Tainted Blood

Rating: 8/10 (3 February 2008)

(Spoilers ahoy.)
Regular viewers of Cartoon Network's Adult Swim lineup should be familiar with the grotesque, hilariously offensive parody show "Robot Chicken." A recurring in-joke involves director M. Night Shyamalan ("The Sixth Sense") popping up periodically to make the following declaration: "What a twist!" And while I'll be the first to admit that narratively desperate films that trot out manufactured twists bother me very little (maybe since something like "Saw IV" has nowhere to go but down in the first place), films like "The Prestige" (which twisted me into cold indifference) and Paul Thomas Anderson's "There Will Be Blood"films of no small qualitywound up diminishing my overall high opinion of them.
Yet before I get around to the closing 30 minutes of "Blood," in which an otherwise sturdy narrative becomes unhinged, let me comment on the first 120.
I had never seen a PT Anderson film before this, so I came in with a bit of skepticism. I tend to be wary of films that get released late in the year for the sole purpose of unleashing the torrents of critical praise and opening the Oscar-nod floodgates (even more prominent with the Coen Brothers' "No Country for Old Men"), but "There Will Be Blood" kept me engrossed quite well. Despite the lengthy run time, the film itself doesn't feel long, and the lush cinematography (by Robert Elswit) and dusty locationsplus fine attention to costume and set designproperly evokes the physical look and technique of the early classics of cinema. This is one of the most unassuming, understated "epic" films I've ever seen, with machinations so subtle that periodic revelations hit with bruising force.
Daniel Day-Lewis plays Daniel Plainview, an oil-driller at the turn of the 20th Century who quickly rises to riches and notoriety. He's driven, and makes up for his lack of persuasive skills with a shrewd cleverness that only underlines his bitter hatred and disgust toward humanityat one point, he's negotiating with the railroad managers and wonders what he'll do with even more riches. Plainview has a band of trusted workers, and trots his son, H.W. (Dillon Freasier), along to his meetings with clients and townsfolk. Early on, Plainview is approached by Eli Sunday (Paul Dano"Little Miss Sunshine"), who claims to know of a place rich with oil, and will guide the driller to it, for a price. As it turns out, Eli is the leader of the local dustbowl parish, and quickly unravels into a character whose motivations are as selfish and hypocritical as Plainview's.
But Anderson doesn't clue us in all at onceone of the more delectable aspects of "There Will Be Blood" is a deliberate pace that slowly shades in the characters, turning both Plainview and Sunday into individuals who undergo change in a variety of ways, for good and ill, while keeping the underlying motivations obscured. This understated battle of wits is sustained quite well for the film's first two hours, as is the awkward relationship between Plainview and his curiously remote, unusually mature son.
Unfortunately, "There Will Be Blood" slips into the same territory that undid "The Prestige" in its final minutes. I don't know what has compelled talented filmmakers to gravitate toward the "What a twist!" mentality in the past decade, especially when their story lines are so solid that a twist could do nothing less than diminish the value of what has gone one before. The initial twist in "Blood"involving Plainview's sonis actually fairly predictable, and while it does illuminate certain scenes that occurred years before, it is established and hastily dismissed (its failing being that I ultimately didn't buy it as a natural narrative progression). Almost immediately after, there is a confrontation between Sunday (who has since become a successful religious commentator) and Plainview that layers on the pop-psychology double-entendres until both Dano and Day-Lewis erupt in a fracas of method histrionics. The scene itself is rather laboriously set up, with Sunday's appearance functioning merely for plot closure, and the final fight we have been waiting to see all along.
That being said, "There Will Be Blood" does possess passages of such raw purity and beauty that the film is, for a bulk of its run time, genuinely spellbinding. The performances are spot-on, with Day-Lewis carrying the film as the type of bitter bastard who would usually make 2+ hours feel like an eternity; Dano is the more understated foil, giving a performance of quiet grace and wickedness. And as a whole, it is simply beautiful to look at. While allusions can no doubt be drawn between "Blood" and America's current foreign-policy mess, I was so captivated by the film that I barely considered it.
7.5 out of 10