There Will Be Blood

Finally was able to see Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood. At the screening, I realized I had been anticipating this film for probably 4 years. Maybe less. I remember news coming out about this project not terribly long after Punch-Drunk Love. With the amount of press this film has received in the last couple months, it has been downright painful waiting for it.

My first impressions are that this is an epically American film. Citizen Kane is perhaps too easily the first film that came to mind. Like Kane, this film is the story of a great megalomaniac intent on power and money, and perhaps those two things alone. Daniel Plainview is a great anti-hero, and perhaps more sympathetic and likable then critics like Jim Emerson give him credit for. He is not a complicated man, and our easy understanding of him quite easily leads to sympathy and even admiration. In retrospect, I think it is wrong to say that Plainview cares only for money. It is competition that drives him. His rivalry with Eli Sunday never truly takes on an economic slant. Instead, both men seek to break the other down and assert power. It is this competition that drives the films two most remarkable scenes: Plainview's baptism and Sunday's visit over 20 years later. It was an absolute joy to watch these two characters attempt to destroy the other.

I am anxious to watch this again and pay a little more attention to the actual physical construction of the film. There are certainly some powerful images here and Jonny Greenwood's score is almost overwhelming (I almost felt like there was too much score, although it is still remarkably powerful). My initial feeling is that this film does not quite carry the affective power that No Country had on me. That film felt more distant and mysterious after my first viewing, while I feel like I took in There Will Be Blood more completely, and with less affective residue. I am anxious to see it again, certainly. I have come to realize that it is the film that immediately holds you at distance that holds more power and richness. While Cloverfield may be more involving, I highly doubt that it will sustain itself over time. Zodiac, No Country For Old Men, and even There Will Be Blood still have more work to do.