There Will Be Blood
Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film is an immediate yet odd classic. The film is grave and holds its tenor throughout. The opening sequence pans into Daniel Day Lewis’s character mining solo for gold or oil. The superior score (by Jonny Greenwood) and direction in the opening sequence recalls Kubrick’s Shining and Malick’s Days of Heaven; there is something revelatory the audience feels in this character’s existence, out here in the barren land, a lone figure with a dream and ambition where noone else might see it. I was inspired immediately by the gripping opening sequence.
Anderson’s screenplay and direction from Upton Sinclaire’s novel “Oil” is a lifetime in its scope of remarkable drive that can make and break the same man. The film reads like a western, and in these oil speculator towns business is pitted against the lofty language of spirituality. There is little room for the Good Book in Mr. Lewis’ character Daniel, who is hard yet decent to start anyway.
As with most films I have no problem with 2 hrs 38 minutes. Matter of fact I could have watched more film, but the story plays its last hand in an ugly yet satisfying fashion. The film prods at extremes in the end, one circling the other suspiciously, truce for now while it’s useful to both parties. There is poignancy and cynicism in “There Will Be Blood” certainly, but the thought crosses my mind that I do not have to live in the extremes, and neither do most of the characters in this world Mr. Anderson very convincingly creates.
This film haunts me and is likely the best of 2007. A film’s excellence is directly correlative to it’s resonance, it’s memory in the audience mind. Most films are immediately if not quickly forgotten. This film like other great films has burned itself into my concience like a tattoo that I cannot laser off.
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