There Will be Blood...
Preceded
by some boring dialogue and predictable character development.
So
after watching No Country for Old Men I decided I would finally take
the time to watch There Will be Blood. This is a movie that I wasn't
really interested in at all when it first came out, a movie about an
American Oilman in the early twentieth century carries no interest in
it at all for me. Added to that, the mixed reviews and hearing how it
is on the slow side certainly didn't do it any favours with me. But
over the years I have heard more and more good things about it from
my friends and so decided to take the endevaour of sitting down and
watching this epic.
Overall
Shannon and I agreed, boring, actually that should be Boring. I found
the first half hour to hour somewhat interesting but then it quickly
devolved into an orgy with itself. It just seemed to go on and on
without much need. Alright, we get it, Daniel Plainview is a very
very cutthroat businessman, who will stop at nothing to make money
and whose business and money comes first and everything else
(including human life) second, but really did it need to be 2.5 hours
of that?
Acting
first. Yes Daniel Day Lewis did an outstanding job as Daniel
Plainview, but that is about it. Paul Dano's preacher was annoying at
best and awkward at worst, and why does he scream so high pitched so
often in this movie? I think I much preferred his mute character in
Little Miss Sunshine. The whole subcast of actors and characters had
spotty acting throughout, I especially remember the father of the
Sunday ranch (David Willis I believe), oh my lord that acting was
awful, that is the sort of stiff awkward thing you see in a high
school play, not a big Hollywood film. Although thankfully his
character was very minor with very few lines which was much different
than Dan Aykroyd's terrible terrible awful awkward acting in The
Curse of the Jade Scorpion (a very nice Woody Allen movie with some
of the worst overall acting I've ever seen, one should watch some of
it just to see how bad of an actor Dan Aykroyd is, even if I still
love the first Ghostbusters movie and hope the next one is good but
doubtful). But after watching the movie and looking over the cast of
the film it is clearly a movie wholly about Plainview and all the
other characters are simply filler. What I found funny about Daniel Day Lewis is this movie is how much he looked and sometimes his mannerisms reflected a combination of Kramer from Seinfeld and the Soup Nazi, just something weird I noticed while watching. Oh and how the adult HW reminder me of a friend's (JR) boyfriend (PG).
I
found this movie to echo many of the aspects of The Great Ziegfeld;
the emotional and business rise and fall of a man at the turn of the
last century. Albeit, the fall for Plainview at the end is not about
bankruptcy but the idea of his fall from grace (very loosely using
the word grace in Plainview's case) is there. To me, The Great
Ziegfeld did a much superior job of conveying this feeling, and much
more interesting and entertaining than There Will be Blood.
In
the end this movie was boring and I didn't much care for any of the
characters and the subject matter isn't particularly interesting
either. This combined, I can definitely see how Daniel Day Lewis won
best actor, but I can also see how No Country for Old Men beat it for
best picture. Although part of me wonders how it even got on the list
of nominated best pictures, yes this is how much I disliked it.
But
we always have to consider that this, like many things in life, are a
matter of opinion. If we all agreed on everything it would make for a
very boring world, all perhaps a happier world in some respects.
Next
to watch from this year is Michael Clayton. Another film that I had
no interest in seeing when it first came out, but that interest has
grown over the years. I always seem to have a love hate relationship
with George Clooney. While I don't like him and never really want to
watch his films, I usually end up really enjoying them, even if his
clean cut nice guy with a chip on his shoulder/ulterior motive
character seems ever present in his movies.
