There Will Be Blood (Anderson)

I thought it’d be nice to kick-start this blog with a bit of negativity, so here’s a look at one of the major problems that I had with There Will Be Blood. The main issue I have is with simplicity being masqueraded as complexity. It’s what I find most problematic with the film, and it’s something that runs through a bunch of different areas. In my eyes, it results in making the picture rather messy and incoherent.

Firstly, the acting: Daniel Day Lewis and Paul Dano have had high praise for their performances and I find it pretty frustrating that this is the case. It seems to me that their acting style is at odds with what PT Anderson is going for in the film. Throughout, Anderson presents Plainview to the viewer as a sealed box. He’s a character that remains unknowable to the viewer, from his wordless opening scene to the rather louder grandstanding finale – we know little of his past, nothing of his “real” family, friends etc. - only simplistic fragments of his outlook on life (I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people). It doesn’t take long to realise which route Plainview is heading down, that his accumulation of wealth and power is going to intersect with his decline as a man. It’s a simple story, and Plainview is a simple man, and that’s fine, but Day Lewis’ performance is desperate to imbue complexity in Plainview where there isn’t any need to. His manner is oppressively expressive, every twitch and vocal intonation is so over the top, so intent on proclaiming importance that it undercuts the predetermined narrative arc that Anderson sets Plainview on course for.

There’s been much praise of Johnny Greenwood’s score for the film, but what reason people have found to be delighted eludes me. Unless the score is meant to be ironic, I see no reason to have bombastic, spazzy arrangements to accompany Plainview’s “action” scenes, and a jaunty little number after we witness him caving in Eli’s skull. Greenwood’s wild and uncontrolled score undercuts any dramatic intensity that Anderson manages to build up – when Plainview runs to save his “son” from the fire Greenwood goes for a sledgehammer approach and it jars terribly with Anderson’s careful, controlled direction. For large chunks of the film, the score seems completely at odds with what’s taking place, and complicates what’s happening on screen unnecessarily.

It’s obvious from watching the film that PT Anderson has great talent for directing, and there are some scenes in the film that play out remarkably. The choreography of certain extended shots are breathtaking, with the camera roaming around the characters like they’re positioned within a boxing ring, a stylistic trait that rhymes wonderfully with the sparring characters at the centre of the film. At other points, his style seems clumsy and lacks cohesion. For a film that seems intent to focus almost exclusively on Plainview, I see little need for the scenes that get inside the child’s head so that we too can hear what he hears (or rather, doesn’t). For a film that seeks to place the viewer on the outside, I see no purpose for these sections at all - trying to flesh out and complicate the film in areas where it doesn’t need it, it makes much of the action extraneous and the film as a whole seem bloated.

Does the film have anything to say about capitalism, religion, family? The film positions itself in a manner to suggest that it does, but in reality there’s very little chew on. It’s a film that looks like and has the feel of an epic, a film that will touch on big issues, pitting Plainview vs. Sunday, Business vs. Religion. As the film progresses, it becomes clear that the film is never going to escape from the small scale interactions between the characters – it’s a film that speaks loudly but doesn’t have anything to say. Plainview may be unknowable to the viewer, but unlike Citizen Kane (a film it shares quite a few similarities with) it doesn’t tell us anything about the impossibility of knowing a man. The film doesn’t give us any reason to think what is taking place on screen might actually mean something. Look at how the film wrong foots the viewer for much of the film by having Paul Sunday and his brother Eli being played by the same actor. The film toys with the viewer for much of the film, leading them to consider that the brothers may in fact be one person (which turns out to be untrue). If Anderson is going to play games with the viewer, he should at least have something interesting to say, but there’s no insight into brotherhood, no probing of ideas about mutability, nothing. So why does Anderson have one actor play both of the brothers then? It serves no function other than unnecessarily complicating what unfolds – it adds nothing, develops nothing – it just unnecessarily confuses the viewer, covering up what is overly simplistic by making it appear complex.

For the past few months, off and on, I've been toying with the idea of starting a blog about film. The reasons are typical: to do something creative, to stave off boredom, to create a container for the hours I'm spending watching and reading and thinking. As with most of the plans I've ever had, I've been hesitant. One of the reasons for the hesitancy is confidence - Do I have anything original to put forward? Can I write intelligently enough and thoughtfully enough about an artform I'm only just starting to find my way with? I decided that I'd give myself a few months until I felt better prepared to put what I have in here out there. I've been becoming even more passionate about film - watching, reading, thinking as much as possible, but still the same questions and worries keep dogging me. In the end I realised that of course these worries are going to persist, and that they'll keep on persisting until I start to write and create this container - that the confidence, thoughtfulness and intelligence will (hopefully) come after I spend some time stabbing around in the dark on this blog...So here it is: I hope that if you find me here you'll bear with it, and that after a while you'll start to see some light.