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Kayleahsg
Review: There Will Be Blood
January 21st, 2008
As I mentioned in a previous post, Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the most overrated directors in film. I can’t stand any of his movies. Still, I wanted to see this movie after seeing the trailer and reading the almost unanimously positive reviews for it. Although I had my reservations seeing as I hate the director’s other work, I went into this movie wanting to like it as I love the time and setting in which it takes place. I should have trust my initial instincts.
This movie should have been titled There Will Be Snores and I heard a fair share of snoring in the theater I was in.
The problem lies squarely in the hands of the director, the hack posing as auteur, Paul Thomas Anderson. He lets his ego get in the way of his narrative and what we’re left with is a meandering and pretentious story without cohesion or resonance.
There are many problems that plague this marathon long film. The first and most annoying is the music by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood. Film music is supposed to underscore a movie’s dramatic beats but Greenwood’s score tries too hard and intrudes upon the film drawing attention to itself like a hooker in a church choir.
Another problem the movie suffers from is Paul Thomas Anderson’s overuse of long tracking shots that follow the characters around. Used sparingly these types of shots can be effective in creating a dramatic realit, but when overused, as in this movie, they lose their meaning and only serve to slow down the pace and draw out an already overly long movie.
Daniel Day-Lewis is good as greedy oil man Daniel Plainview, his performance is both operatic and oversized and built around a gravelly voice and aristocratic cadence. Plainview is corrupt from the beginning to the end and does not change at all throughout the whole movie. This makes the character both unrelentling and fascinating.
At one point, the character of Plainview states that he “does not like to explain himself.” And that’s fine. What isn’t fine is how the writer and hack Paul Thomas Anderson keeps the character away at a distance. Without Plainview, there is no story. And while we don’t need to see or understand why Plainview is the way he is or does the things he does, we do need to see Plainview thinking and deciding his course of actions. Instead, what we get is a “greatest hits” filmmaking approach that shows what happens to Plainview at a distance without taking a point of view. To make matters worse, the supporting characters are disposed of like used Kleenex once they’ve shown up and served their purpose with little development and even less meaning.
There Will Be Blood is not, as some critics have suggested, the new Citizen Kane. It may, however, be the new Empire (1964, directed by Andy Warhol) to audiences having to sit through this snoozefest. To sum it up, the movie, at 158 minutes, is long and boring. The pacing is slow and the directing is pompous and bombastic. The music is grating and intruding. And the critics have either been paid off or are Paul Thomas Anderson nut huggers. You’re better off watching the episode “Hellfire” from season 1 of MacGyver.
Buy the Moose a cup of coffee.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:40 pm
I can see how someone might not be appreciative of the unique music score or the overtly artistic direction. Those are two stylistic elements you either like or you don’t, and I wouldn’t begrudge someone who doesn’t. However, I don’t fully grasp why you thought it was boring other than your inherent dislike for Paul Thomas Anderson and this type of filmmaking.
This is ultimately a film people will either love or hate. I fall into the category of those that loved this film. For another take on THERE WILL BE BLODD, check out:
http://davethenovelist.wordpress.com/2008/01/07/a-review-of-paul-thomas-andersons-there-will-be-blood/
January 21st, 2008 at 7:00 pm
I agree with your point about THERE WILL BE BLODD’s problems in the screenplay. However with these modern ’style’ directors like PTA, Wes Anderson what I find fascinating are their branching out into deeper genres. I definitely see a lot of artistic growth here though and found this a very refreshing ‘modern take’ on classic archetypes. It was definitely memorable and I thought ballsy for Dano too. Worth my $8.50.
A modern movie that you may enjoy is the fantastic 3:10 to Yuma. Breath of fresh air that one.
January 31st, 2008 at 9:32 am
THANK YOU. I bore witness to this frustrating snoozefest last night. A truly awful experience, very very disappointing. Hoping for something great. I went in completely cold, having sequestered myself from any press or reviews, which is exactly how I like to see films, when possible. Not a big PT fan, liked punchdrunklove and boogie nights, gagnolia not so much.
Shocked this morning to see so many positive reviews for this…
These young American filmmakers get their millions and huge acclaim for this? And Bela Tarr has to scrape together every cent over years and years to produce his utter masterpieces? Sokurov? Very frustrating these compromises with art and commerce.
February 6th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Your right about two things: PTA is overly pretentious and the movie could be a half hour shorter.
However, your analysis of Daniel Day Lewis’ acting I couldn’t disagree with more. Because it is so much of a departure of the typical “non-acting” we see from Brad Pitt,Tom Hanks, or most other film actors, it seems unnaturalistic. At no point does he phone it in and everything is a truthful choice.
If there is anything to criticize him about is that he sucks up the energy around him, but that could very well be a directorial issue.
Stick to your complaints about Paul Thomas Anderson, but don’t disparage Daniel Day Lewis’s colossal performance because it is abnormal to see such outstanding, unreal acting on the screen.
February 9th, 2008 at 8:58 am
I completely disagree with your conclusion. Your arguments are okay, but to be fair, films are like music, and directors are like recording artists; just because you don’t like country doesn’t inherently mean that country “sucks”. The ant/protagonist is quite monotonous, most of the shots are long tracking, but who says every film should be paced and arced like “The Departed”? There are tons of music styles that we hear and simply don’t get, but our inability to connect doesn’t mean that real music doesn’t exist. I use this analogy with PTA films in general. He is pretentious — but that’s his ’style’. His films are always about the inner demons of its main characters. It doesn’t make for bubble-gum entertainment, and that’s the point. The flipside is a movie like Juno; those of us who saw it before it blew up were thoroughly entertained, and then when all the skeptics and fair-weathers went to see it once it became mainstream, started a backlash on the presumption that it tried too hard. Hogwash if you ask me… that was a fine film and this is too, albeit for entirely different reasons.
February 23rd, 2008 at 10:47 am
“Because it is so much of a departure of the typical “non-acting” we see from Brad Pitt,Tom Hanks, or most other film actors, it seems unnaturalistic.”
Give me a break. Non-naturalistic, stylized, in-your-face acting gets feted at awards ceremonies all the time. Every year some grand, big, stylized performance wins an Oscar. Oscar voters like nothing better than rewarding big, huge, theatrical gestures: from Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind to Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada, stylized, non-naturalistic, putting-on-a-show type acting has always been amply rewarded and admired. This claim that “non-acting” and understatement is favored is a myth. There is absolutely nothing unique or groundbreaking about what Day-Lewis has done here.
April 9th, 2008 at 9:36 am
Next time you watch a movie, try WATCHING the movie. I bet you sit down with the latest “indie” sensation from sundance and do nothing but analyze every second of the film until you feel like you’re better than it, like you could do a better job. Paul thomas anderson is a genius that just speaks a different cinematic language than you, and because you can’t wrap you narrow mind around the purpose of this film you hate it. There are movies that I watch that I think I’m going to hate, but I go into them with an OPEN mind and actually enjoy some of them. Try looking at a film not just for plot and dialogue, but consider the cinematography as a sort of storytelling and the score not as overpowering, but a plot point itself. Artistic people have the ability to tell a story without using words and blatant in-your-face dialogue. How do you think classical music has survived for so long. Learn to look deeper at things and maybe you’ll suprise yourself.