Perhaps Too Art House For Its Own Good

Rating: 5/10 (6 January 2010)

I was looking forward to seeing this when it was released in the cinemas , a story of single minded obsession with some great reviews from Daniel Day Lewis performance . Only problem was when I checked the local listings of the local Odeon cinemas it wasn't being screened . Nor was it being screened at the Edinburgh film house which left me puzzled . I did find out that it screened at the Edinburgh Cameo but had finished its run before I got a chance to see it . I was puzzled that film that received much critical acclaim didn't get a wider release but after seeing it on Sky movies I'm somewhat surprised it got so much acclaim in the first place
There's a term invented by the American film critic David Bordwell called " intensified continuity " which in its simplest term is " MTV style directing " . Scorsese did this with GOODFELLAS and CASINO , Oliver Stone with all of his 90s work and Francis Ford Coppolla with Dracula . Bordwell does make a point that shot length seems to be increasing in the late noughties compared to the 1990s . Interestingly NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN which came out the same year as this had a similar , long , rather slow , old fashioned feel to it . But at least NO COUNTRY was a plot driven thriller where as THERE WILL BE BLOOD is character driven which means it can be painfully tedious at some points
The cinematography is good and Lewis certainly isn't bad as Plainview , but the problem is in the cinematic storytelling . The film starts with long sequences with no dialogue and these scenes drags on . There's also a problem with trying to figure out what the message is . You could understand if there's a sympathetic Marxist slant on the fundamental flaws of capitalism but then Plainview's nemesis is shown to be a preacher who isn't exactly portrayed in a good light . Moral ambiguity or moral equivalence ? A thinly disguised attack on George W Bush ? I doubt it , more likely it's just an art-house hit that received more praise than it possibly deserved .
There's not much wrong with it per se . As I said it's a film that is shot and framed well with good cinematography and good performances . However for audience members like myself whose main interest in watching cinema is narrative it's a film that I'm in no hurry to rewatch