Movie: There Will Be Blood
General Info
Title: There Will Be Blood
Year: 2007
In Short
From rags to riches: we see a very determined and ambitious man climb his way to the top, the hard and emotionally costly way.
The Movie
Visuals
Hmm.. No super special visual tricks, just very smart use of the tools of the trade: great landscapes, a lot of good versus bad, light versus dark setups. A very strong sense of looking through the main character’s eyes, can’t put my finger on it.
Plot
No real surprises or complex intellectual stuff: it’s very similar to movies like Giant.
You get to experience the main character’s struggle to succeed in his dream: become as rich and powerful as possible in order to be totally independent of other people. To achieve this he still has to endure the personal and business relationships, something that really doesn’t come easy to him, except with his son. And he has to succeed in the oil business during the harsh and pioneering times in the beginning of the last century.
The development of this man into something of a sad and horrible monster is riveting stuff to behold; you keep supporting him in his fight to survive and be successful. Even though he sees every single person in his surroundings as enemies, his real nemesis in the story seems to be the young evangelist in the little village where he’s trying to drill for oil. The battle between these two really blurs the line between Good and Bad, love it!
The story ends with Final Confrontations: with his son and with the evangelist. Both scenes are very well handled.
Cast
Excellent, friggin’ excellent cast. Daniel Day-Lewis is his usual intense self, deservedly winning an Oscar for this role. The young Paul Dano was even more impressive, though.
Special props to that baby in the train scene, I don’t know how they got the kid to interact with Daniel Day-Lewis, but that baby is a natural.
Conclusion
160 minutes.. The 1st half was exciting and interesting the whole time, but after the intermission, the story started to wander, kinda lost in the desert for a while. That part of the movie felt rushed, as if there was more to tell while on the other hand a lot movie minutes was spent almost wasted on seemingly less important parts of the plot. It’s the closing part that compensated the bad parts in the second half.
Magnolia director Paul Thomas Anderson wrote the screenplay and directed the movie and it was an impressive job. Still have problems with the second part of the film, but I know that this movie will be crossing my mind for a long time, in a positive way.
Rating: 
March 15th, 2008 at 12:54 am
As a young girl my best friend and I, used to spend a few times a month watching D.D.L. in The Last Of The Mohicans. We used to rewind the screen to watch that scene when he held Madeline Stowe and said “I will find yew!” The heaving chest he was sporting in that film and those cute little skinny ass legs in the buckskin, damn ..sorry TMI….I digress…I will be checking this film because I admire his acting so much. The line “I HAVE ABONDONED MY CHILD!” is now apart of pop culture lexicon in North America. Your bringing you A game once again!
March 15th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
okay, thx Evelyn, for the rest of my life I’ll be forced to fight the urge to look at DDL’s legs in a movie and contemplate their cuteness factor.. definitely not a thing a man should be burdened with
March 15th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
:D)
April 13th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Hello, Frenchy. After watching this film last night, I was wondering if you could explain what scenes in the second half lost you. For me, it was instrumental to have the second half of the film as it was in order to show the degradation of Daniel Plainview’s mind. He went insane because of his obsession with the business of oil. Frenchy, you know I love my metaphors and this film was full of so many! I was having a field day, thinking of the many different angles that PT was going for. This film is a giant. Dano I think of as a young Edward Norton. He was a tremendous adversary. Now I have a question?*spoiler* There was talk that there was no real Paul Sunday (twin), but rather Eli was the one who went to Daniel and told him of the oil.
April 13th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
hiya Eve!
Ehm.. thinking.. thinking.. ah, *there be spoilers a coming*
the whole lost brother subplot, where they go on a long journey to the coast is a story that took too long. I do understand that cause and effect for the main character: his discovering the betrayal and making amends for that, but to me, it could’ve been done a quicker. Saving more time for the other downwards moving relationship: his son. That, was more interesting to me. And of course some more scenes between DDL and Dano would’ve been great (I like the comparison with Norton, works very well for me).
The plot where there were no twins? Hmm.. Sounds kinda weird, cause DDL’s character revelation at the end (Brother 1 warned about Brother 2) wouldn’t have made sense. But, my memory’s a bit sketchy on that part of the story..
April 13th, 2008 at 10:59 pm
Yes, I thought that was a bit of a reach myself and my arms aren’t that long…Hardy har har…Okay, back to the storyline. I can see what you mean about the pacing of that sub plot, but to side with PT’s writing, that period of time was needed as we were able to see the growth of the familial relationship between the two characters. The blood between brothers. I kind of think that this realationship was important as a mirror to the lost relationship between Plainview and his son. I think that the root of his anger came from the loss of another family link. He lost his son to a world of silence and the truth about what happened to his brother, the loss of blood. The act of betrayal pushed him over the edge. His ruthlessness, lust for oil, and ability to discard of people so easily mirrors a certain Dick Cheneyness, only differnece is that Plainview was a better shot.;)
April 13th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Yeahwell, I preferred more time spent on the son than on the brother, you liked it as is..
*spoilers etc*
Both turned out to be bogus blood links, coz the son isn’t his either, right?
Did the brother’s betrayal push him over the edge? I thought he’d already leapt from that edge himself and the brother thing was just a pointy rock he bumped his head on the way down (ah, the sweet abuse of metaphors, ain’t life grand?)
Yeah, Plainview was a better shot and didn’t mind getting his hands really dirty. The other guy? Meh.. He’ll be forgotten..
April 14th, 2008 at 12:55 am
Those Metaphors…ahhh…I’m telling you Frenchy, it’s so much fun. The seen in the restaurant when he puts the white napkin over his face and starts talking was so funny. As well a the milkshake analogy. There was some dark humor in this film. Sometimes I think that gets forgotten by the film snobs. Well, Frenchy thanks for going over the film once again for the pseudo film lover. Might I recommend a film for you to check out and discuss in the future. It’s a classic called “The Swimmer” with Burt Lancaster. It’s totally art house, but I’d love to hear you dissect it into Frenchy fried pieces for your readers eager consumption.
April 14th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Hmm.. A Burt Lancaster movie? I knew he had done some with an Italian director, but this sounds interesting too..
Gotta make me a movie to-do list
September 13th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
HF aka “long-tail-pseudo-film-lover” has to agree with Frenchy here. Watched the movie on dvd yesterday. Great stuff, but I wish they had taken a little more time on the troubling father-son relationship. Kinda missed that. You have a chance to have a better look at the “cute skinny ass legs” in “My left foot”, lol
September 13th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Heheh.. Another movie I have to revisit soon.. Funny how a movie does or doesn’t stick with you after six months..
September 13th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Well… maybe you’ve seen a lot of them ?
September 14th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Yeah, I’ve seen quite a few in my time