Pretentious crap

Rating: 3/10 (29 May 2008)

Yes, the cinematography is glorious. Yes, Daniel Day-Lewis is a genius, and I'd say he nailed the character.
Unfortunately, the character just isn't worth getting to know. Plainview is just another hateful megalomaniac, and this two-and-a-half-hour explication of that nastiness brings nothing new to light. Eli is equally uninteresting, and we never really get to know the son. Some of the dialogue is clever, but it's never clever enough to save this movie from the overwhelming miasma of depression cast by the hideous protagonist and the appallingly slow movement of the story. I understand the use of empty spaces and immobility in a film. Malick, Sayles, Kubrick, and Haynes have all managed to produce brilliant moments of exposition in which nothing actually happens and little is visible, but this movie just doesn't reach those heights.
Finally, worst of all, the sound track is just ghastly. It's like Philip Glass on Quaaludes. Deafening atonality.
In a year that gave us Michael Clayton, Juno, No Country for Old Men, and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, I can't see how this movie garnered a single award.