Worth Your Time

Rating: 9/10 (1 January 2008)

Yes, I liked this film. A lot.
But there are some aspects I found disappointing or even objectionable: Why was the intensity of the film destroyed at the end in the bowling alley/mansion scene with the Milkshake nonsense. Laughter, the best mood breaker. It seemed to almost mock the submersion which the film had demanded up until that point. As if to say, so what?
Eli's dual personality is left up to the visual evidence he is the same person as Paul and the subsequent descents into lunacy, such as his attack on his father. Wouldn't it have been a more forthright treatment if Plainview had looked into his eyes when he first introduces himself as Eli and said something. Such as, "Oh really?"
Daniel Day-Lewis is in every scene. A cinematic breakthrough some will shout. I felt that some perspective from without, from someone else's point of view, would have helped better define Plainview.
I've never read the Sinclair novel. I'm wondering if there's any insight into Plainview's later life, after he "makes it" and builds his house. It would have been a better use of time than the so, so long unspoken mine scenes at the beginning.
I suppose those were used to set up the harshness of the business, the physicality of success in oil and the likelihood of mishap. Okay. But why so very long? Yeh, we understand we can't see at the bottom of the shaft. Let's move on.
Daniel Day-Lewis' performance is excellent, but one dimensional. The script and his approach doesn't allow us any view of Plainview's doubts, did he ever have any? Or his humanity, was it beaten out of him?
Also, the score was a complete imposition. Slowly increasing sound level equals increasing tension. Oh, come on. More subtlety would have been appreciated.
God and greed and guts and good, very good. But just short of being the best film of the year.