There will be Blood

The hype machine can be a bitch. Reviews, awards and other accolades can be a double edged sword. A movie released in late November or early December is vying for that Oscar gold and a movie like There will be Blood is the perfect Oscar picture. It is one of the 3 best reviewed movies of the year (No Country for Old Men and Ratatouille are the other 2) it has won over 30 awards already and is now nominated for 8 Oscars. I have read reviews calling it a masterpiece and that Daniel Day Lewis' performance is legendary. The trailer was brilliant- violent images of fire spliced with lines like "I hate most people." Violent images of big things falling spliced with lines like "I don't want anyone else to succeed." Reviews compared Lewis' character to Satan himself. I was prepared for an epic, over the top, glorious, fiery movie. I was ready for the blackest of humor and I was prepared to watch Daniel Day Lewis just make everyone else on this planet look like an amateur. After all that is what I was promised.

The story is very straight forward- Daniel Plainview(Lewis) wants to control all of the oil he can. That is all he cares about. He has a son and it seems like he loves him but the reality of the situation is once his son goes deaf due to an accident, Plainview doesn't have much use for him. The scene where his son's accident happens is one of the most gorgeous looking scenes in the movie. Plainview sets up shot in a tiny town that is kind of run by a preacher, Eli Sunday (Paul Dano). Eli is also after something-power and money. The similarities between Plainview and Sunday are set up nicely as they spend a good portion of the movie trying to humiliate each other. But make no mistake, this movie is about Plainview. Plainview is a man who will lie, cheat and even kill for what he wants. However, he is also willing to humiliate himself if it will get him what he wants- control of the oil.

This is a very very good movie. The acting is top notch; Paul Thomas Anderson directs with the confidence of a director reaching his top form. The story is quite excellent and the screenplay features some great very darkly comic moments and some very rich symbolism and the themes present in the movie are as prevalent today as they were when Upton Sinclair wrote the novel on which this movie is based. That being said, I was underwhelmed when the movie was over. I am not sure if the hype machine was the cause, or if there was something actually wrong, because I can't point out any real flaws, except I think the editing could have been tighter at points. Lewis is excellent, but I was left wanting more. The climax of the movie is what I was expecting from the whole movie. I wanted a grand big, nasty Satanistic character and I got a guy who was a dick. He may have been a soulless dick, but until the end he was not the creature I was expecting. Perhaps my expectations set me up for failure, but when I did that with No Country for Old Men, I was not disappointed, so I don't think the expectations were far out of line.

I brought up No Country for Old Men a few times in this review and I think it is fitting because both movies have similar themes of greed and power over-running lives. Both movies feature a cat and mouse game between someone who is purely evil against someone who just let greed get the best of him. Both stories are very different but they actually kind of achieve the same end result. Of course, There will be Blood also examines the role of religion in the lives of people. A girl claims she gets beat if she doesn't pray; Eli Sunday may or may not be a real prophet; like evangelists today, Sunday puts on "One god damn hell of a show" and like evangelists today, he wants-no needs-money. Like Plainview he is willing to submit himself to humiliation to get the money he wants. He seems like a righteous man until greed gets a hold of him. This is not a new theme, but it is explored in very dark ways here and his preaching scenes are awkwardly comical, but so awkward that you aren't sure whether to laugh or not, like the rest of the comedy in the movie.

One other person I want to mention is Dillon Freasure, who played Plainview's son H.W. Plainview. This kid does not have a ton of dialog or screen time, but he was stellar. I cannot imagine it was easy to act in his first movie ever with a guy like Daniel Day Lewis, but I was really moved by this kid. Granted, knowing a lot about how kids react when they go deaf, I kind of had a slight advantage, but this kid really nailed the whole thing. I only wish Paul Dano was much more up to the task. He was good, but he looked scared, not as a character but as an actor. I am not sure he was a strong enough force to be matched with Lewis' level of acting. I don't want to give the impression that I did not like this movie; I was just underwhelmed. There are brilliant moments sprinkled throughout, but it gets a bit too slow at times and never seems to match the intensity of the epic and amazing score. I expected this movie to come close to bumping No Country for Old Men off the number one spot for 2007, but instead I got a movie that ends up barely in my top 5.

Final Grade: A-