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There Will Be Blood

5 star:		(171)
4 star:		(64)
3 star:		(53)
2 star:		(51)
1 star:		(78)

 

 

Upton Sinclair's epic novel OIL! has been successfully transformed to a film by screen writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson ('Magnolia','Boogie Nights', etc). The film is a long song (158 minutes), covering a fascinating span of time in turn of the century California when oil gained the lure of gold and transformed the land and the people into creatures of capitalism and greed and lust, and were it not for the presence of Daniel Day-Lewis' powerful performance as the man who makes it all happen, the story itself would become tiresome. It doesn't.

Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) is a silver miner in 1898, but soon discovers oil and begins on a mission to become wealthy, owning most of the oil fields from the mountains of central California to the Pacific Ocean. With his medicine man manner of getting people to do what he wants he pursues his greed relentlessly, disrupting small sleepy towns like Little Boston as he gains access to the wealth of the black gold. There are odd characters along the way, such as the evangelist Eli Sunday (Paul Dano) who become crushable clods beneath Plainview's boots. The progress of the story is well known to most: it is the telling of the tale in the hands of wholly credible, completely physically immersed Daniel Day-Lewis that makes the story seem new.

The film's grimy atmosphere is well presented in Robert Elswit's cinematography and the odd musical score by Jonny Greenwood is as ominous as the vantage of Plainview. Greenwood elects to weave classical works into the fabric of the film: when young HW falls deaf after an explosion the silence is partnered by one of Arvö Pärt's 'Fratres', and the film's credits are displayed over the Anne-Sophie Mutter/von Karajan recording of Brahms' Violin Concerto. Strange bedfellows, yes, but entirely appropriate to the overall mood of the film. The journey is long and depressing, but the power of Day-Lewis' performance is magic. Grady Harp, April 08

When is a "Collector's Edition" not a collector's edition? When the second disc barely has an one hour's worth of additional featurettes and other extras. "There Will Be Blood" deserved to be recognized as one of the finest films from last year. That's not to say the film is perfect but its flaws are pretty easy to overlook because of Paul Thomas Anderson's sweeping and ambitious storytelling. I'd recommend the single disc edition as the "Collector's Edition" doesn't have all that much in the way of extras. The single disc edition is really all you need even though it doesn't have ANY extras.

The packaging for this set is horrible (which I could forgive if the discs weren't scratched up in the process). How did this get past the marketing department at Paramount?


"There Will Be Blood" based on Upton Sinclair's novel OIL! gives us two portraits of two very different men both ruled by their own obsession--Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis in his Oscar winning role who seems to be channeling John Huston from the film "Chinatown")an oil man who in spite of his impressive skills as a smooth talking salesman, doesn't like people very much (aside from his son H.W. which he uses to help sell people that his is "a family business") and Eli Sunday (Paul Dano)a smooth talking healer and leader of the Church of the Third Relevation. Both men want wealth and power for Plainview its a means to escape. While Sunday sees the oil leaking out of the ground of his father's ranch to gather a flock, reach out with his message and, in turn, gain the power that he believes he deserves. The two men don't get along from the moment they meet--Eli is on to Daniel's "plain speaking" way of doing business and getting something for next to nothing and Daniel believes that Eli is a charlatan. In their own way each is a hard nosed uncompromising businessman with visions that don't mesh.

The DVD:

Robert Elswit's cinematography deservedly won an Oscar for the film and while the DVD transfer looks good, the night sequences are a bit murky and dark. Detail overall is pretty good with a color scheme that accurately captures the theatrical look of the film.

Audio sounds terrific nicely reproducing Johnny Greenwood's score.

There are no extras on the first disc which has a menu as plain as Daniel's view of the world. The second disc features a vintage silent featurette that runs about 27 minutes and uses Greenwood's score to accompany it. It tells the "story" of oil and shows us how oilmen hunted for it and brought it to market.

We also get "15 Minutes" a collection of vintage stills from the era taken around oil sites, behind-the-scenes footage and various clips showing all the work that Anderson and his crew put into researching the film. It's a silent segment accompanied by music and lasts, yep, just over 15 minutes.

Next up we two deleted scenes that last nearly ten minutes. Under three minutes "Dallies Gone Wild" is an alternate take of the restaurant scene involving Daniel, his son H.W. and employees of Standard Oil.


We also get the teaser for the film and the original theatrical trailer both of which remind me of the lost art of crafting a great trailer that will pull in an audience without giving away too much. All things considered, this is a disappointing "Collector's Edition" even with the awkward collectable packaging that is included (where the discs slide inside) and would be prone to damage with time.

