Anemic

Rating: 3/10 (9 November 2012)

Two hours of bleached-out austerity followed by twenty minutes of expressionist lunacy. A man driven to succeed by his hatred and contempt for humanity has occasionally figured in literature (e.g., Absalom, Absalom!), but not very often in film. Unfortunately, the director drains the juices from his story with his bone-white palette, his tamped-down emotions and his penchant for shooting dramatic scenes in long shot (Man as a tiny figure against a harsh and unyielding landscape, etc.). Daniel Day-Lewis has little more than a dry, rasping authority, while Paul Dano is simply bad as a revivalist preacher and his brother, a piece of dual casting that makes for enormous confusion. Near the end, the film veers to the other extreme, with Day-Lewis acting in a florid, hambone manner that makes one blush. It takes a long long time for this bloodless film to get some color, and when it finally does, you may wish it hadn't.