21 January 2008

Mammon 7, God 5

There Will Be Blood

Crit
OK, folks, we have a new contender for best of '07, and at least a new contender for P. T. Anderson's career-best. Day-Lewis is scary-good, in every sense, and Dano's character(s?) is/are far more complex and surprising that the trailer suggests. What I did not realize going in was that the central battle in the film is between rapacious capitalism and the goofy brand of fundamental Christianity that have since come to such a symbiotic understanding. And another thing: this has to have the highest ratio of violence to gunshots of any film in recent memory set in a gunpowder-using culture; and if you make the ratio violence : (gunshots + knife or sword wielding), you can drop the historical qualifier.
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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

As you know, I was disappointed in There Will Be Blood, which had great acting (esp Daniel Day Lewis) and looked beautiful, but seemed somehow unsure of itself. Plainview was a character study, while Sunday seemed more a caricature--they didn't have the same weight, and consequently I didn't feel the monumental opposition between the two. The final scene in the bowling alley, where Plainview kills Sunday, seemed silly and contrived (especially Sunday's confession). I wanted to laugh. So many good elements, but somehow the dots didn’t connect for me.

12 February, 2008 18:51

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