I just got back from a There Will Be Blood and I am in awe. I think I have to let it sink in for a while, but I can say instantly that it was an amazing experience. I think this solidifies Anderson as one of my favorite directors of all time. What'd you think?

i'm going to see it tomorrow.

i found it to be highly unusual, but at the same time, completely captivating. It really left a profound impact. I think it might be my favorite movie of 2007...

I'm trying to decide whether I should use my free movie pass on this or wait until Be Kind Rewind

By the Evan, I thought After The Beep was nicely done.

GO SEE THERE WILL BE BLOOD! I have been dying to talk about it with people, but so far the only people i know who have seen it are my girlfriend and i. It is unlike any film i think i have ever seen.

thank you by the way.

Daniel Day Lewis was absolutely captivating (he always is), but I found P.T. Anderson's directing and pacing to be inconsistent. The best way to put it is that it felt like Anderson was taking the viewer on a ride, and that if the viewer didn't like something, tough - it's his ride, darnit. While this is true of all directors to some extent, Anderson just seemed to be in his own little world on this one. I'm not saying I didn't like it, but I did question some of his choices.

But again, Daniel Day Lewis's performance alone makes the film a must-see. And Paul Dano is pretty good too.

i agree that the pacing was unusual, but there wasn't one moment where my eyes weren't glued to the screen. I found the directing to be prefect. It was just plain creepy throughout, and really created an atmosphere that only furthers the uniqueness of the film. what made this movie for me is the fact that there are many different ways to look at Daniel Plainview and his relationships with his son, his "brother" and Eli Sunday...Daniel's actions seem to be the result of love and betrayal, or greed and egotism, and deciding which is which where and why left a strong impact on me. I think that Daniel Plainview is either a very complicated man, or a very simple man, but that fact that he could be either really seemed to be profound to me, which is why i liked the film as much as i did.

I won't lie: I'm not sure I got "There Will Be Blood." It felt like unfocused drivel--ersatz John Ford, maybe--but so many people I respect liked it that I'm willing to admit there could be something I just didn't get.

From where I sat, there seemed to be no coherent story, no central objective, no narrative motion--it kind of sat there, moving laterally, never going anywhere. This isn't a matter of "pacing," per se, but of the movie having a point other than "I thought of some good scenes I'd like to record."

Some films, obviously, have thematic rather than narrative "points"--but I wasn't able to detect any consistent themes or motives that Anderson was attempting to explore. (Again, did I miss it?)

Perhaps the character of Daniel simply never materialized for me; I really never saw any recognizable psychology at work there--or, for that matter, in the secondary characters. Pretty much everyone in the movie seemed like an empty vessel whose objective(s) shifted randomly whenever Anderson had a new idea for a scene.

Don't get me wrong--there was much to be admired from a technical standpoint, including photography, performances, and brilliant use of music. A number of scenes and bits were interesting in their own right. I'm just not sure why Anderson thought they went together.

So to those who liked the movie: is there something I'm missing here? In one sentence or less, what is this movie about?

It certainly isn't about anything that can be summed up in one sentence. I like and agree with much of your criticism - the film does move laterally (very nice phrasing, by the way), and is confused about it's focus. But, what I do feel you are missing is the brilliance of Daniel Plainview's character and Daniel Day-Lewis's portrayal. That, by itself, was enough of a thematic element to sustain me through a film that was admittedly lacking in some needed narrative push.

Cinematical,

You may well be onto something; if there is brilliance to the character of Daniel Plainview, there is little doubt that I missed it.

Plainview struck me as entirely half-baked; he had a lot of "ingredients," to be sure, but to me, they just never came together into a whole. This is a very person-specific thing, I suppose. I just never felt like I knew the guy; presumably you felt otherwise.

As for Daniel Day-Lewis' performance, he was obviously working hard and all, but... I guess I feel that when an Academy Award-winning actor is reduced to doing a John Huston impression for the duration of a feature-length film, the man is truly up a creek.

I'm interested in what you saw. If you wouldn't mind, I'd appreciate it if you'd elaborate on what interested you about the character.

Thank you for your willingness to engage; I really wish I could see the movie as its fans see it. As is, I feel like the guy on the outside of an inside joke. (-:

--IA

The film is not really about the plot, but about the character. The film reminds me of life... It shows the life of a man who becomes consumed by his relentless persuit of success, but there is no exact one thing that it says. It seems to me like within the facets of the film's ambiguity are its deepest truths and most profound themes. Not unlike life, you can look back on it, and gather what you will. The more i think about it, the more it seems to say to me....In this way, it reminds me of 2001: a space odyssey; depending on how you look at it, you can come to different conclusions. It asks the viewer to put in the effort to say what it is about....A traditional narrative has an agenda, and is deliberately designed to fulfil that agenda. It seems like this film has no agenda, but nonetheless is completely, and deliberately designed, and thus within its ambiguity lies its true agenda.


thats just what i think though.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Evan,

quote:

Originally posted by Evan:
GO SEE THERE WILL BE BLOOD!

