"The art of filmmaking in its purest form!"
Director Paul Thomas Anderson is the new sheriff in town and with this movie he might just be revered as one of the most talented, profound directors of the decade. I'm a big fan of his movie Magnolia which I thought was a revelation. I now understand why THERE WILL BE BLOOD has gotten... so much praise lately. The best movie ever that deals with Greed is Oliver Stone's Wall Street starring Michael Douglas as the infamous Gekko, the next best movie about Greed has got to be this one.
Greed, pride, wrath, and envy. This movie's got at least four of the seven deadly sins and all of them possess the character that the great Daniel Day Lewis portrays, Mr. Daniel Plainview.
He reminds us of Citizen Kane, of how he finally gets it all and loses his soul at the same time.
The difference is Plainview doesn't have rosebud or anything from childhood that's missing. He loves his son and he loves what he does for a living. But he doesn't want anyone else to succeed not even the person he raised as his own son. He's so caught up in trying to make himself the most influential man on earth that when his trophy son gets sick, he sees it as a weakness. He wants his son to be perfect again so badly that for all the years following that he's having difficulty accepting his son for who he is anymore, a deaf. He is consumed by all his desires that he would fake getting baptized just so he can get his pipelines built through the land,.... the means justify the ends.
He sees the worst in people when in fact the thought of competition brings out the worst in him.
This movie also rubs against religion and what it can become when used by the wrong leader, a man with an agenda, a corrupt, hypocrite, and self-righteous religious zealot. Actor Paul Dano (Little Miss Sunshine) might just be the next big thing, the up and coming actor with a talent as intimidating as his fellow co-star, he's got the ability to deliver two characters, one as the young preacher Eli and the other as Paul the alter-ego who wants to intervene and involve himself in Plainview's business.
This is a movie only for those of us who can appreciate good quality movies.
To most, there might be some boring times, I'm not gonna lie to you... there'll be times when you find yourself looking at your watch frequently wondering when this movie's going to be over, it definitely was not made to be a crowd-pleaser..
and that's understandable because movies like this usually take their sweet time in studying the characters as they go deeper and deeper into the abyss of whatever complicated situation may show up on the table.
I do like the ending in this one much better as opposed to No Country For Old Men's ending.
The set looks convincing, the old-fashioned style of old drilling, the art direction, they even use sites and lands in California that still look like they haven't changed a bit since the 1800s. This movie can be considered somewhat of a western movie.
One of the great character actors of our time, Daniel Day Lewis is perfect playing a soul-less man...
He's not the kind of face that young people would recognize if he's walking down a street full of a crowds, he doesn't make many movies but when he does, he makes sure the world remembers why he's got one golden statuette already in his pocket and he might just get one more with this movie serving as his ride to victory.
I think Paul Thomas Anderson should get nominated for directing and adapted screenplay.
One thing that would stick in the minds of those who've seen this movie, the screeching sound of the music by Johnny Greenwood, one of the members of the band Radiohead.
It has that feel that brings us back to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. But what I don't like is that at times, it sounds like an alarm sound when a whole city is being under attacked or evacuated, maybe that is the intention... to warn us about what selfishness does to a person in its pure nature, in the most evil form.
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