There Will Be Blood

In a way, it's a shame that Mr. Strick has not yet seen this movie, because I am more interested in his thoughts on it than my own, but it is becoming criminal that we don't have a review of it yet, so here is my review:

As many know, I am a big fan of western movies, and over the past few days I have re-watched Red River and Destry Rides Again, both fine classic westerns. There was a recent New York Times Magazine article about the return of the Western to Hollywood, by which was meant 3:10 to Yuma, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, There Will be Blood, and No Country for Old Men. I don't know if that is a meaningful trend: even if one includes The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, Brokeback Mountain,The Proposition, and Open Range, well...well, then that actually does start to look like something.

Among the films just listed, several are in the Sam Peckinpah/spaghetti western vein of extreme violence: The Proposition may be the most violent film I've ever seen, and even the middle-agey Open Range and the art-house Jesse James were notably brutal. And, albeit in a different way, No Country for Old Men is not a film I would let my mother see even five minutes of, it's so violent.

If I was like John Ruskin, tallying up the number of deaths in Dickens' Bleak House, There Will Be Blood would have a relatively low "body count." But the movie is violent not in the sense of being-rated-R-for, but in the sense of a violent jolt, a violence-against-nature--in the sense of being physically intimidated for 2 hours. Violence is done to the viewer; you get up a bit shaken.

Many people have remarked and will continue to remark on Daniel Day Lewis' performance in this film. Deservedly so. His posture alone, in the scene where he meets his brother, deserves an Oscar. So does the score--No Country for Old Men brilliantly dispensed with any score; the intense and eerie score here seems the only possible convincing response. Like No Country for Old Men, the editing is superb and not at all new-fangled. And if Daniel Day Lewis is channelling John Huston (in Chinatown) here, PT Anderson is mining the Kubrick of Full Metal Jacket and Barry Lyndon here: epic discomfort.

I can't give a "reading" of the film without giving a great deal away, so I will stop at saying that, with some faults--mostly of excess--this is a unique accomplishment and completely blows away both the glossy Best-Picture-winning and navel-gazing indie films that have dominated American cinema since...let's tentatively say since The Silence of the Lambs or the previous Coen Brothers triumphs, Miller's Crossing and Barton Fink. I may be getting carried away, but everything certainly looks weak and vain next to this movie. Especially bad in comparison is The Gangs of New York, or a film like Training Day. Here really is a film with superb editing, great dialogue, virtuoso acting, a perfect score, and a vice-grip on its story line. These differences between this film and the usual critically-lauded prestige picture lead one to honestly ponder when and why we came to expect anything else.