With only five feature films under Paul Thomas Anderson's belt, he already has acquired the reputation of making big films. Boogie Nights and Magnolia were sprawling works of cinema, astonishing when you consider the director was still in his twenties. Magnolia in its sheer constructs was a more complex and emotionally intense endeavour than Boogie Nights and to follow it up with a small light film seemed the only reasonable thing to do. The small light film happened to be a romantic comedy with Adam Sandler and contrary to all expectations from the lot who would skim through the surface Punch Drunk Love turned out to be a romantic comedy film cut from the same cloth and was fiercely a Paul Thomas Anderson film.
Now after five years PT Anderson brings his latest endeavour, going back to making big films with a big ominous title. Having followed Anderson's career since Boogie Nights and along the way writing up a 15000 word dissertation on his films, it was hard not to keep monumentally high expectations from a film that comes after a considerable hiatus and with loads of critical acclaim and started bagging prestigious awards, acclaims and recognitions as soon as it saw the light of the day.
Anticipation was also tweaked by promotional blurbs on papers, critics vowing to give blood to see this film again, giving the the title of the film a spin, There Will be Oscars, and the film being likened to a modern American masterpeice and drawing comparisons to the mighty Citizen Kane (1941). Call it expectational overkill but once I actually got down to see the film in a cinema, despite the fact that I wanted to desperatly love the film at the end of the 2 hours and 30 minutes and so run of the film I could only bring myself to mildly admiring the effort.
I'll let the cat out of the bag and give a heart wrenching account of what didn't work for the film. Unlike Anderson's previous films There Will be Blood does not have a heart. It leaves you cold by the end of the film and one might argue what would one expect from a film that is about a heartless and cold oil tycoon. But we get to see heart and curdling of the blood plenty in this film and in the performance of Daniel Day Lewis who seems to have won every acting award there is to offer this year. But the arresting visuals and sheer panoramic majesty of the film, sun bleached landscape of California of a bygone time complimented by exceptional performances, merely serve as a cosmetic sheen over the bones of the film. The film attempts to look like a great epic and unlike other films that try to be great, There Will be Blood stand defiently head and shoulders above the lot but still doesn't quite make for a great film. You get a feel for Daniel Plainview's obstinate unbound nature to acquire more and more oil and property and wealth but there are inconsistencies with his relationship to his adopted son, HW. The only scenes that generate any warmth are the ones between father and son. The toddler playing with the father's moustache at the begining of the film, Daniel Plainview and HW sharing fire at night and exchanging minimal dialogues, father and son drenched in black oil and cooing to each other on the floor and HW's anger at his father when he returns from a hostel. Daniel Plainview's indifference and disappointment at HW's handicap intially seems understandable but at the same time it is firmly established that regret eats him away and doesn't take kindly to how others view his relationship with HW and then the rift between both at the end of the film feels unexplained and unaccounted for and goes against the grain of whatever had been going on in previously.
Plainview is given his antagonist in the babyfaced preacher Eli Sunday, played by Paul Dano who holds up his own against the might and fury of Daniel Dy Lewis' performance and provides for a manic showdown between the two in the last scene which can only be described as deranged in intensity and feels a bit out of place with the pacing of the film.
Jonny Greenwood's score drew favorbale responses and while it would be unfair to compare this work with his output with Radiohead, the score could easily have been compsed by any conducter. Additionally, it doesn't has the evocative power any good score to a film should have that defines the film and stays with you sometime after you have seen the film. This aspect came to me as a bit jarring considering the use of music in his three previous films.
All in all, despite its visual and acting credentials There Will Be Blood is a departure for PT Anderson. One can say he has grown up and has moved on from the unabashed romanticism he dispalyed on his previous films that just soon as may be refered to his San Fernando trilogy in the coming times.
There Will Be Blood has mertied Anderson his first nomination as a director (It just could as well have been for Magnolia and already won him a best director award at Cannes for Punch Drunk Love) so it can be seen as a formal, categorical recognition of his craftsmanship. Daniel Day Lewis is good infact very good indeed in the film and rightfully deserved his share gongs and medals but then again don't you think he never had much of a competition this year. But away from the festival award crowd, Paul Thomas Anderson was always notably compared to Scorsese and Altman for Boogie Night and Magnolia.
So there was a chance of seeing him coming out of the shadows of his cinematic heroes and mentors and stepping into his own. There Will be Blood doesn't excatly finds his distinct own look. The film aspires to be Citizen Kane by way of Treasure of Sierra Madre (1948) (an influence Anderson admits seeing every night before going to bed) so in a way it harks back to the old age of masters as Huston and Welles and maybe that is what didn't work for me; a contemparary relevance that the other films possesed.
Though the way the film opens, Daniel Plainview, rough and rugged mining for gold and discovering oil, doesn't has any dialouges for the first eleven minutes and the last crazed scene in Daniel's private bowling alley both have strong Kubrickish echoes. Another cinematic influence Anderson latches onto.
Maybe if Anderson would have chosen to keep the film's title Oil or even Oil! rather than There Will be Blood there wouldn't have been such a big let down.
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