Film Review: There Will be Blood
January 14th, 2008There Will Be Blood, the newest film from quirky, indie comedy director, Paul Thomas Anderson, is neither the prequel to Martin Scorcese’s 2005 effort Gangs of New York, nor its sequel. It does, however, feature Golden Globe Winner, Daniel “Day” Lewis reprising his role of mustachioed madman, Bill the Butcher, this time under the moniker of Daniel Plainview, an early 20th century oil tycoon.
While Gangs was based on an exhibit at the MTA Transit Museum, Blood is loosely based on the Upton Sinclair Novel/CBS Sitcom, The Beverly Hillbillies!, and prominently features Day-Lewis as the lead, now opposite Little Miss Sunshine’s, Paul “Book ‘em” Dano, in the role of some angry religious guy.
While most of us are familiar with Hillbillies!, as a delightfully whimsical, care free red state to blue state romp through the lives of the rural poor, it’s easy to forget that it was once, in fact, a book. Sinclair’s original tale, loosely based on the story of a bunch of inbred country-fried rubes who strike rich when oil is discovered on their humble dirt farm, is a much more somber undertaking. The original novel featured strong anti-capitalist, alarmist themes, weighty imagery, and a lot of words. As a director, Anderson, a veteran of the Saturday Night Live writing staff whose previous work includes the quirky indie comedies Rushmoore, The Royal Tannenbaums, a Pat sketch, and That 70’s Movie With the Guy Who Had a Huge Cock (spoiler alert!), hovers between the two extremes. Moments of Farrelly-esque slapstick comedy and Day-Lewis’s hammy mugging, give way to brutal scenes of grim brutality, and savage savagery with stark religious undertones.
Anderson changed the name of the lead character, Daniel Plainview, from Sinclair’s protagonist and real-life self-made oil-man, Jed Clampet, on the insistence of Day-Lewis, who has a strict rule about revisiting roles already played by other actors. If you’re looking for the morally ambiguous tortured anti-hero of Jim Varney or the raw sexuality of Buddy Ebsen, you might be disappointed, but Day-Lewis manages to give his own everyman tinge to Clampet’s infamy, while Dano delivers an MTV Movie Awards caliber performance as the movie’s lead Christ-figure, though he’s actually a bad guy.
Unfortunately, this movie is a bit of a sausage fest, it’s lack of a love interest for the main protagonist, though not unusual for a Western, does set it apart from the usual, yearly crop of quirky indie films. Frankly, I thought it came off as a little “Gay”, and thus so two years ago. The soundtrack, by Radiohead guitarist, Johnny Greenwood, could seemingly do much to buoy its “hipster cred”, but alas even this aspect falls short. Greenwood’s scoring features shrill, bone-chilling string arrangements, with intense bursts of percussion doing much to pace the high-tension moments of the film, yet crucially it falls short in approaching even a B-list iTunes Celebrity Playlist. In the end, would it have killed him to drop some Nick Drake? My friends, Eagle vs. Shark, it ain’t.
All in all, is this movie funny? That depends on your definition of funny. If you chuckle at dark, gritty portrayals of the incestual relationship between church and industry, their subsequently exploitive effects on the working poor, and their grimly detrimental consequences to our environment, then stock up on your clown diapers, for a balls-to-the-wall zany laugh riot. But if you’re like me, and you like your quirky indie comedies a little more subtle, I suggest saving it for the Netflix Queue. Instead, pony up your $8.50 for another Upton Sinclair adaptation, Juno!.
Rating: C+
