There Will Be Blood (2007)
There’s a tendency in people to believe that most great movies are impenetrable, that they contain a series of elusive codes and symbols that need to be poured over and deciphered. The film buffs relish this of course, but this belief may turn the more casual filmgoer off, believing a supposed Great Movie to be more trouble than it’s worth. Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood is certainly such a movie. Many will try to figure it out, many will write well intentioned college papers, but the most confounding thing about Anderson’s new film may be how up front it actually is. The film is stripped down, blunt, brutal, as single minded in its pursuit as its protagonist, Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day Lewis.)
There Will Be Blood may be, at just over 150 minutes, one of Anderson’s longest pictures, but it’s his leanest work since his debut, Hard Eight. There Will Be Blood isn’t Citizen Kane, it isn’t The Treasure of the Sierre Madre (which I said after reading the script six months ago), it’s a classically structured horror film: concerned with one very disturbed man, who over and over tries to reach out to the society he doesn’t understand, and over and over fails. Whether or not he ultimately breaks through the cocoon of his own dementia is the central conflict, the drive of the film, symbolized, if you must, by the continuing explosions of the substance of his trade, oil.
It would also be tempting to write that There Will Be Blood is about The Twin Evils of Our Country, as personified by Plainview and his conflict with an opportunistic young preacher, Eli Sunday (Paul Dano). But, again, I don’t think the film is truly interested in this pursuit. Watch how the film opens, and watch how the film closes, it is stubbornly, resolutely, about Daniel Plainview, no more, no less. Listen to Plainview’s final words, they are meant to be taken literally. By the end of the picture, Plainview’s conflict has been decidedly resolved, and his final words reflect that. While we’re talking about what There Will Be Blood is most assuredly NOT, let’s take a moment to note what Plainview is not, and that’s a monster. I’m stunned by the lack of empathy that even perceptive writers have shown in regards to this character. Plainview does monstrous things over the course of the film, no doubt, but he is not a monster. Plainview reaches out to people at least three or four times over the course of the picture, but it’s in his way, his language.
The film bears a bit of resemblance, strangely, to Kubrick’s flawed The Shining. That film WAS about the evil of man, and that was its limitation and mild undoing. Anderson, always a humanist, keeps things personal, intimate. The Andersonian dialogue and homage rich visuals have been starkly pared down, but Anderson’s true overriding obsession remains: the distance between fathers and sons, and the usually uncrossable bridge that exists between the generations. The final scene between Plainview and his surrogate son, H.W. (Barry Del Sherman) seems to me to be the scene that has been powering ever film that Anderson has ever made. Anderson has dug deep within himself to create There Will Be Blood; it’s a relentless, obsessive film about the relentless, obsessive pursuit of unattainable things. There Will Be Blood has been compared to Malick and Kubrick, but it doesn’t have their chic aloof, this is a film that hits hard in a sickening, funny, primal way.
I’ve never seen anything like Daniel Day Lewis’s Plainview (the characters’ names certainly invite a little of that bong water analysis that I just decried). The Huston comparisons are apt, but Huston never had the monstrous need, a determination to purge all vulnerability, that Plainview exhibits here and that actually makes him more fit for organized religion than Sunday. Watch how Plainview sleeps, or how he twists away from crowds like a wounded insect. Watch Plainview’s one moment with one of the little Sunday girls. To call Plainview an outright monster would be to deny the tragedy of There Will Be Blood, and the film is most assuredly a tragedy.
Do you know why I love this movie? And Paul Thomas Anderson’s films in general for that matter? Because they fucking go for it. There Will Be Blood is brilliant, muscular filmmaking, and would be a great movie regardless of how it ended, but it’s the ending that moves the film into the realms of the biggies. Anderson, Lewis, and Dano (who’s just as strong going head to head with one of our great actors in one of his best performances) just plain fucking go for it in the final scene. The film is a tone poem, a huge boil waiting to be lanced, and my oh my how these men lance it. They push into total chaos, of true bugfuck madness, and push and push, and push risking laughter, risking ludicrousness. Anderson has a taste for symmetry and the final scene is everything that the ominous, slow build opening is not, the ending is what Plainview has needed all along, a punch line that recalls the end of Taxi Driver. At the end we’re led to believe that Plainview has obtained the clarity his last name implies, and it couldn’t matter less.
★★★★
December 31st, 2007 at 8:36 am
Are you going to see TWBB again? I think I need to. Surprisingly, I have not been mulling it over, though I would like to.
December 31st, 2007 at 11:11 am
Most definitely. I look forward to revisiting Blood as soon as it’s fairly convenient to do so.
December 31st, 2007 at 3:30 pm
I’m just about all talked about over this movie, but I loved your take on it Chuck and I’m glad you caught the midnight screening so we can talk about it.
I’m with you 100% on the ending which has apparently caused some heads to be scratched. Bullshit. The whole movie earns that ending and there was no other way to go. It’s what makes a great film brilliant.
