There Will Be Blood - a film by Paul Thomas Anderson

Wow, this film was amazing. Its entirely unconventional, and very bizarre (in a very, very good way). This is the next step in the evolution of film as an artform.
 
The movie was incredible, it was dark and bleak and mad. I thought it was a true modern day masterpiece... on par with anything done in the last 20 years, easily.

On a technical level it was a dizzying masterwork. Cinematography was fluid and sparse and haunting and beautiful and ugly. The score was the same. Art direction, editing, sound design. It was filmmaking at the absolute highest level IMHO.

Story.. I thought it was so refreshing for PT Anderson to drive a forceful linear narrative, instead of a sprawling jumbled multi character ensemble. This film seethes with straight forward intensity. Some peeps might feel as if it was slow but I thought it was powerful in its singular focus on depravity and drive and ambition and greed. The film was as dark and disturbing as ANY horror or thriller film I've seen, if not more so.

It was very "Kubrickian" (that word has been tossed around a lot) and its hard not to draw comparisons to 2001 and The Shining for sure. I only say that because I cant really think of any films in recent memory that are this absolutely haunting.

As a filmmaker you HAVE to watch this film simply for the staggering display of technical excellence as well as the seething performances... ones that dig deep deep down into that dark place.


9.9 outta 10
 
Man, I've watched it yesterday and it's like a got it tatooed on my mind. What an astonishing piece of art work. Everything is simply perfect.
 
Oh, and of course...there's people who can act, there's actors, there's method actors and then there's Daniel Day Lewis.
 
Batutta said:
...and what PTA does in Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood, is start his protagonist at a place where you more or less can identify with him, and then watch him get sicker, and sicker, and sicker, until he implodes.
Click to expand...

Hard Eight was exactly the same as well.
 
This movie is a ride and PTA is an artist. BUT:

Why, when all of the other characters age 10 years, does Paul Dano not age a day?

The AC article about this movie is great. PTA wouldn't allow Elswit to use flicker to simulate fire for the shots of characters looking at the burning oil derrick. He insisted they actually light stuff on fire.
 
TheMacB said:
Why, when all of the other characters age 10 years, does Paul Dano not age a day?
Click to expand...

I did think that was a bit odd. The only defense is that in most of the film I think he's supposed to be a teenager, like 18-19 years old, so 10 years older would make him 28. A lot of people don't age much in that time span. Still, it would have helped if they changed his look a little, gave him a different haircut or some facial hair.
 
Uh oh! I feel like I'm being swept up in the sensationalism...could this movie be the best movie ever since the existence of space time?



Slow? Yes. Entertaining? Yes. Boring? No. Strange? Indeed.

The best movie ever since the existence of the space time continuum? Or the last 10-20-100 years? Naw.

What was up with DDL's voice. It sounded strained like he was trying to hard to change his voice.
 
I'm glad somebody else pointed out the aging thing... I just got home from this... and in my personal opinion it wasn't anywhere NEAR the league of NCFOM. I found the soundtrack to be quite... uh... grandiose.

The acting was superb... absolutely perfect... cinematography, absolutely perfect, but after that I'm not as impressed as everybody else seems to be. Ever since Dances With Wolves I've had this thing I do where I mentally shut off the soundtrack at various times in a flick... just to see if the imagery grabs me the same way... and I think this soundtrack was a serious gamble that's paying off big time. The intensity and bravado of the soundtrack creates some feelings that I think are being sourced through your ears instead of your eyes.

Also I was bugged by frequent scenes of beautiful, yet unmotivated lighting. I commented in the NCFOM thread about how amazing I thought the lighting was... whereas in this flick I had a hard time ignoring the 12x12 soft silk over the woods... and pretty much in every night scene.

Good movie? Yeah... but it didn't work for me as "perfection" the way it did for others.

For me... if this movie was a 7 then NCFOM was a 10... very good movie... but disjointed, and in my opinion not up to the mastery of some other stuff this year.

SPOILERS!

So Paul and Eli are the same, right? Eli "going on missions" is about trying to make money as an alternate personality... and he is one and the same. To me that would explain Plainview's hatred of Paul/Eli. Roger Ebert's review says that when Plainview pointedly ignores the deal to let Eli bless his well... that the lifelong hatred is born. I think it has little to do with that in particular... Ebert also seems unclear as to whether or not Eli and Paul are the same person... if they aren't, then that is crappy writing. They have to be... BUT, that raises a question at the end. When Plainview tells Eli that he gave his brother $10K on the spot for the info... but since we KNOW that is untrue (that is was $500) I assume he's just spewing whatever hatred he can muster off the top of his head... BUT that leaves me wondering what the heck is up with Eli's reaction to his words? It's like a spewing conglomeration of hatred and fear... to serve as a vessel for some exciting acting... but it left me making the exact same face as the guy in the banner for the LoveFest Entry, "I ****ing hate you".

