There Will Be Blood - An Extraordinary Movie

So Ryan, Cass and I just walked out of what is quite possibly the most extraordinary movie I have ever seen - Paul Thomas Anderson's "There Will Be Blood". Extraordinary for a number of reasons.

Firstly, the almost flawless performance by one of my all-time favourite actors - Daniel Day-Lewis. Day Lewis' portrayal of oil prospector Daniel Plainview is nothing short of breathtaking from the silent opening 20 or so minutes of the movie to his quirky and most certainly apt final words of the movie, "I'm Finished".

Clearly I'm not the only one who thinks so with Day-Lewis picking up a 2008 Golden Globe award as "Best Actor" in the scaled down ceremony (well, glittery press-conference anyway) held on the weekend. Let's face it - the guy's a genius. He only puts out a movie once every few years, and when he does they are amazing - cast your mind back to his portrayal of "The Butcher" in "Gangs of New York" for instance.

Secondly, the actual movie is quite extraordinary in itself. Ryan and I were just saying tonight that if someone asked us to explain what the movie was about it would be hard for us to get our brains around a coherent answer so I'm probably best to just quote the synopsis provided by the Apple Trailers page for the movie:

A sprawling epic of family, faith, power and oil, THERE WILL BE BLOOD is set on the incendiary frontier of California’s turn-of-the-century petroleum boom. The story chronicles the life and times of one Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), who transforms himself from a down-and-out silver miner raising a son on his own into a self-made oil tycoon. When Plainview gets a mysterious tip-off that there’s a little town out West where an ocean of oil is oozing out of the ground, he heads with his son, H.W. (Dillon Freasier), to take their chances in dust-worn Little Boston.

In this hardscrabble town, where the main excitement centers around the holy roller church of charismatic preacher Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), Plainview and H.W. make their lucky strike. But even as the well raises all of their fortunes, nothing will remain the same as conflicts escalate and every human value – love, hope, community, belief, ambition and even the bond between father and son – is imperiled by corruption, deception and the flow of oil.

Every emotion in the book is covered in this tail of morality - love, hate, passion, greed, jealousy, pettiness, paranoia, trust and sadness, and if you're anything like me, you'll be left pondering all the little intricate details of the story long after the final credits have rolled up the cinema screen.

Finally, and this is maybe only me who thinks this (but I doubt it), the haunting musical score that seems to permeate the entire movie is exceptional in its own right. The urgent, sometimes disjointed string arrangements always seemed to hit the mark in their delivery to the point that they almost made me feel uncomfortable at times.

 

I can't recommend seeing this movie enough. It's certainly not one of those "wait until it comes out on DVD" flicks. This is a true contender for one or more Oscars at the upcoming ceremony in February, and is most definitely worthy my following rating:

My rating - 5 out of 5

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