There Will Be Blood

[smartone]

This new movie from PT Anderson is getting compared to Citizen Kane

looks amazing -- can't wait to see it

[Glenn Anders]

Yes, smartone, Todd Baesen and I saw the trailer for THERE WILL BE BLOOD, when he took me to a showing of the Coen Brothers' NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, a picture also filmed in Marfa, Texas, home of GIANT, and evidently a suitable partner in a pair of double features. Indeed, picture and performances have been given Wellsian or Welles-like comparisons: to CITIZEN KANE (as you say), to George Stevens' the aforementioned Giant, to Stanley Kubrick's THE SHINING or even 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Paul Thomas Anderson is being compared to Welles, Kubrick, Stevens and Altman. And Daniel Day-Lewis's performance as the Kane-like oil tycoon, Robert Plainview, has drawn several early critics to suggest that he is copying the verbal acting style of John Huston (in his prime), as a younger version of Noah Cross from CHINATOWN.

It is a film about an almost American Gothic misanthrope, who hates people, and almost everything about America, using his found wealth to isolate and protect himself from mankind, in a spectacular way -- especially from the Evangelicals who provided the land on which he based his empire, the behemoth of Standard Oil which comes to threaten it, and finally the embittered step-son he nurtured until the boy failed him, by being deafened in an oil rigging accident.

That's some mouthful about a 240 minute profoundly dark and extremely vicious contest between Big Oil and Evangelical Populism. The film, based on Upton Sinclair's novel, Oil!, of course, is not contemporary, and not a nearly complete summary of America in the first half of the 20th Century. It was not written, directed and starred in by one man, but no one I've read so far would opine that Paul Thomas Anderson (MAGNOLIA) has not made a great film. The reverence of these early pre-opening reviews is similar to that found in ones about CITIZEN KANE before its 1941 opening.

From as at yet a distance, I would add Erich von Stroheim's GREED into the mix as a model. Thomas is evidently trying to say something fundamental about American materialism at its most elemental level.

We shall have to see.

Meanwhile, Baesen and I can recommend the similarly bleak NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (not to mention Sidney Lumet's BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD). A final irony is that one of the first complete screenings of THERE WILL BE BLOOD just took place at the Castro Theater in Frisco, as a benefit for the John Burton Foundation, which helped finance the picture, and which is dedicated to rescuing homeless children!

Glenn

[Glenn Anders]

Just a footnote to THERE WILL BE BLOOD.

The picture is no CITIZEN KANE, and Paul Thomas Anderson is neither Orson Welles nor John Ford. The references would be better to Erich von Stroheim's GREED, and possibly to Martin Scorsese, way out west. The film's great virtue, the skillful spectacle and bleakly beautiful setting to one side, is the performance of Daniel Day-Lewis as Plainview, the quintessential robber baron of oil, based on the life of Edward L. Doheny, Jr.

The script has so many holes in it that one would almost think that it is intended as Part I of a trilogy. That would make a lot of sense.

Glenn

[moviefan]

Just a footnote to THERE WILL BE BLOOD.

The picture is no CITIZEN KANE, and Paul Thomas Anderson is neither Orson Welles nor John Ford. The references would be better to Erich von Stroheim's GREED, and possibly to Martin Scorsese, way out west. The film's great virtue, the skillful spectacle and bleakly beautiful setting to one side, is the performance of Daniel Day-Lewis as Plainview, the quintessential robber baron of oil, based on the life of Edward L. Doheny, Jr.

The script has so many holes in it that one would almost think that it is intended as Part I of a trilogy. That would make a lot of sense.

Glenn

I just got back from seeing it and I thought it ok. It started to falter at the end and it ruined an otherwise good movie. The director came to the conclusion that the movie was going on for a long time and he needed to end it somehow. I think it could have ended better instead of ending with a one liner.

Not a classic.

Citizen Kane is a better movie.

I don't think it will be a trilogy.

