Visual poetry and great acting...drunk up

Rating: 8/10 (2 June 2008)

"There Will Be A Blood" is a great piece of film-making. The camera glides and slithers, taking on the movements of no less than a drill and a wagon. A sort of surreal poetry is created out of one of the most banal subjects imaginable, creating a surprisingly entertaining experience. Unfortunately, it's short of a masterpiece because of one element, and one alone: the writing. Paul Thomas Anderson is not alien to this problem. His idiosyncratic writing is what makes people, either love him or hate him. PTA tends to write high melodramas, rich on character but a bit too self- explanatory and forceful (like the other "T"), as if he were writing the dialog thinking about how great it will sound in the TV ads. It does.
It's never realistic, but realism in film is always a tricky concept: a movie not being realistic doesn't make it bad per Se, but it doesn't necessarily make it great either. So here we are at what is undeniably Paul Thomas Anderson's greatest film thus far: he shows in the writing, up to a point, an incredible use of restraint, reigning in his tendencies to write modern Greek tragedy.
He has something in that relationship between the boy and Plainview; no surprises that this is the focus of the novel, since it's an element that feels like it belongs the most in this story. The airplane begins to experience turbulence around act two, where Plainview doesn't interact with any other characters verbally, except for his family member. He goes on extended soliloquies, including of course, the one about how much he doesn't like people. O'Connor's character stays silent and out of our perceptions completely until his untimely demise.
This protracted segment is well-played like the rest of the film, but fails to provide any insight into Plainview the man. He might as well be talking to himself. The natural ending to this segment reveals a diary which gives us a brief glimpse in to the "Why" for such a human monster. A movie about one-person's complex experience seen through their eyes alone is flop-sided. No one in Plainview's world is even afforded a personality. Such lack of emphasis on interaction, and such overemphasis on monologues make him a character in serious danger of becoming one-dimensional, a fate which Daniel Day-Lewis' talent prevents. The approach of Upton Sinclair's novel was to use the boy as naturally, a source of humanity for Plainview. The film almost gets there, but the boy of "There Will Be Blood" seems more like an element Anderson treats like a consolation prize to those critics who may call the Plainview character TOO enigmatic, and therefore a tad unbelievable (note the fact that he's carted out halfway in the film, as if, like Plainview, Anderson's use for him has run out).
The second mistake happens at about the same point: Anderson's use of the Boy Priest as a foil, and mirror image, to Plainview. Only until the end was I even sure of the Priest's intentions. Up until that point I didn't read the kind of craven greed that Anderson supposes the priest has. The exorcism scene purports that any holy man during the Great Revival was not simply a practicing charlatan, but one as knowingly deceitful as Plainview. Unfortunately, we are NOT provided with any the level exposition necessary to discern the Priest's character, making his function obsolete. Why is the religion parable even there? Just because Anderson was raised a Catholic and feels bitter about its hypocrisy? Does that mean it has to work in to every story of his?
Another personal element PTA sweeps under the rug in favor of the religion plot is the relationship between Plainview and H.W. I felt the resolution was fine enough. Though some of the lines bordered on self-parody, again Day-Lewis saved the day by being so amazingly gifted. I feel this is certainly where the movie should have ended. A non-conclusive series of shots showing Plainview wandering through his mansion alone would have served the story of a greedy oil man quite well. Not in America, however. Even our greatest directors, perhaps because of being raised on manufactured stories, find existential endings unsatisfying. They struggle to end a movie at all; look at Spike Lee, for example.
Anderson has been also plagued by the "Curse of the Ending". Why a penis? Why drinks? For that matter, why frogs? Because it's hip and garish. Because it provides college students with something to chat about back at the dorm, and recall again when high. We are served to an ending that is so uncharacteristic that it does not serve the movie at all. Losing his previous restraint, Anderson allows his movie to end with a selfish, buffoonish piece of writing that almost causes the entire thing to implode, nearly reducing his master stroke to a T-shirt slogan. What is ultimately missing from this movie is a sense of full rounded purpose: of events, of Plainview's existence. A frustrating truth is that the boy was a potential key lost in favor of an undeveloped religion plot. Is Plainview a force that wrecks like a ship at the end? And is that disaster, one that has been mocked to death, a great one or merely...a disaster. Did Anderson give up? Was he unsure of how to end a life as complex as Plainview's? I think Welles had something with that sled.