There Will Be Blood (2007)
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
Ruthless silver miner, turned oil prospector, Daniel Plainview, moves to oil-rich California. Using his son to project a trustworthy, family-man image, Plainview cons local landowners into selling him their valuable properties for a pittance. However, local preacher Eli Sunday suspects Plainview's motives and intentions, starting a slow-burning feud that threatens both their lives.
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We're variously reminded of Greed, Citizen Kane, Days of Heaven, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and even Werner Herzog's oil-fire documentary, Lessons of Darkness — all better movies on similar themes.
Then again, Day-Lewis' oversized turn is right in line with Paul Thomas Anderson's oversized ambitions in creating a modern-day masterpiece, a movie so audacious that it flagrantly apes Citizen Kane during its final half-hour and recalls The Treasure of the Sierra Madre at regular intervals.
He references other films--CHINATOWN and CITIZEN KANE most notably--yet this too is a way of showing the timelessness of the examined themes.
Altman’s contributions to modern filmmaking, especially of the American independent type, are so vast and so liberating that it would be almost as limiting for a serious young American director to try to avoid them as it would have been for a silent filmmaker to work without reference to D. W. Griffith or a studio director of the ’40s and ’50s to avoid referencing Citizen Kane.
It evokes passing comparisons to everything from "Giant" to "Citizen Kane" but it's impossible to pigeonhole.
Plainview's only goal in life is to become enormously wealthy, and he does so, reminding me of " Citizen Kane " and Mr. Bernstein's observation, "It's easy to make a lot of money, if that's all you want to do is make a lot of money."
He references other films--CHINATOWN and CITIZEN KANE most notably--yet this too is a way of showing the timelessness of the examined themes.
His performance has lead to comparisons with John Huston (probably most famous these days for his turn in Chinatown), but in a way it's more reminiscent of De Niro's violent boxer Jake La Motta in Raging Bull.
Normally an exceptional performer, Day-Lewis has opted, either through Anderson's direction or of his own accord, to channel John Huston -- and probably Noah Cross in Chinatown -- into his character, speaking with the same educated, growling, snakeskin drawl.
But Anderson overreaches in the movie's lengthy epilogue set in 1927, which seems loosely inspired by "Chinatown."
In Roman Polanski’s Chinatown , detective Jake Gittes became suspicious of a devious California millionaire named Noah Cross, played by the great John Huston.
But Day-Lewis, who seems to have modeled his courtly-demonic vocal drawl here on John Huston's Noah Cross in "Chinatown," is one of the few actors who can infuse a symbolic character with the lifeblood of passionate, lived-in experience.
We're variously reminded of Greed, Citizen Kane, Days of Heaven, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and even Werner Herzog's oil-fire documentary, Lessons of Darkness — all better movies on similar themes.
Based on Upton Sinclair's novel Oil! the movie opens with an excellent 12-minute sequence with no dialogue -- perhaps a nod to Erich von Stroheim's silent milestone, Greed, also about the destructive power of accumulated wealth?
His films aren’t really like anyone else’s, though in the case of his latest, There Will Be Blood, there are certainly strong intimations of at least three other movies—Erich von Stroheim’s Greed (1923), Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941) and Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974).
By depositing such a complex emotional drywell of a man in the absurd luxury of a manor house with its own bowling alley and then leaving him there to molder and unlatch, Anderson creates an indictment of the American success ethic so detailed and yet so centered on the personal and psychological that the nearest point of comparison is probably Citizen Kane or even Greed .
Mr. Anderson's epic fable about the American Dream begs comparison with other great American classics "Greed," "Chinatown," and even "Citizen Kane," though perhaps it's not of the same overall merit in spitting out its allegoryâ??as it gets bogged down too much in covering its misogynist main characters, who are used to serve a schematic political purpose.
Inspired by Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel 'Oil!' and Margaret Leslie Davis' biography of the oil tycoon Edward Dehaney 'The Dark Side of Fortune', and shot in the same place (Marfa, Texas) where oil saga Giant was filmed in 1956, There Will Be Blood taps into a deep seam of American ideology and iconography.
