your mom will hate this movie

Rating: 10/10 (25 January 2008)

As a cinema junkie and Paul Thomas Anderson disciple, THERE WILL BE BLOOD was likely the most anticipated motion picture experience ofwell, my entire life (thus far). I read Upton Sinclair's OIL! in early 2007. Paul's decision to adapt a novel written in the 1920s had me pretty curious. It was a great read, a massive tale and educational as well, but it was hard to visualize it as a PT Anderson picture. I've never been much of a period movie guy myself. Sometimes, the period drama can end up being a filmmaker's wrong turn down a path of boredom. TWBB is Anderson's slowest picture yet, but it is far from boring. For me, the joy of watching it comes from the way the story takes its sweet time. We creep along as the plot slowly cooks away and seeps under your skin, into your subconscious. I've always felt Paul's films had a dreamlike quality, and TWBB is his most surreal film yet. I dreamt of it all night long after my first viewing. It was a strange feeling to wake up the next morning and realize I'd spent my slumber in Little Boston with Daniel Plainview. A movie has never had that effect on me before. TWBB is likely the most important, revolutionary, and all around best motion picture of this decade. Pretty much what PULP FICTION was for the 90s. How do I know this? Why do I feel this way? It's hard to put into words. I think you can watch the film and either you get it or you don't, and I'm not trying to be condescending when I say something like that. It doesn't mean you're a stupid idiot if you don't get it, but I do feel bad for you, because you're missing out on the great experience I've had, a completely original experience, and that's why it's challenging to write/talk about this film. There's really nothing to compare it to. It's an unprecedented work of art. I've honestly never seen anything like it. For all its uniqueness, it's not that far out there structurally. It follows the traditional, film school principle of the three act framework, and by breaking down TWBB into its three acts, it becomes clear that the heart of this epic tale revolves around the tragic story of a father and son. Act one is the dialogue free prologue. Daniel's character is introduced and fully formed without a single word spoken. People get hurt and killed in holes, and these incidents lock the rest of the movie in a constant state of dread. In one of my favorite scenes, Daniel attempts to calm a crying baby, and the baby is fantastic, best baby acting I've ever seen, and perhaps these scenes spilled out of Paul as he wrote, a result of his own new found role as 'Dad' (or maybe not. I imagine he might despise comments like that, and I don't blame him). The film moves into its second act with both Daniel's decision to keep the baby as his son and the jump forward in time about nine years. The first half of Act two builds and builds as this story of finding oil in Little Boston is set up. The halfway point of the film comes with HW's ear drums being blasted away by the pressure of an exploding oil well. Daniel makes the decision to send his son away, and it's all down hill from there. The story gets darker and darker, until finally, we jump ahead about 15 years to HW's wedding and the beginning of the third act, and oh, what a final act it is. I've already warned of spoilers, so I wouldn't feel too bad revealing the details, but I don't think there's much more to say about the end of this film other than it's hilarious, perplexing, and, well, perfect. As a lover of all things PTA, this film has once again reaffirmed that he's only capable of the greatest of cinematic accomplishments. Many say TWBB is nothing like other PTA works. I agree and disagree. Like all his films, it's an incredible experience and is at its best seen on the big screen with great sound quality. For how drastically different a direction TWBB is for Paul, I could also say it's a culmination of the rest of his career. The beginning is really just another version of the first scene of PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE. A man works alone, going back and forth from inside, in the darkness, to the outside, in the light. Jump to the ending, and we get another version of the grand finale from BOOGIE NIGHTS (Long Way Down). Like MAGNOLIA, the music of TWBB builds the momentum of the story. Like all of Paul's films, TWBB gets to the point where it overflows with nervous energy. He makes edge-of-your-seat, popcorn movies without resorting to butcher knifes and masks or machine guns and helicopters. The fun, quirky PTA dialogue is here too. "So" "so" "so-sothis is what we do." Maybe the one thing missing from TWBB, in comparison with Paul's other films, is a great female role. There are none, just a handful of bit parts, and there may have been more, but for some reason, great scenes in the script such as Daniel with a prostitute and another with a woman breast feeding baby HW were not included in the final film. One of my favorite PTA trademarks is his powerful closing images and lines with the final shot, the last five seconds of all his films: blood on the cuff of a killer is covered up, a large penis is finally revealed, she looks at us and smiles, she wraps her arms around him and says "Here we go," and he looks back and claims, "I'm finished."