview. For his part, the oilman sees in Eli a weaker version of himself.<\/p>\n

In this morality play, Eli was meant to represent cynical religious zealotry as the other side of the capitalist coin. The knee-jerk reaction would be to blame Upton Sinclair\u2014the agitator and muckraking author of the 1927 novel\u00a0Oil!<\/em>\u2014for the film\u2019s thinly veiled socialism. That would be a partial mistake. While Sinclair was an uncompromising socialist, by the late 1920s Moscow regarded him as an apologist for capitalism. Though the novel\u2019s J. Arnold Ross (based on real-life Teapot Dome\u2013scandal figure Edward Doheny) is hardly a paragon of integrity, neither is he the devil incarnate that director Paul Thomas Anderson puts onscreen. Sinclair actually portrayed his protagonist rather sympathetically, as a compromiser who (however deluded) justified his actions to himself and his son as serving the greater good.<\/p>\n

By contrast, Anderson doesn\u2019t just hit you over the head with the film\u2019s political message; he bashes you in the teeth with it. With nary a political word uttered, his script is nonetheless crafted to lead the viewer to the inexorable conclusion that\u00a0this is America.\u00a0<\/em>That\u00a0individualism<\/em>\u00a0is a dangerous force society needs to keep in check. That an\u00a0industrialist\u2019s success<\/em>\u00a0is society\u2019s demise.\u00a0There Will Be Blood<\/em>\u00a0isn\u2019t so much based on Sinclair\u2019s novel as it is distilled from it.<\/p>\n

The result is the exact opposite of dramatic catharsis. Instead of purging me of discomforting emotions, it filled me with wrath, fear, and disgust. I felt as though I needed a bath when the screening was over.<\/p>\n

But although I left the theater shuddering, I had been riveted to my seat during the entire movie. As repugnant as his product is, Anderson\u2019s mastery of his craft is intoxicatingly compelling. Watching\u00a0There Will Be Blood<\/em>, I could identify with Robert DeNiro\u2019s character Travis Bickle in\u00a0Taxi Driver<\/em>, as he sits in an adult movie house, both repulsed and fascinated by the lurid images he watches between open fingers of the hand covering his eyes.<\/p>\n

What makes\u00a0There Will Be Blood<\/em>\u00a0so devastatingly effective is that it\u2019s a revolt against all the slick clich\u00e9s of today\u2019s cinema. It reestablishes the lost art of epic moviemaking without being self-consciously \u201cartsy.\u201d For a motion picture almost three hours long, Anderson makes the most of the slight material that comprises the movie\u2019s plot. The script is simplicity defined; there are no overlapping and interwoven subplots. Although Anderson\u2019s gloomy palette paints his nasty, petty characters in black, they are projected clearly and with range.<\/p>\n

Though it\u2019s been compared to\u00a0Citizen Kane<\/em>\u00a0and George Stevens\u2019s\u00a0Giant<\/em>,\u00a0There Will Be Blood\u00a0<\/em>is more reminiscent of Sergio Leone\u2019s operatic\u00a0Once Upon a Time in the West<\/em>, another sprawling tale that takes its time. Cinematographer Robert Elswit\u2019s camera cuts a swath across the plains and rocky terrain with uncomplicated shots that showcase the movie\u2019s wide-open locales. Neither are there are gratuitous special effects. As the final credits rolled, I was stunned to learn the visual climax of the flaming oil derrick against the deep blue twilight sky was a CGI digital composite; it looked like a Technicolor version of the oil rig fire from the film-noir classic\u00a0The Wages of Fear.<\/em><\/p>\n

The rich imagery onscreen is undergirded by a soundtrack from alternative musician Jonny Greenwood, guitarist of Radiohead. Written mostly for strings, Greenwood\u2019s symphonic composition is full of\u00a0portamento<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0pizzicati<\/em>. It\u2019s the perfect aural complement, employing a brisk, matter-of-fact tempo and discordant themes that underscore Plainview\u2019s efficient energy and unsettling pathology. Greenwood\u2019s score easily belongs in the same company as the best from Jerry Goldsmith or Bernard Herrmann.<\/p>\n

Like its Social Darwinist anti-hero,\u00a0There Will Be Blood<\/em>\u00a0packs one hell of a wallop. And yet, it fell somewhat short of being a true masterwork. Still, aside from its absurd, anti-climactic ending, it\u2019s a stunningly made work of art used to drive home the stale, nihilistic theme that the American Dream is at base really a nightmare.<\/em><\/p>\n

There Will Be Blood<\/em>\u00a0gets away with its epic Romanticism by wallowing in the Gothic muck of depravity and corruption. But although it\u2019s a giant step forward in reclaiming the silver screen from the hacks and charlatans who\u2019ve turned moviemaking into a spin-off of the video-game genre, the sum of its parts is greater than its whole.<\/p>\n

Robert L. Jones is a photojournalist living and working in Minnesota. His work has appeared in <\/span>Black & White Magazine<\/span><\/span>, <\/span>Entrepreneur<\/span><\/span>, <\/span>Hoy! New York<\/span><\/span>, the New York <\/span>Post<\/span><\/span>, <\/span><\/em>RCA Victor <\/span>(Japan)<\/span><\/em>,\u00a0<\/span>Scene in San Antonio<\/span><\/span>, <\/span>Spirit Magazine<\/span><\/span> (Canada), <\/span>Top Producer<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0 and the Trenton <\/span>Times<\/span><\/span>. Mr. Jones is a past entertainment editor of <\/span>The New Individualist<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Daniel Day-Lewis, with son Dillon Freasier in tow, fires up the screen in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood” Full of Fire and Music and Whatnot [xrr rating=4.5\/5] There Will Be Blood. Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Martin Stringer, Kevin J. O\u2019Connor, Jacob Stringer, Matthew Braden Stringer, Ciar\u00e1n Hinds, Dillon Freasier, Joseph Mussey, Barry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,36,37,3],"tags":[11,7,10,14,9,12,6,8,13],"class_list":["post-13","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dramas","category-epic-movies","category-independent-films","category-mreview","tag-2007-movies","tag-daniel-day-lewis","tag-epic","tag-jonny-greenwood","tag-oscar-winner","tag-paul-dano","tag-paul-thomas-anderson","tag-there-will-be-blood","tag-upton-sinclair"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":475,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions\/475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}