While I was, at times, absolutely LOVING the movie... at other times I was questioning it... I felt like I was being served a delicious meal... on a conveyor belt... and I could see the next course coming but it was all too far apart. The jump to 16 YEARS later felt like an after-thought... something needed to wrap up the story...

I've read some say that DDL did Huston better then Huston... but I think that last 10% is Connery... my girlfriend whispered that to me during the front porch scene.
 
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this is from IMDB:

In an interview on the National Public Radio program "Fresh Air with Terry Gross," Paul Dano told Gross that he had originally been cast in the much smaller role of Paul Sunday, Eli's brother, and another actor had been cast as Eli. However, after Dano had already started filming his one scene as Paul Sunday, Paul Thomas Anderson decided to replace the actor playing Eli. Anderson then asked Dano to play Eli Sunday (a much bigger role) as well as Paul Sunday, and they decided to change the film to make the brothers identical twins.
 
Man that's weak... they should have thrown in something subtle to indicate they were the same person... and then SLIGHTLY modded the script at the end to reveal that Plainview knew they were the same person the whole time... and that would help justify his otherwise inexplicable hatred.

The subtlety could have been a slip from the father... or perhaps when Eli was boarding the train and we see Plainview he could have simply mouthed something mean that ended with "Paul"... or else they should have shown the two on screen together even briefly... like Paul watches the Plainviews arrive at the farm from working inside a barn... while Eli simultaneously comes out to meet them.

That bums me out that they were supposed to be two different people... because the evangelistic ideals put forth by Eli are far more interesting if you think he's got an alternate personality... plus the renouncing of his spiritual status and money problems through investing makes a lot more sense if there's another [hidden] side to him that Plainview already recognized.

You just pushed a 3-dimensional idea back into a 2-dimensional story.

I thought about the movie all day yesterday... and I did like it overall... for the brilliant moments of pure film-making.
 
even so, consider that identical twins ARE a physical manifestation of an alternate "you". does that win back a little of that 3-dimensionality for you?
 
i think a lot of shaping like that happened while they were making it. like, how will the story change if they're twin brothers. what will that do to the audience's predictions.

in the script, at the beginning Daniel kills the boy's father in order to get the oil. That's how he ends up with the boy. I don't know if they shot that or not but i can only imagine how that scene would affect the way we feel about Daniel when he's playing with the boy on the train.
 
I got that they were twins right off the bat. When they first met Eli, there was a brief awkward moment where Plainview wasn't sure who he was talking to, and then a shared look between Daniel and his son silently saying, "that's odd". Subtle (and maybe too subtle for some) but it's there.
 
Finally saw this on Saturday. Thought it was WAY better than No Country, but I don't think it deserves a Best Pic nom. Still think Into The Wild and Zodiac were the best films of the year.
 
Watching the film originally, it seemed pretty obvious in my mind that they were twins and not the same person.

After reading up on it, I'm glad they were twins and not "split personalities".

The idea has become so damn cliche it usually just bugs me when I see it happen in films.
 
The whole brothers thing threw me as well. Batutta, it's funny - the scene you mention, when they first meet Eli, is actually the reason why I *did* think they were the same person. That look to me said, "Are you seeing this, son? He gave us money before, and now we're supposed to pretend like that never happened." But about 50 minutes in, Eli jumps on his father and tells him that his brother (Paul?) told DDLewis about the oil. So that right there ends the "same person" myth. Although now that I read on this board that PTA cast Dano at the last second as a twin (instead of the original actor) - this is a perfect case of why you shouldn't make some decisions on a whim. It doesn't appear that PTA wanted us to be confused about this and yet here we are, talking about it.

The film itself: SPOILERS ------ The first hour of this film is f'ing brilliant. It's brilliant. I only wish that the rest of the movie would've continued this way. I literally had no idea what was going to happen from second to second. The middle of the movie was very good. I was totally into it - not as much as the first hour, but I was into it. But that last 20 minutes... WOW. PTA really blew it. Because the rest of the film was so good, I feel like people are giving him the benefit of the doubt (we think: "I don't really like the ending as much as the other stuff. but since it's PTA, it must be my fault that I don't get it. Not his. Therefore it must be good"). Those last two scenes, I kept thinking, "Is this an actors showcase or the end to the movie I was just watching?" We all know DDLewis can act. Why are we given two scenes that the movie didn't need at all where we just basically watch him go wild, completely unrestrained, to see that?? The scenes were totally unnecessary. The movie would've been fine without them. I felt like PTA didn't know how to end his movie. For all of his great choices earlier in the film, and the way he let the film tell the story - the end seems completely showy. Two scenes. Both in one location each. Both very long. These are the kinds of things directors do to prove they're great directors. They want to say, "Look what I'm going to do. I'm going to put two people in a room for ten minutes with nothing but their dialogue and I'm going to make you love it." His need to show off as a director ruined an otherwise great film. I mean anybody here can say to Daniel Day Lewis, "For this entire scene, do whatever the hell you want." That's not hard.

So anyway, that's how I feel about this movie.
 
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