There Will Be Blood (Two-Disc Special Collector's Edition)
by Paul Thomas Anderson
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Ciar?n Hinds, Daniel Day-Lewis, Jacob Stringer, Kevin J. O'Connor, Matthew Braden StringerDirector: Paul Thomas Anderson
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language); French (Dubbed); Spanish (Dubbed)
Format: Color, Dolby, Dubbed, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 158 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-04-08
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Paramount
Movie Reviews of There Will Be Blood (Two-Disc Special Collector's Edition)
Movie Review: Carringtons and Ewings and Plainviews, oh my!
Summary: 3 Stars
This is an elegant, beautifully-filmed, brilliantly-scored and intensely acted cinematic experience... ...that left me completely nonplussed and apathetic by the time it finished.
Daniel Day-Lewis is really the only actor in this who's either A: on-screen for enough of the movie to make an impact, and/or B: talented enough to make a great performance out of a straightforward set of dialogue. It's not that his supporting cast isn't very, very good - it is - but this film, intentionally or no, ends up as a huge Star Vehicle for Day-Lewis' finely honed thesp skills, and he is excellent as a kind of Charles Foster Kane-meets-J.R. Ewing. Actually, the megalomaniacal leanings of Daniel Plainview are so total and so well-crafted that it's astonishing that we might feel any sympathy for him at all: but thanks to Day-Lewis' skill in the role, he doesn't wind up as a boring bad guy.
For which the audience should be very, very grateful: Daniel Plainview is in probably 90% of this film's frames. Although sometimes this does get a little... ...well, more on that later.
The direction is superlative and the cinematography, exquisite: Paul Thomas Anderson and director of photography Robert Elswitt have done a wonderful job of visualising the maddening disquiet of Plainview's greed against a barren, unforgiving environment.
And the music and sound direction are wonderful, too - this movie uses silence as a sound to great effect for the first thirty minutes or so, and the discord created between lush orchestral movements and harsh, hard-to-hear air raid sirens further the audience's connection with the unusual, unpleasant actions and circumstances of the Plainview family.
So why only three stars? For me, "There Will Be Blood" was like eating an entire table full of chocolate cakes in one sitting: sure, they're gorgeous and appealing and made to tempt the consumer - but a whole table full is just too rich and you wind up sick and bored. The relentless intensity of "There Will Be Blood" doesn't allow the audience to catch its breath at all, and while the acting and production are all excellent, the monotony of the film's intense tone doesn't let us assimilate what we've seen. We're constantly assaulted with more Very Serious Acting, more Very Meaningful Imagery, more Terribly Important Cinema - and "There Will Be Blood", at a hefty running time of 158 minutes, asks too much of its audience in trying to stay engaged with all this high-octane one-note relentless Cinematic Wonderfulness.
That said, it's still a powerful, brilliant bit of cinema: I just didn't care to see more of it after the one hundred minute mark. Somehow, for me, it's less than the sum of its parts - even if its parts are incredible.
Summary of There Will Be Blood (Two-Disc Special Collector's Edition)
Unmistakably a shot at greatness, Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood succeeds in wild, explosive ways. The film digs into nothing less than the sources of peculiarly American kinds of ambition, corruption, and industry--and makes exhilarating cinema from it all. Although inspired by Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel Oil!, Anderson has crafted his own take on the material, focusing on a black-eyed, self-made oilman named Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), whose voracious appetite for oil turns him into a California tycoon in the early years of the 20th century. The early reels are a mesmerizing look at the getting of oil from the ground, an intensely physical process that later broadens into Plainview's equally indomitable urge to control land and power. Curious, diverting episodes accumulate during Plainview's rise: a mighty derrick fire (a bravura opportunity that Anderson, with the aid of cinematographer Robert Elswit, does not fail to meet), a visit from a long-lost brother (Kevin J. O'Connor), the ongoing involvement of Plainview's poker-faced adoptive son (Dillon Freasier). As the film progresses, it gravitates toward Plainview's rivalry with the local representative of God, a preacher named Eli Sunday (brimstone-spitting Paul Dano); religion and capitalism are thus presented not so much as opposing forces but as two sides of the same coin. And the worm in the apple here is less man's greed than his vanity. Anderson's offbeat take on all this--exemplified by the astonishing musical score by Jonny Greenwood--occasionally threatens to break the film apart, but even when it founders, it excites. As for Daniel Day-Lewis, his performance is Olivier-like in its grand scope and its attention to details of behavior; Plainview speaks in the rum-rich voice of John Huston, and squints with the wariness of Walter Huston. It's a fearsome performance, and the engine behind the film's relentless power. --Robert HortonA sprawling epic of family, faith, power and oil, THERE WILL BE BLOOD is set on the incendiary frontier of California's turn-of-the-century petroleum boom. The story chronicles the life and times of one Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), who transforms himself from a down-and-out silver miner raising a son on his own into a self-made oil tycoon. When Plainview gets a mysterious tip-off that there's a little town out West where an ocean of oil is oozing out of the ground, he heads with his son, H.W. (Dillon Freasier), to take their chances in dust-worn Little Boston. In this hardscrabble town, where the main excitement centers around the holy roller church of charismatic preacher Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), Plainview and H.W. make their lucky strike. But even as the well raises all of their fortunes, nothing will remain the same as conflicts escalate and every human value - love, hope, community, belief, ambition and even the bond between father and son - is imperiled by corruption, deception and the flow of oil.
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