I’d argue that Plainview is a kind of monster, but not in the modern sense. He’s the old school sympathetic monster, like Dracula. People who are only repulsed by his character don’t make any sense to me. He amuses me. He makes me sad. I’m glad I’m not empty inside like he is, but he’s not repulsive.
I’m also surprised that more people don’t see how funny this movie is.
December 31st, 2007 at 3:56 pm
Excellent review Chuck. You really bring out important aspects of the film.
I like you have been surprised by the characterization of Plainview as a monster when there is clearly a tragic arc to his journey. Perhaps the powerful closing scenes that showed him most locked within a protective cocoon and feeling antipathy towards others simply over-wrote the earlier evidence of his loving behavior towards his son and other efforts to connect with “family”.
I hope you don’t mind my adding a few thoughts and observations.
I agree that the film is most concerned with the father-son relationship, but it also explores another family relationship - brother-brother: real, false, and symbolic.
P.T. has acknowledged that at one level the film is about the twin forces - capitalism and charismatic religion that played a critical role in shaping the nation. But he also expressed the belief that by focusing on the human story those messages would take care of themselves without any need for didacticism on his part.
The other thing he and DDL have stressed was the desire to capture the intoxication of single minded and passionate striving. And how it can becomes so rewarding and obsessional that reaching the goal is inevitably an anti-climax and empty. They drew the analogy to making a film. And what better artists than these to bring their own intense and all-consuming processes to expressing this aspect of the story.
I think that in life people who get lost in over-work or other more obsessive striving for too long inevitably pay a big price in terms of nurtured connection with others. Plainview is an extreme but one doesn’t have to look far to find such people.
December 31st, 2007 at 3:58 pm
Chuck, Cj, I’m with you on the ending…how could it possibly end any other way? Over the top? It wouldn’t have crossed my mind as over the top if I hadn’t heard it from every other reviewer. I think that’s an interesting comparison between Plainview and Dracula. There Will Be Blood would have been a good alternate title for Dracula, actually.
One thing I don’t see, CJ, is that the movie is funny. There are funny moments, but the overall feeling of the movie is dread. That said, I did chuckle a few times in spite of myself. I think the laughter in tragedy is one of the things that makes the movie seem so real and tragic, but I would never say it’s meant to be a “funny” movie.
Anyway, what a great flick; such a pleasure to see it.
December 31st, 2007 at 5:00 pm
CJ: Dracula is a wonderful comparison.
Sartre: Please, add as many points as you like, I can’t believe I totally neglected to mention the brothers in the film, particularly since it would be roughly exhibit C in support of the “Plainview isn’t totally inhuman” approach to the story.
So PTA and DDL DID mean the twin evils stuff, huh? I figured it to be a kind of sleight of hand. Can’t wait to get back in the theatre and re-explore this one.
And finally thanks for stopping by, hope to see you around more often.
Travis: I think both you and CJ are right about the film’s humor. Blood has a strong sense of humor, but it’s usually coming from how almost absurdly dire the situations of the film usually are. There are some laughs, but they are usually of the “we have to laugh or we are gonna go nuts with apprehension” variety.
January 1st, 2008 at 2:58 am
Excellent review, Chuck.
I concur with you and Craig that Plainview is far more three-dimensional than some are saying elsewhere. Day-Lewis just lives this guy and when he goes crazy he goes *REALLY* crazy. But so what? And, yes, the film’s conclusion, as described by so many, is “bat-s*** nuts” and so on and so forth. So? I honestly can’t see the film ending any other way. I suppose it could but to what purpose?
I particularly relish the way in which you describe the film as boiling, and that Day-Lewis, Dano and Anderson lance it. They do indeed.
January 1st, 2008 at 10:14 am
Thanks Alexander. I can’t really see the film ending in any other direction either. To end such a slow burn with a whimper would be almost dramatically perverse.
January 2nd, 2008 at 7:58 am
Travis, TWBB was certainly not a comedy, and maybe I’m just sick, but especially the 2nd time I saw it I was smiling everytime Plainview would have dealings with Eli.
To put what I said more accurately, I think there is more humor in the Plainview character than people are admitting.
The Baptism scene has a strange way of being cathartic, a little heart rending, frightening and yes…amusing. The milkshake speech and the way Plainview lights up over hs mounting victory…amusing.
Anyway, I think you’re right that to say the film is ‘funny’ isn’t right, but there is more humor in it than people will admit.
January 2nd, 2008 at 10:35 am
I agree with you, cj. Sometimes you can’t help but laugh.
January 5th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Holy Shit man. Caught TWBB today. I enjoyed your review even more after seeing the film. Mainly because the only thing i could get out at the end was something like “Fuck.” …You’re review is more descriptive.
I loved the imagery. Loved Daniel Day, loved Dano. I think youre dead on about how the film is bare, blunt, and brutal.
Im planning on going again next weekend and spending some ‘chris time’ with it. Im looking forward to the next nerd meet up so we can talk about it in person.
January 6th, 2008 at 10:54 am
Glad you liked it Chris. I hope to catch again in the coming weeks too.