There are also echoes of the 1956 James Dean classic, Giant.
Clocking in a a bursting 158 minutes, the latest Paul Thomas Anderson epic comes onto the scene reminding viewers more of the 1956 George Stevens opus "Giant" than anything else in recent or past memory.
Those who remember the 1956 James Dean classic "Giant" will notice hints and whispers from that epic in the crude-soaked new film.
Their travels are determined by Daniel’s brutal speculations, from Texas to California (the film was shot in Marfa, Texas, same location as George Stevens’ Giant, another epic melodrama about land, oil, and blood, though its CA setting suggests Anderson’s abiding interest in the state’s entwining commercial histories).
It was shot in Marfa, Texas, the location of George Stevens’$2 1956 oil epic Giant .
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Then again, Day-Lewis' oversized turn is right in line with Paul Thomas Anderson's oversized ambitions in creating a modern-day masterpiece, a movie so audacious that it flagrantly apes Citizen Kane during its final half-hour and recalls The Treasure of the Sierra Madre at regular intervals.
Moments of cinematic homage to "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" are evident in a miraculous picture that is simultaneously an art film and a mainstream masterpiece.
Anderson has cited John Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre as a huge influence on this project.
The movie resonates with our memories of old films like "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," "Elmer Gantry" and, especially, "Citizen Kane."
As in another American classic, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, it's not the gold that destroys men's souls but greed; in There Will Be Blood, the commodity that drives the greed is oil.
Elsewhere, Anderson has cited The Treasure of the Sierra Madre as his favorite film, and no portrait of an isolated, half-mad American tycoon can escape the shadow of Citizen Kane .
We're variously reminded of Greed, Citizen Kane, Days of Heaven, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and even Werner Herzog's oil-fire documentary, Lessons of Darkness — all better movies on similar themes.
The production design is by Jack Fisk, and "There Will Be Blood" often recalls Fisk's work with Terrence Malick on the equally meditative yet operatic "Days of Heaven."
Young Mary Sunday might have walked right out of Days of Heaven , and like that film, Blood ’s centerpiece sequence features a glorious, terrifying conflagration.
Stylistically, the film is almost a homage to Stanley Kubrick, particularly "2001: A Space Odyssey" -- opening with a similar prologue that jumps in stages over the years and using a soundtrack throughout that employs anachronistic music.
Its opening scenes deliberately recall the mysterious power and otherworldly menace that inhabited the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey, fusing score, sound and image together to create an extended, breathtaking, nearly wordless expository sequence the likes of which have rarely graced cinema screens.
In the wordless opening scenes, set to Jonny Greenwood's thrilling score, we spot Plainview, a silver prospector, huddling on the ground like the apes in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Like Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey , Blood boasts a brilliant musical score by Radiohead’s guitarist Johnny Greenwood in which dissonant waves of strings seem to shriek and groan like plate tectonics.
As if to reiterate his main character’s monolithic status, Anderson seemingly invites comparisons to 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The influence of Robert Altman on Anderson's work continues, this time drawing inspiration from Altman's 1971 "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" but one could just as easily draw parallels to Michael Cimino's "Heaven's Gate" if Anderson didn't do so much more with his own attempt at creating an epic period piece.The first thing that immediately impresses is the amount of detail put into examining the early days of the American oil business, the technical aspects of drilling and how the industry flourished with big corporations and big money making it harder for entrepeneurs like Plainview to make a living.
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Anderson’s interest in landscape as metaphor recalls the films of Peter Weir, who explored the spiritual implications of wilderness landscapes in Picnic at Hanging Rock , The Last Wave , and The Mosquito Coast .
Bayona is a resourceful but soulless manipulator, bogging down intriguing themes of supernatural dread and spiritual redemption in motherhood with torpid, recycled tropes (many lifted from Guillermo Del Toro, who "presents" the film) and a group of spectral children that aims for Peter Pan and The Turn of the Screw but instead ends up far closer to The Goonies.