There Will Be Blood

Quote of the day:
“We're selecting candidates for the most important job in the world via a process that's less rational than the one used to choose Miss Kumquat of Pasco County.”
--Dave Barry, in the January 26th Miami Herald

Daniel Day-Lewis will win the Oscar for best actor. His performance in “There Will Be Blood” is something else.

If he had inhabited this character just 1% less, he would be overacting. But he is perfectly calibrated for this incredibly entertaining semi-allegorical tale of America’s values.

This kind of thing is director Paul Thomas Anderson’s specialty. “Hard Eight,” “Boogie Nights” and especially “Magnolia” were all wild yet clearly-controlled explorations of fate and what makes Americans tick.

“Magnolia” used several story lines to look at the intrusion of coincidence and spirituality into a hyperbolically perverse world of greed and egotism. It was America magnified and seen in a carnival mirror. I’m still coming to understand this 1999 movie.

Anderson adapted an Upton Sinclair story for “There Will Be Blood,” and he has marvelously taken to the next level Sinclair’s message of entrepreneurship transforming into sinister avarice. This transformation happens in the story of Daniel Day-Lewis’ oil man, and also in the story of a hometown preacher played by Paul Dano.

I find myself remembering how specific scenes looked on the screen--the pictures come back to me in a vivid and powerful way. Also, much of the soundtrack was put together by Jonny Greenwood, a trained violist who is the guitarist for Radiohead. I can’t think of a recent film in which the music so perfectly synergized with the visual narrative. It’s quite an accomplishment.

There’s been some debate about whether the last scene in the movie makes sense. I think, in Paul Thomas Anderson’s extraordinarily creative vision, it does.

I had to think about it a bit, and it’s growing on me.