Conclusion: A powerful, terrific film and one of the ten best from 2007, "There Will Be Blood" appears in a disappointing special edition from Paramount. The film looks fine and the soundtrack is brilliantly rendered which should be enough to get fans to purchase the single disc DVD and that's what I would recommend.

The extras on disc two of the "Collector's Edition" are slim pickings to say the least. It's as if Paramount rushed to pull this material together in light of the Academy Award nominations and wins the film scored. They are very disappointing for a two disc edition and I can't strongly recommend the two disc edition based on this. If you just want the film, go for the single disc edition and wait to see what the Blu-ray comes packs in the way of special features.

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There Will Be Blood is another one of those movies that you will either love or hate. Daniel Day Lewis is fantastic in this extensive character study; the acting in general was superb. But the pacing was very peculiar--long passages occur when nothing much happens; and the music was overwhelming more than a few times, literally covering the dialogue. I am a composer myself, and I appreciated the composer's skill, but I think the sound engineer should never work in Hollywood again. All in all, the reviewer below who described this as an "Oily Citizen Kane" was pretty close to the mark, although this movie was more violent. All in all, I was left with too much of a sense that the director was trying too hard to create a film that would last for all time. To my mind, a somewhat more direct method would have made a better film. But perhaps it's me.

10 stars

"My advice to approaching There Will Be Blood is to sit back and let it engulf you. Day-Lewis' resonant voice is a potent magnet. It evokes the deceptively dulcet tones of John Huston in Chinatown, charm slathered over wolfish perversity, the better to cheat you with, my dear." Peter Travers

In the first few minutes after the final moments of this film, I sat in silence. I felt like I had been punched in the belly, the impact of this film and the performance by Daniel Day-Lewis is monumental. Daniel Plainview, is a man who was scratching for a living in the beginning of teh 1900's. He scratched for silver at first and developed a bum leg after falling down a mine. He moved on to oil and after striking an oil well he moved on to become an oil tycoon. At this time he adopted a young boy he named HW. This boy became the love of Plainview's life, and the only tender moments we see are with HW. Plainview's nemesis is Eli Sunday, a preacher in the Evangelical mode. He and Plainview get under each other's skin, and the true embarrassments in life that both feel occur because of the other. Each of them are preaching a sermon the other has no belief in.

Plainview also meets a brother with whom he feels close and is able to share his inner feeling until the day that he discovers a truth that changes things forever. Daniel Plainview is a man like no other, he represents to us the dark, the evil of power that enfolds someone in the grip of living a life that does not bother with human relationships. Plainview told his brother,"I look at people and I see nothing worth liking."

From the opening scenes of darkness and strife until the final scene that will cut to your core, we sit enmeshed in this story, this film. Paul Anderson, the director has more than a memorable film, it is a monument to the epitome of film making. I could find nothing to criticize in this film. It will long be remembered as a masterpiece. From the musical score to the photography to the actors all, everyone and everything is perfect.

Highly, Highly, Highly Recommended. prisrob 04-11-08

In the Name of the Father

Magnolia

I will not get into detail about the film (rated FIVE STARS), as there are many great reviews here and they all hit it on the spot about how incredible it is. My concern is with the HORRIBLE packaging that Paramount decided to use with the release of this beautifully haunting film. How does this get by the marketing reps? How does a mistake like this get by ANYONE? This release seems rushed and poor and Paramount should invest more time and money in preparing an ultimate edition, an edition that will prove worthy of the money spent by DVD collectors. As mentioned with most other reviews of the packaging, the disc was easily scratched when I tried to take it out and I even bent the sleeve with how careful I was trying to be. I have already contacted Viacom (who owns Paramount) in hopes of having them release the film again with different packaging (and possibly get the film with the new packaging).

If the early Paul Thomas Anderson seemed to be channeling the young hyper-energetic Martin Scorsese, 'There Will Be Blood' - a more quiet and thoughtful, but no less amazing and cinematic work - shows Anderson working in the vein of Stanley Kubrick. In place of a hyperactive camera, there is now a coldly, brilliantly observational one. In place of empathetic if damaged characters there are now people drowning in their own poison and lies.

He has created a film both boldly theatrical and subtly real, both broadly political and intensely personal. Complicated and intentionally confusing emotionally, with a protagonist gradually subsumed by greed, the film is full of ideas and themes, but feels more mature and focused than Anderson's earlier work, brilliant as that all was. Daniel Day Lewis is amazing, the film looks incredible (if simply shot for an Anderson film), one only sees more and more layers and meanings on repeated viewings.

One of the more important films of recent years, this critique of the American dream - both personal, and by extension national - of success, of conquest, and of control is mesmerizing, and ultimately devastating.

