There Will Be Blood
Movie Review ~ Lily Faught
This Valentine's Day, if you want to watch a cute romantic comedy, see 27 Dresses. If you want to see a steamy bookcase-sex, see Atonement. If you want to watch a movie about finding true love, a person who is "the cheese to your macaroni," see Juno. If you want to cuddle up to your loved one while watching a stupid movie about some monster attacking New York City, see Cloverfield. However, if those movies don't seem apealing go out and watch There Will Be Blood.
There Will Be Blood is not the kind of movie you run home to tell your roommate to see. It's the kind of movie you push to the back of your mind so you can complete basic tasks, like eating and sleeping. It's going to haunt you for hours, even after you've left the theatre. But come on, it's probably the most well-directed and acted movie in the new millennium, so it's worth it to give up 2 hours and 38 minutes of your life.
If you've seen the poster for There Will Be Blood, you'll have seen a creepy picture of Daniel Day-Lewis in the shadows. But in the movie, he's really not scary or anything. He's just your average embodiment of the American Dream, a poor miner who rises to the top with hard work. He's a pretty sweet guy, except the fact that he has a thing for manipulating and killing anyone who stands in his path. But whatever works.
Day-Lewis was born to play Daniel Plainview, the aforementioned oil tycoon/serial killing sociopath. He was pretty terrifying in Gangs of New York when he played Bill the Butcher, but what's scarier than a two-face...with a gun? Just like that annoying girl in junior high, Plainview is two different people; one second a caring father to his adopted(cough cough stolen cough) son, H.W. The next second he's shipping H.W. off on a train because his son is rendered blind.
Plainview has it pretty good. He gets a multi-million dollar oil tract from the ignorant hicks, the Sundays. Emile Hirsh's glasses wearing sidekick from the Girl Next Door plays Eli Sunday. Sunday wants everyone in the town to be a fanatic Christian and attend his half-scary, half-hilarious services. The beginning scenes at Sunday's Church seem like they almost belong in a Will Ferrell movie, they're so extreme. Plainview thinks religion is worthless besides getting people on your side, but he grows to hate Sunday so much that he throws all of that out the window. He basically makes Sunday look like a fool at every given opportunity. Even if the only scene anyone watches in the movie is the one where Sunday gets his revenge on Plainview, Day-Lewis should still get the Oscar for this one scene. Michael Clayton who?
It's not just the great writing and directing by Paul Thomas Anderson (who adapted the movie from Upton Sinclair's novel Oil!), but it's the images themselves that make the movie better then a Red Bull on a study break. Even if someone who hates the West Coast, the scenes of the California and New Mexico desert and ocean are enough to change their mind. Even people who are deaf can enjoy the scene where the sky turns black from an exploding oil rig.
Seeing There Will Be Blood is not something to undertake lightly. Be forewarned, it is an event. You may not even like it, you may think you have wasted almost three hours sitting on your butt, but you will without a doubt appreciate it in the end.