There Will Be Blood

June 9, 2008 - 9:53am — duncan

I finally saw There Will Be Blood this weekend. This movie was fantastic, I highly recommend it. It's the best movie I have seen in years.

The soundtrack is incredible too and composed by Jonny Greenwood from Radiohead.

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June 9, 2008 - 11:42am — Jim

Re: There Will Be Blood

Oooh, good discussion topic. I saw it too, but didn't enjoy it as much as I had hoped. I think maybe it had been hyped so much for me that I went in with expectations that were too high. I liked a lot about it, but these were the two main things I didn't like:

1) Plainview's character seems to me to change too quickly. I didn't feel like we got a good reason for him to go so crazy at the end.
2) I didn't think the preacher's character was developed very well. I was never sure whether he was really religious or he was just a con man.

Daniel Day Lewis was awesome, of course, and the movie was beautiful. But those two things kept me from enjoying it more than I did.

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June 9, 2008 - 12:21pm — duncan

Re: There Will Be Blood

I can see your point about Plainfield's change. I felt that from the very beginning it was established without so many words that he was nuts. The whole movie I felt led up to seeing him lose his mind. I thought that this was what made his performance so amazing and the score so perfect. I was nervous that he would lose it the whole movie. Part of what kept me so enthralled was that nervous feeling, like you get in a horror movie, that someone is going to pop out of the darkness.

The preacher Eli, caused a lot of confusion at first because the movie could have taken a new direction when they introduced that character. I agree that they could have developed it a little more, but they did subtly explain the strict religious upbringing (the dad hitting the daughter for not praying), and in the beginning when Paul immediately asked Daniel about his religious affiliation. I also thought that the religious element added a lot to the development to Plainfield's character and his relationship with his son. His willingness to do anything to get what he wanted. I also thought that it set a tone of the period that the movie was set in.

The scene with Eli and Plainfield at the end of the movie was some of the best acting I have seen. I thought they worked great together.

June 9, 2008 - 12:30pm — Jim

Re: There Will Be Blood

That's an interesting point--about Plainview seeming nuts from the beginning, so you have that anticipation of things about to go wrong.

I think the reason I didn't see that was because one of the first things we see him do is take the son of the man who has died--and, despite what he says to him at the end of the movie, it does seem like he cares for the boy--they show him holding the baby on the train, etc. So that made him a more sympathetic character for me, someone I thought we were supposed to identify with. So the first time he beats up Eli was a real "WTF?!" moment for me.

I think I also wanted to believe that Eli's belief (whatever we might think about it) was genuine, that he was a contrast to Plainview, but the ending seemed to call that into question. I'm not really sure why I wanted to believe that, though.

June 9, 2008 - 12:44pm — duncan

Re: There Will Be Blood

yeah, Eli was exposed as a charlatan at the end, just as Plainfield had said he was earlier in the movie. I didn't think that it was a surprise that Eli was disingenuous, he was clearly obsessed with growing his ministry at all costs. He did sell out his community right at the beginning. I saw the two characters, Eli and Daniel, as both mentally ill to a degree.

June 9, 2008 - 1:44pm — zippyzero