I don't know...I'm a little hesitant because the last time I went to the theater was because people were giving never-ended praise to No Country For Old Men was...so I gave in and in the end it didn't even start to meet the expectations I had built for it. Severely disappointed to say the least...

with regards to the feeling that you hardly know Daniel Plainview...i completely relate, but i also feel like it is deliberate...Nobody in Daniel's life knows who he is...we only get little glimpses of what is going on inside his head... it is at these most vulnerable moments that he feels that he has been done wrong by, and then further isolates himself from having an emotional experience, and becomes consumed by greed, and the persuit of success....The audience's relationship to Daniel is just like his relationship to everyone else.

braininabox,
how could you feel let down by No Country? Despite the questionable ending, of course.

Evan,

It's nice to hear that I'm not the only one who didn't feel like he knew Plainview. I guess we differ on whether this is good or not (to me, unknowable characters are neither very difficult to construct nor very rewarding to watch), but I suppose that's just a matter of personal taste.

What I'd like some elaboration on is this: you write, "It seems to me like within the facets of the film's ambiguity are its deepest truths and most profound themes."

What are those profound themes? What are those deep truths?

--IA

heres how i see it:
because we don't really understand daniel, and what drives Daniel to act how he does. His actions could be motivated by any number of things. One instance which really sums this up for me is when Daniel sits with HW and he explains how the business is going to operate... Is daniel sharing a loving, meaningful, albit unsettling, Father-son moment, or is he indulging himself with fantasies due to his obsessive desire to succeed? I dont know....but the fact that i dont know says a lot more about what people are than it would if i did.

does that make sense?

quote:

Originally posted by Evan:
braininabox,
how could you feel let down by No Country? Despite the questionable ending, of course.

Just couldn't get into it. It wasn't necessarily boring, just nothing new it seemed. That and if I didn't know beforehand that the Coen bros directed it, I never would have been able to guess just by watching the film.
I'm just afraid There Will Be Blood will be the same way...but I'll probably end up giving it a shot anyway sometime this week.

Evan,

I think I see where you're coming from. I'm still not sure what profound thing it "says about how people are" that Daniel's motivation is unclear (other than, "sometimes our motives are unclear"), but if it has meaning for you, that's awesome, and it doesn't matter what I think.

I'm gonna see the movie again. I don't want to be unnecessarily dismissive. The fact is, my rotten tomato dispenser is on a hair-trigger these days. Let me try to explain where I'm coming from.

I've felt a troubling trend emerge over the last decade or so in which being provocative has become confused with being interesting. In which being opaque has become conflated with being deep. Call it the "Donnie Darko Effect."

My gut reaction was that "There Will Be Blood" was another in a long line of guilty parties, but I might be off-base.

My problem with "provocative" is that it's lazy. Combine any random events or random images, and our brains will try to forge some connection between them. Encouraging that kind of connection-forming is the definition of "provocative"; and while that can, admittedly, be kind of fun, it's MadLibs, not art.

I don't mean to dismiss or de-emphasize richness of narrative. On the contrary, I LOVE that you can spend a lifetime re-reading "King Lear" without ever mining it dry. Rich though it is, however, "Lear"'s narrative isn't abstruse: the story makes perfect sense, it is full of understandable characters and recognizable psychology, its most basic themes and morals are readily apparent (and summable), and it begs to be ENJOYED rather than merely admired.

(I should mention the other end of the spectrum, the morality-play, which, in its postmodern manifestation, can be "The Seventh Seal" or "Endgame." Neither provides a traditional narrative, but both have ACTUAL and SPECIFIC and QUANTIFIABLE things to say about being human.)

I know this all sounds rather cerebral and academic, and I promise to dislodge the bulbous stick from my rectum any day now. It's just--I've got this bonnet, and in that bonnet is this bee, and the bee's name is "Pseudo-intellectual Crap."

For the record, I mean no disrespect to the many admirers of the film in question; I fully admit that I may have misjudged "There Will Be Blood." I'll continue to try to "get it."

Maybe this Emperor DOES have clothes. The thing is, I've had it up to here with the nudists.

--IA

quote:

Originally posted by Icarus Ascending:
Combine any random events or random images, and our brains will try to forge some connection between them. Encouraging that kind of connection-forming is the definition of "provocative"; and while that can, admittedly, be kind of fun, it's MadLibs, not art.

I take it you aren't too familiar with David Lynch

<quote>I take it you aren't too familiar with David Lynch</quote>

Well, sure I am. Is the work of David Lynch somehow responsive to my comment about provocation vs. depth? I'm thoroughly confused.

--IA