Oh I noticed. My legs fell asleep twice.

My biggest beef with this movie, I think, is that it was very lazy from a screenplay POV. The two biggest and most drastic life-changing character developments (the son and the preacher) occur offscreen so we don’t even get to see why the son and DDL disagree, nor do we get to see what changed in the Preacher’s life. We’re told that the son and DDL disagreed on things, and the Preacher tells us he lost money in investments (but nothing about why he now drinks whisky and is so easy to dismiss God).

Instead we’re shown the following:

Beginning: Greedy Self-Centered Guy
Middle: Greedy Self-Centered Guy
End: Greedy Self-Centered Guy

And you could have come and drank whiskey in a big-girl glass if you wanted…

i liked the movie for the most part while i was watching it (and think ddl is a great actor), but was annoyed and disappointed at the end and thought that it puts us through way, *way* too much fictional b.s. to make the point - that people have absolutely no dignity when it comes to money and will do almost anything to get it. the best part (for me) turned out to be the depiction of early oil drilling. ah, but different people have different tastes, yes? the end.

michael, i couldn’t agree more. as i told my girlfriend - it would have been something if it was a true story, but it wasn’t true and there was no story. but, like i said, different strokes.

Mickey - yeah I had those thoughts myself - esp about the “Paul” character. I never could decide if he was real or if he was a twin who did disappear. I can totally see your point now.

I just think that some things could have been cut and more interaction between DDL and Eli or DDL and the falling out with his son in order to make a much more complete movie…Esp with the son. One moment he’s ecstatic the son is back and he’s showing him the pipeline and gushing about how that teacher will help him, the next minute he’s in “competition” and disowns him.

Wrong - “Also, Eli and his brother Paul were actually the same person, a schizo condition that was the result of his father’s abuse.”
It looked like Eli was doing the abusing to me (beat daddy’s ass at the dinner table, anyone??). Paul was his twin and long gone with his cash. The family would have called him out on the Paul thing if there was no Paul. “Eli, who is Paul?” Duh.

this is such a terrible review it would warrant future restraints on the author’s contributions if byt were interested in being taken seriously.

I agree with Michael that it would have been nice to see the father/son relationship explored more. It is a question that hangs throughout the film as to whether Daniel truly loves HW or is just trying to use him. Clearly, he feels bad about sending him away after his deafness and after the cathartic moment in the church and all.

But Daniel is a pretty rude guy when it comes to dominating his field and making money, and he was disappointed that he could no longer communicate easily with HW and raise him to take over his business. I think the news of HW starting his own business was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

I enjoyed the movie quite a bit, but I’m sympathetic to Michael’s complaints!

I also stand by the Paul/Eli analysis. Abusive fathers are a theme of the film. Daniel was driven from home by his relationship with his father, and Mr. Sunday is established as an abusive father through his beating of his daughter Mary. It’s a readily usable cinematic device to refer to a character that doesn’t exist, and its clear that Abel Sunday now views his son Eli as a voice of God or somesuch, which has given Eli the upper hand in their relationship.

Thanks, Chad (everyone arguing thank Chad too)

After digging and digging I’ve found the violin and piano music by the composer Arvo Part which is used throughout the film. It’s called “Fratres”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XX7MNMSNUQE

and if you find yourself liking Arvo, check it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtFPdBUl7XQ

What? What? What? What happened to the review I wrote weeks ago about this? Since when are movies reviewed twice on BYT?

..but instead adds, that while Michael is entitled to his opinion about this awesome awesome film, I feel like perhaps your lack of dinner contributed to your utter dislike. I think you missed the point with the title duder. To assume that There Will Be Blood is a literal title is to assume that PT Anderson was making a how-to-manual. Or something like that. Whatever the case, I still love you.

Michael: I read your gibberish and understood it well - I mean, come’on, it’s not like that we are talking about an article with any intellectual underpinning here.

I know pretty well what dialogue means and also that you certainly did not do a good job in initiating one. I also don’t believe that dialogue is what you are interested in - you yourself stated just a few days ago that you “hate debating over the internet”. You just want to provoke reactions which is different from an actual dialogue in which the underlying purpose is to reach an agreement.

You really just present an opinion that lacks depth and taste in film.

where do you see here a discussion about the film? Are you referring to your own responses to some of the comments of which most reacted to the quality of this blog? There is exactly one person here you had a back-and-forth exchange with, and this is Mikey who actually liked the film.

Oh, and you think that insulting your readers and people you don’t know is a reflection of your honest aspiration to establish a dialogue? Go figure.

Oh, one more thing — I came away from the movie convinced that Eli and Paul were one and the same, but apparently Paul Thomas Anderson initially had only cast Paul Dano as Paul, not Eli. When it didn’t work out with the actor who was supposed to play Eli, Anderson thought, ‘What the hell? I love Paul Dano — we’ll cast him as Eli too and make them twins.’

Personally I love the ambiguity of it; I think you can make a strong case for either scenario (twins or schizo).