When I first saw "There Will Be Blood," I was disappointed. While I enjoyed the performance of Daniel Day-Lewis and I appreciated the gorgeous cinematography, the film did not do much for me. For one thing, it felt pretentious and overlong, the work of a talented, but self-indulgent director.

What a difference a second viewing makes. One of my favorite film critics, Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune, picked the film as his favorite of the last decade, so I decided to revisit it. After that re-viewing, I watched it a third time. This is the rare film that grows on repeated viewings.

The second time around, I did not find the pacing of the film to be slow, but patient. The film, to me, really penetrates to the heart of the American tradition of rugged individualism and the good and bad of capitalism (put roughly, the first half of the film shows the good of capitalism and the second half shows the bad). Daniel Day-Lewis is just mesmerizing as Daniel Plainview, a character so mysterious, he makes Kevin Spacey in "The Usual Suspects" look like Mary Poppins. The lack of any backstory or context provided for him and his son, H.W., will no doubt frustrate some filmgoers, and this film is certainly not for everyone, but for me, it's really excellent stuff.

Every time I come back to this film, I find something new in it; the more I see it, the stranger and sadder and more ambiguous the film seems to me. Many critics have taken issue with the last forty five minutes or so of the film, which takes place much later than the earlier part of the film, but for me, that is what really makes the film great. I would compare the ending of the film to the ending of "Apocalypse Now"; frustratingly eccentric for some filmgoers, but for me, absolutely great.

If you haven't seen this, see it, and if you have, see it again. Whether you loved or hated it the first time, seeing this film once is not enough.

Five stars.

I don't need to summarize this movie as other reviewers have already done a good job at it. I was a bit disappointed with the movie because of all the hype I had heard from critics and from peers. I found the story to be not all that compelling and even the characters are not that captivating. The only character with any depth is the main character and his story his pretty simple - he's alone and poor, he's ambitious, he's successful, he's miserable, he goes crazy. Citizen Kane anyone?

All in all, after speaking with friends about this movie, I have found that many people like the message "greed + ambition = evil" more than the movie itself. However, this message is only part of the movie because it would be just as easy to view the opposite message that all the honest people eventually end up getting the raw end of the deal "honesty = foolishness"?. Everyone appears to be miserable in this movie with no consistent message as everyone seems to be just as miserable before industrialization than after.

In the end, after the movie was over, I wasn't moved, intrigued, or impressed. My first thoughts were "great acting by Daniel Day-Lewis, cool soundtrack, nice landscapes and dark imagery, and interesting vignettes of the zeitgeist of the early 20th century oil craze (hopefully it is somewhat accurate)".

In summary, I can find intellectual reasons why this movie is good. However, it didn't stir up any intense feelings nor did it send me on a long thinking binge. Consequently, I can say that this movie is "good" and "worth seeing", but I can't say that it is "great" and a "must see".

I must warn all would-be single-disc purchasers that this version comes in one of those crappy cardboard "jewel boxes", rather than the standard plastic "clamshell" versions. I'm sure the disc is going to get scratched, even with handling it with care.
Thus, the 4 out of 5 star review.
Other than that, GREAT flick!

...and I don't think I had read even one critic's review before going to see this movie. I had high hopes for the movie (for $10, we all would like to enjoy what we see when we go to the cinema, right?), but not exaggerated ones. I too am prone to walking out of films I find unenjoyable, but There Will Be Blood captured me for its entirety. I've read all of the 1 and 2 star reviews, and many people have said character development was poor, or have mentioned the lack of dialogue in the first 10 minutes. I had a completely different experience of this film. The cinematography of Marfa, TX (a place I think most of us would rarely give a passing glance if we drove by) was exceptionally stunning, the musical score disturbingly well-done, and the character development engaging. The focus of this movie is Daniel Plainview (DDL's character). If you don't like 3-hour-long character studies, perhaps this movie isn't for you, but in my view the development of the supporting characters and their relationship to Plainview made his madness and greed all the more believable. Many reviewers said they were "waiting for something to happen" (which never did). With the Hollywood hype, did people expect explosions, strange plot twists, and unforeseen drama? Apparently. TWBB tracks the course of one man's life; it isn't guided by scintillating plot details or shocking moments--although Plainview is, in many ways, quite shocking. And remember, this is (loosely) based on a Sinclair novel, so how much "action" are you looking for in turn-of-the-(19th)-century scripts? I don't want to be one of those people who tells others they "missed the point" if they did not see the value or beauty of this film, because it feels unfair. What I will say, however, is that it is very literary (if not "intellectual"...though not in a high brow way), and takes some investment from the viewer to be properly enjoyed. My best experience watching this film was in a theatre all by myself--no lines, no smacking of popcorn. And it was perfect.