A "Masterpiece".

Rating: 10/10 (29 January 2008)

That's right, 10. And that's out of 10. That's 100% of its total potential. I love that we try to quantify the quality of something. It caters to that part of the mind that finds great difficulty rationalizing experience. And one thing is for sure, There Will Be Blood is an experience. At least, for me it was. It was a 'film', that much is also certain, but the combination of images, sounds, and words that compose this film behaves almost as some kind of catalyst. For what, I'm not so sure, but the bottom line is this: it's deceptively simple. I almost instinctively felt that something far more complex was going on beneath the surface, but it really wasn't. All of the meaning injected into this film stems from the fact that we are given vast amounts of time to do so. The mind is left to ponder, but never out of boredom; with the way that sound and image are combined and used in this film, you're basically forced to. And that's what I mean when I say 'catalyst'. I can't say that the film 'treats' us as active participants, because that implies that we are leisurely given the choice to responsibly chose whether or not we wish to participate. No, we're simply given no choice but to become active participants. And then there's the ending, which is one of the greatest I've ever seen. What makes the ending so completely satisfying is that it liberates us from the film's long, introspective grasp, which is reflected in the final line of the film. The ending is violent, yes, but that violence is cathartic, even if it is morally unjustified. And so I left the theater stunned that I should feel that way, yet almost happy to leave, as strange as that may sound. There Will Be Blood was like a mirror reflecting the ugly side of every person in the audience. It used curiosity as its lure, always recoiling, the audience always following until it was too late to look away. And what we saw was both honest and hideous, but most importantly, impossible to forget.