04/25/09 - There Will Be Blood

There Will Be Blood (2007, 158 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0469494/

I finally get around to watching this Academy Award winner from a few years back. The film was heavily praised for Daniel Day-Lewis's performance as an oilman Daniel Plainview.

The story basically follows Day-Lewis's character throughout his life and we see his trials and tribulations. There's side characters such as those played by Dillon Freasier (a young "son" of Plainview named H.W.) or Paul Dano (the twins Paul and Eli Sunday), but the movie was made with Day-Lewis in mind and this is obvious. But it's also a glaring fault, which I'll talk about later.

With Day-Lewis in mind for this role, he was apparently given about a year to prepare for it. Day-Lewis comes fully ready, too, having little nuances for his character that has his own accent and mannerisms. Though I haven't seen I don't think any of Day-Lewsis's other works, from what I can gather, he approaches most roles with this similar attitude of being fully submersed. The other character featuring prominently is Paul Dano's Eli Sunday (Paul is only in one scene). I felt like Dano really held his own in the movie and, while obviously not as good as Day-Lewis who is more experienced, did not look like some two-bit nobody cast along. I was very impressed.

The thing that hurts the film the most, though, is that it doesn't really know what it is. It seems mainly made to showcase Daniel Day-Lewis's talent. It certainly did that, getting him the Academy Award for Best Actor that year. But the movie was sort of a hodgepodge of other things. First, it had themes of God and faith. Second, we got the father-son sub story. Then we could view the whole film as a rise and fall of a man's life and career. Which was this movie? I feel like it was parts of all and all of none. By this I mean it never really made up its mind what movie it should be.

One thing that was great about the movie was the score. The film employed the 2001 feel in that it told large stretches of the movie with essentially no dialogue or even scene noise, but instead through an orchestral score. It was superbly done. The tense H.W. scene with the oil rig blowing was particularly memorable. As a whole, the dialogue of the movie was sparse. Many scenes had very little really said.

Overall, I gave this film a 7/10. The movie itself was certainly lacking, but Day-Lewis and Dano's performances are so great that the film is certainly worth a watch. But the movie certainly doesn't belong in the pantheon of elite movies to come out in the past few years.