Aside from the incredible Oscar winning performance of Daniel Day Lewis, Paul Thomas Anderson's, "There Will Be Blood" is a tour De force of creative talent and energy exhibited by some of today's most outstanding cinematic pros. Mr. Anderson's acidic screenplay crackles like an oil fire and Jonny Greenwood's (of Radiohead fame) original score, with it's Ligeti like tonal clusters and atonal flashing, is both electric and orchestral, both lush and terrifying. The contrast between the Post Modern musical sensibility against a turn of the Century backdrop leaves one ill at ease and off balance, as are most of the characters.
Robert Elswit ASC, who easily walked away with the 2007 Academy Award for cinematography has captured on film the dry, dusty grit of the California desert that one can almost taste, the blood red sunsets of big sky country, and the wide open western spaces of a time gone by.
Robert Elswit ASC, who easily walked away with the 2007 Academy Award for cinematography has captured on film the dry, dusty grit of the California desert that one can almost taste, the blood red sunsets of big sky country, and the wide open western spaces of a time gone by.
This is a film that comes along once in many decades. It is one of those pictures that had me studying the closing credits, thinking to myself that here were the great film makers of tomorrow. "Remember these names," I said to myself. Paul Dano brilliantly plays an understated fundamentalist preacher, who on the one hand seems to almost glow with gentle piety, yet one gets the feeling that he is as volatile as a stick of dynamite. His Sunday sermons are so full of of pent up rage against his empty and meaningless life that he might be carted off to an asylum at any moment. "One hell of a show," says Daniel Plainview, the "wildcat" oil man, played by Lewis, after one of Dano's insane healing rants. Plainview wants nothing more than to make enough money to escape all contact with humanity, a humanity that he holds in such bitter contempt that he has become sociopathically dangerous. His young, deaf son and his crew men seem to be the only sane and healthy characters of the bunch.
This film is loosely based on a rather obscure novel by Upton Sinclair called simply, "Oil." It is a study of ambition. It is a study of social interrelations. It is a study of industriousness and entrepreneurial will. It is a study of greed and lust for power. It is a study of madness.
