2008 Woodie Awards
the reel critic
Jason Gutierrez
Issue date: 2/21/08 Section: Arts
MOVIE |There Will Be Blood
DIRECTOR | Paul Thomas Anderson
STARRING | Daniel Day-Lewis, Kevin J. O'Connor.
Indie auteur Paul Thomas Anderson was a critical darling of the late 1990s, with his films "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia" firmly cementing his reputation as one of the most prominent rising directorial stars. His films tend to be paradoxical. They are dramatic, but have a strain of absurdist comedy running through them. They are intimate, but have an epic vision. They are simultaneously about one person and about all people. His latest release, "There Will Be Blood," is different though. Anderson jettisons the tongue-in-cheek humor one usually finds in his films and instead focuses on crafting a sweeping epic.
Using Upton Sinclair's muckraking 1927 novel "Oil!" as a jumping off point, Anderson tackles the California oil boom, which we see between the early-1890s to the mid-1930s. Daniel Day-Lewis plays Daniel Plainview, as the film follows his rise from a one-man mining crew to a ruthless oil baron. The key to his success is the dusty backwater town of Bakersfield, California - a town where Plainview finds an ocean of oil waiting for him just under the ground and settlers all too willing to sell their land. The only thorn in Plainview's side comes in the form of a 19-year-old boy (played by Paul Dano), a self-styled preacher who, like most people in the film, is looking for money so that he might expand his small country church.
Anderson has made a film that some might find difficult to like. The characters are selfish, greedy and nearly impossible to connect with. Even the character of the preacher, who in most other films would be seen as a protagonist, comes off as shrill and irritating. But those characteristics that most would find off-putting makes the characters fascinating, and because the film is so long it's easy to see how greed insinuates itself into the very fiber of their being. Anderson is less interested in the social history of the California oil boom, but is instead setting himself to work on showing the dark side of the American success story. He and Day-Lewis have made a modern-day Charles Foster Kane, a man who has set out to better his living situation, and in so doing loses touch with the rest of mankind as greed overtakes his entire world view. Day-Lewis delivers a titanic performance as Plainview. He allows himself to become Plainview and pays little mind to whether or not the audience can connect with the monster he has created. It is one of the gutsiest and best performances in recent memory, and further cements Day-Lewis as one of the screen's greatest actors. Also impressive is young Dano as the irritatingly self-righteous priest, Eli Sunday. It takes a lot to stand alongside Day-Lewis' amazing performance, but Dano more than holds his own. As much as I would like to go through and praise every performance in the film, space prevents it, so I will just say, all the performances are fantastic, from Day-Lewis to Kevin J. O'Connor as an interloper claiming to be Plainview's brother.
DIRECTOR | Paul Thomas Anderson
STARRING | Daniel Day-Lewis, Kevin J. O'Connor.
Indie auteur Paul Thomas Anderson was a critical darling of the late 1990s, with his films "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia" firmly cementing his reputation as one of the most prominent rising directorial stars. His films tend to be paradoxical. They are dramatic, but have a strain of absurdist comedy running through them. They are intimate, but have an epic vision. They are simultaneously about one person and about all people. His latest release, "There Will Be Blood," is different though. Anderson jettisons the tongue-in-cheek humor one usually finds in his films and instead focuses on crafting a sweeping epic.
Using Upton Sinclair's muckraking 1927 novel "Oil!" as a jumping off point, Anderson tackles the California oil boom, which we see between the early-1890s to the mid-1930s. Daniel Day-Lewis plays Daniel Plainview, as the film follows his rise from a one-man mining crew to a ruthless oil baron. The key to his success is the dusty backwater town of Bakersfield, California - a town where Plainview finds an ocean of oil waiting for him just under the ground and settlers all too willing to sell their land. The only thorn in Plainview's side comes in the form of a 19-year-old boy (played by Paul Dano), a self-styled preacher who, like most people in the film, is looking for money so that he might expand his small country church.
Anderson has made a film that some might find difficult to like. The characters are selfish, greedy and nearly impossible to connect with. Even the character of the preacher, who in most other films would be seen as a protagonist, comes off as shrill and irritating. But those characteristics that most would find off-putting makes the characters fascinating, and because the film is so long it's easy to see how greed insinuates itself into the very fiber of their being. Anderson is less interested in the social history of the California oil boom, but is instead setting himself to work on showing the dark side of the American success story. He and Day-Lewis have made a modern-day Charles Foster Kane, a man who has set out to better his living situation, and in so doing loses touch with the rest of mankind as greed overtakes his entire world view. Day-Lewis delivers a titanic performance as Plainview. He allows himself to become Plainview and pays little mind to whether or not the audience can connect with the monster he has created. It is one of the gutsiest and best performances in recent memory, and further cements Day-Lewis as one of the screen's greatest actors. Also impressive is young Dano as the irritatingly self-righteous priest, Eli Sunday. It takes a lot to stand alongside Day-Lewis' amazing performance, but Dano more than holds his own. As much as I would like to go through and praise every performance in the film, space prevents it, so I will just say, all the performances are fantastic, from Day-Lewis to Kevin J. O'Connor as an interloper claiming to be Plainview's brother.
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