[Glenn Anders]

Agreed, moviefan:

I was only reacting to my own intitial report, which was based on very limited, hyperbolically praiseful prescreening critiques given to the picture.

The problem is in the script. Writer/Director Anderson claims that every night while he was writing it, he screened John Huston's THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE. Obviously, Anderson outstripped Huston in presenting the details of mining and oil rigging, but he failed in the crucial task of telling a coherent story.

I agree that a trilogy is unlikely to appear, but only a trilogy or at least a sequel would dramatically explain the gaps in the lives of Plainview and the other characters. If one knows the full story of Ed Doheny, Jr., going beyond even Sinclair's novel, and his story's relevance to us today at the end of the Bush Administration, that is the movie one would have thought Anderson was shooting for.

As you suggest, he seems to have struggled as far as 1911 in Plainview's saga, and then just said, the hell with it.

I'll welcome more of your perceptive comments, moviefan.

Glenn

[Tony]

I'm not clear on this Glenn: have you or have you not seen this picture, "There Will be blood"? I was sure you had seen it when you wrote "The picture is no CITIZEN KANE, and Paul Thomas Anderson is neither Orson Welles nor John Ford. The references would be better to Erich von Stroheim's GREED, and possibly to Martin Scorsese, way out west. The film's great virtue, the skillful spectacle and bleakly beautiful setting to one side, is the performance of Daniel Day-Lewis as Plainview, the quintessential robber baron of oil, based on the life of Edward L. Doheny, Jr. The script has so many holes in it that one would almost think that it is intended as Part I of a trilogy. That would make a lot of sense. "

Now this sounds like a review from someone who has definitely seen the film. But then you say in your next post " I was only reacting to my own intitial report, which was based on very limited, hyperbolically praiseful prescreening critiques given to the picture."

So does this mean you've seen the trailer, or the whole picture?
Just wondering...

[Glenn Anders]

Tony: If you will re-read my reaction to smartone's alert at the beginning of this thread, I say quite plainly (I hope) that Baesen and I saw the trailer for THERE WILL BE BLOOD when we went to see NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, and I then included information drawn from two reviews taken from very limited pre-screenings of Anderson's film, one of which I might have seen myself if I had noticed the reference to CITIZEN KANE:

" . . . Indeed, picture and performances have been given Wellsian or Welles-like comparisons: to CITIZEN KANE (as you say), to George Stevens' the aforementioned Giant, to Stanley Kubrick's THE SHINING or even 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Paul Thomas Anderson is being compared to Welles, Kubrick, Stevens and Altman. And Daniel Day-Lewis's performance as the Kane-like oil tycoon, Robert Plainview, has drawn several early critics to suggest that he is copying the verbal acting style of John Huston (in his prime), as a younger version of Noah Cross from CHINATOWN".

That first reaction, to the trailer and several early fulsome critiques I read, was posted on November 11, 2007. I looked forward to THERE WILL BE BLOOD with heady anticipation. A new Orson Welles had emerged, a new CITIZEN KANE produced.

Then, a few of weeks ago, Baesen and I did indeed see another pre-screening of the picture itself, and it is on that basis that I made my remarks to moviefan. If moviefan had not reacted to the thread, I would not have bothered. THERE WILL BE BLOOD is impressive fillm making but a deeply flawed picture.

I stand by everything that I wrote.

Glenn

[Tony]

OK: not trying to be difficult or thick, but you say "Then, a few of weeks ago, Baesen and I did indeed see another pre-screening of the picture itself.."

So this means you have seen it, right?

[Glenn Anders]

Yes, Tony, YES!

I would like to see it again, to discover if I can make more sense out of it, and connect it more logically, as a number of critics would have it, to Welles, Ford, or . . . Kubrick!

Glenn

[Tony]

Thanks Glenn!

[Glenn Anders]

You are welcome, Tony.

Is there anything you would like to know about THERE WILL BE BLOOD that I have not told you?

Glenn

[Tony]

No thanks, Glenn: I think you've given me more than enough information for now, thanks!