Fueled by greed
Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, 156 minutes, rated R.
The best movie of Daniel Day-Lewis' career turns out to be in the best movie of Paul Thomas Anderson's career, a nice slice of symmetry that gets even better when you consider that so far, the actor and director have achieved their personal peaks in one of 2007's best films, "There Will Be Blood."
By far, the movie is among the most satisfying, complex and intelligent films to hit theaters in years. Any year.
As if the movie's title weren't enough indication that all won't go well in this reimagining of Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel "Oil!," Jonny Greenwood's score gets right to it in the film's opening moments.
With the screen still dark, a shrieking of strings is unleashed in ways that become so unsettling, you know you're in for it even before you lay eyes on Day-Lewis' Daniel Plainview, an intense man whose cultivated voice obviously is modeled after John Huston's. It's an uncanny impersonation, as slick with oil as the oil Plainview himself comes pump in California at the turn of the last century.
Thick with mustache and armed with enough greed and hate to ruin a country, nevermind a town, Plainview comes to the oil-rich town of Little Boston thanks to a tip sold to him by Paul (Paul Dano), a mysterious young man who suggests that Plainview visit Paul's family and buy up their land.
For a steep price, Plainview follows through. With his son H.W. (Dillon Freasier) at his side, he rushes to beat Standard Oil at their own game and buys up as much land as he can. Meanwhile, he finds in Little Boston an unexpected adversary in Paul's brother, Eli Sunday (also Dano).
Eli is a Bible-thumping evangelist, the head of the Church of the Third Revelation, and what he sees in the good book is what Plainview sees in oil--absolute power over the people. Together, these two are pitted against each other in ways that make for stirring, dangerous entertainment, with each actor railing off the other and giving terrific performances in the process.
This is especially true for Day-Lewis, who will be nominated for an Academy Award (as will the movie itself) and who might have a good chance of winning, provided the fierce, complicated monster he creates onscreen doesn't turn off too many voters. There's a chance that it might not, if only because of how Day-Lewis shades the man--his Plainview can be devastatingly cruel and kind in one brushstroke.
In that way, he literally is the face of the emerging West. In all the dirt and suffering that surround Plainview, a groundswell of promise nevertheless bubbles beneath his feet. Blood will be spilled to realize that promise (an element that gives the film its sharp connection to the present), but in this do-or-die culture of creating a secure new culture, the pull of that promise is enough to tip those who seek it into madness.
Just as it is now.
Grade: A
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4 comments:
finally got around to watching the infamous There Will Be Blood... Daniel-Day Lewis takes well to the overbearing, violent father-figure role -- he also did this in Gangs of New York.
I wonder about that twin-brother of Eli twist, was that just a way for Eli to lie and make a quick buck? The movie doesn't seem to explain it
I agree, Patrick--it was confusing. When I first watched it, it was off-putting...and never explained. Also, funny how the brother's name was Paul and he's played by Paul Dano. Same for Daniel Plainview, who's played by Daniel Day-Lewis.
Anderson is messing with us. And I rather like it.
I tried to like this movie. All the critics seemed in awe of it. Except for the tour-de-force performance by Daniel Day Lewis, I didn't find very much to engage me. The characters were mostly all repellent. The story unfolded so slowly that after the first hour, I couldn't wait for it to end. And when the closing scene finally did come, I was too bored to be annoyed at the silliness of it.
I was thinking that Paul and Eli were one and the same. Like a character with split or multiple personalities. Never saw them on screen together. Why would they be twins? And remember when Eli attacks his father accusing him of being stupid; says something about his son, yet it is he.
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