Lavonardo

Saw P.T. Anderson’s There Will Be Blood yesterday. The movie was pre-destined for success in the Academy Awards, but came away with more meager pickings than expected. My take on the film is pretty much the same - it wasn’t all it could be, but by no means a waste of time.

Daniel Day-Lewis’ portrayal of the protagonist starts off well, builds up to a crescendo of power that corrupts its wielder, and finally stumbles at the very last moments of the 160-minute stretch, reducing itself to an almost comic figure. There’s no denying that this was an Oscar-worthy performance, but it would have been so much closer to perfection if some restraing would have been applied in the last twenty-odd minutes.

The rest of the cast pales in comparison, almost to the point of not even recalling who the other actors actually were. But that is not the fault of the film, the character of Daniel Plainview is so dominating.

The cinematography is exquisite, with big skies and even bigger hills - the film sidesteps the industrialization neatly, so derricks and such can be counted in single figures. The most powerful scene, an inferno of the first well remains on screen for minutes, to be extinguished without an explanation.

And that may be one of the potential failures of the film. It does not explain, exposition-wise it relies on the watcher to fill in details, instead of giving pre-digested morsels to the watchers. That may be too hard for a big chunk of the audience. Especially when combined with slow pace and long duration. Those expecting action are going to be even more disappointed, this is a very placid film. Friends of sprawling dialogue will not find the film to their liking either, it simply is is not very talky at all, many scenes play themselves out with minimal dialogue.

The plot is not very complex, it has many elements from Citizen Kane and many other bildungsfilms, spiced with a good amount of conflict and plain insanity. It doesn’t even move with ease, the final chapter, set some twenty years past the vast majority of the film seems disjoint, and not only because of Day-Lewis antics in it.

Half a star deducted because of the score - I found Jonny Greenwood’s atonals screechy and irritating. A fact compounded by the sound system in Maxim, where the sole volume setting seems to be eleven.

And I found the fact puzzling that the Sunday brothers are never shown together on screen (and even thought about them being the same individual) - whether this is intentional, remains to be heard in the inevitably wordy commentaries on the dvd releases.

There was some blood, but there was also rather large amounts of disappointment.