Jul 20

Jul 20 There Will Be Blood (2007)

Daniel Day Lewis is a renowned method actor, known for going the extra mile to make his roles feel particularly authentic.
Thus, for his 2007 feature, I have to wonder a few things:
How many oil wells did he drill for practice?
How many people did Lewis murder in preparation?
How many deaf orphans did he abuse for shits and giggles?
Because the answer to all of the above seems to be “an uncomfortable amount.”

Theoretically, this movie had everything I could have asked for: a period piece with stellar set and costumes, a lead character with a well-defined arc, a soundtrack, and a clear conflict.
And yet, it’s like every one of those factors was developed with the explicit purpose of being the opposite of what I wanted, ultimately working out into a painful cinematic blunder.
Except the costumes and set. Those were solid.

Daniel Day Lewis played Daniel Plainview, a prospector with a talent for easily finding the kinds of oil reservoirs that just spew money. His foil was Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), an absolute nut job of an evangelical preacher who rapidly crossed the line from “overly passionate” to “pants-on-head crazy.”

Daniel’s adopted son, H.W., had all of three speaking lines, then had his hearing exploded away at 10 years old. For some reason, everyone took this as a chance to treat H.W. as if he was suddenly mentally deficient, instead of just deaf. Presumably H.W. could read, as Daniel made a big deal about education for children as he pitched his oil derrick business plans to the townsfolk (“oil rigs need workers, workers bring families, families need amenities; I can turn your dirt-pit into a proper city!”), yet no one ever thought to try writing a message to H.W. on paper or slate, and instead just threw him around like a rag-doll while yelling at him.
It was very uncomfortable to watch.

Lewis’s accent of choice for Daniel was unsettling too. It sounded far too much like the Sean Connery accent from the “Celebrity Jeopardy” SNL skits, and I ended up paying more attention to the sound of Daniel’s voice than to the lines he was speaking.
Considering Lewis’s acting method, it’s reasonable to believe that he picked said accent to be era appropriate. That doesn’t make it any less terrible.

Daniel’s character arc took him from “genius oil prospector” to “angry drunk,” and they gave him almost 30 years to get there, so I can accept that transition. It’s just not shown well and it doesn’t make Daniel particularly endearing, just atrocious.

At one point, Daniel and Eli got into a fight.
Now, this being the west and them both being men, I was expecting proper punching.
Instead, I watched Daniel slap Eli a bunch of times while Eli whimpered. Open-handed face slaps - not even a proper gauntlet-throwing backhand!
It was the most disappointing physical confrontation I’ve ever seen in a movie.

The final shot of was Eli, lying dead in a pool of his own blood, having been bludgeoned to death by an entirely unapologetic Daniel, followed by the title card: “There Will Be Blood.”
It was painfully on-the-nose.

There was a running soundtrack through about half of the movie, but most of that seemed to be one lonely, sad, and very unprepared violinist dragging the bow across the strings.
The other half of the movie was uncomfortable silence on top of too-long scenes.
Between the lack of music and the horrible music, I have to wonder if they ran out of money when filming, so someone told some crewman’s first-year-orchestra kid to sit in a sound booth for a few hours and go wild.

Speaking of too-long-scenes: this movie was 2.5 hours long. That’s far too much time expect the audience to just sit there and watch when many scenes just continued well beyond their due date. Characters would stare at each other for a length of time that shifted from ‘dramatic’ to ‘awkward,’ or we’d watch a person walk. And walk. And walk. Or just shots of other things that didn’t particularly tie in to anything else.
It was too much. There was a lot of editing for time that should have happened, because what we were left with instead was a lot of misused film that didn’t benefit the telling of the story.

This movie also completely missed the chance to cast Sam Elliot in any role. He’s the guy you immediately think of when someone suggests “that one dude who looks like the embodiment of every cowboy ever.”

This was a movie with two antagonists, no moral or lesson, and an ending that just kinda happened.
The only thing that came out of this that I liked was the realization that the phrase “I drink your milkshake” was spoken during the last five minutes as Daniel taunted Eli before murdering him.