I hate agreeing with Mikey, but his complaints about this pretty much mirror all of my feeling about PTAs movies. Great acting, nice to look at, self-indulgent actor-smooching writing that goes nowhere but into the scenery for dinner.

But this is why I don’t review movies–too many variables I don’t understand. I also don’t see the point of writing about things that are mediocre. I’ve been to plenty of shows on “assignment” where I never ended up writing a review because I was so underwhelmed.

Plus, there were no mentions of A. the army or B. Vespas in this review. I give it a B-.

I’m not really sure why there is a question as to whether or not Paul & Eli are different people. At the very end Daniel tells Eli what Paul is up to now (he’s got his own fields and is doing quite well for himself.)

I’m also kinda miffed at the “there is no story” claim. This is so clearly NOT a this happens, then this happens and that happens kind of movie. You can leave your Syd Field book at home for this one it won’t be necessary. I discussed this with a co-worker of mine this week and he expressed how he didn’t really buy why Plainview would kill Eli like that. He didn’t their conflict was properly set up. That’s a hogwash. First of all, Plainview’s the kind of guy that has no need for a God or a belief in anything that’s not tangible. So that’s the first level of their beef. Secondly, Daniel resented Eli for NEVER coming around and offering to “heal” his son after he lost his hearing — I think that has more to do with it than a person like Daniel is even willing to admit.

Also, those in the anti-TWBB camp who say the movie has no depth and that the character’s aren’t well developed must not be really watching the intereaction between Daniel and H.W. While it is obvious that Plainview did use H.W. as a prop to establish his family values I think he really did care for the boy. First: the scene on the train when H.W.’s a little baby and he’s reaching and playing with Daniel’s mustache. That’s a genuinely tender moment. Second: look at the way Daniel interacts with Mary. He shows genuine concern over the fact that the elder Sunday abuses her and then after the “I’ve abandoned my child” scene Mary hugs him and again he seems genuinely touched by it. And of course it’s Mary he asks to stand with he and H.W. as they bless the derek. Mary’s the one who is clearly fond of H.W. and Daniel must recognize this otherwise why is he so nice to her?

Finally, there was a review on Aint-it-Cool-News that suggested something that makes a lot of sense to me. At the end when the older H.W. announces he’s going on his own and Daniel seemingly dismisses the boy, telling him his true orphan status. Really though, this could be Daniel’s odd form of tough love, motivating H.W. to go out and succeed. The flashback of Daniel playing with the younger H.W. isn’t just to show us how far they’ve come it’s there to show us that he really does care for the boy, he’s just not so great at expressing it.

Also, I think the score is pretty brilliant and all of the parts I like are Greenwood’s. In fact, the ONE piece of music that I really loved wasn’t on the soundtrack but is definitely Greenwood’s music. It’s the song that was playing when the rig burned down “Convergence” which WAS on Greenwood’s own score for the film Bodysong (which I own.) The only reason I wanted THIS version, though was because while the original is all percussion, the TWBB version incorporates strings into the song and I liked how that sounded.

I could go on about this movie but I won’t. Think I’ll just go see it again…for a third time.

Mickey:

“We interpreted that as Daniel fucking with Eli. Daniel is not one to show respect for his competitors, after all.”

i completely agree 100% with reggie. i firmly believe they are actually two different people, as was made pretty clear when daniel told eli about his success. at the same time, daniel actually did show some respect for his competitors (remember the scene when he told the guy at the train station to head east? or west…whatever, he still helped him out…at core, he was a brilliant businessman). and, it would be just like daniel to want paul to do well. i mean, paul is the one who made him a millionaire…

daniel was insane, but i don’t think he would just “fuck with eli” by telling him something like the story of paul’s success if paul didn’t even exist. that doesn’t make literary or cinematic sense.

i’m not even going to touch michael’s original post - other than by saying i wholly disagree.

1. DDL is truly an astounding actor. Sometimes, his incredibly crap film choices make me forget how effective he can be (My Beautiful Laundrette, Age of Innocence). However, his accent is laughable from scene one. No, actually, the first dialog is later than that, isn’t it? Anyway, his accent royally sucks balls.

2. The movie differs almost entirely from the novel. Like Kubrick-Sellers-Nabokov version of Lolita, it’s the bare bones in similarity, making extra-textual analysis (what the story REALLY means) difficult, if not impossible. Don’t talk smack – read this and judge for yourself:
http://us.penguingroup.com/static/rguides/us/oil.html

3. Like 12 Monkeys or Rashomon, there’s simply not enough information on screen to come to definite conclusions about some of the plot. Whether this was deliberate, as in the aforementioned films, or accidental/due to studio or self-imposed time constraints, should be answerable based on extra-textual analysis, and I welcome whether anyone knows if PT Anderson made it deliberately vague or unintentionally so. For instance, Donnie Darko contains one scene where the Writer/Director’s commentary track on the DVD states that he intended one scene to mean the EXACT opposite of what I assumed. He intended no ambiguity there, and I got it 100% wrong. His interpretation makes the movie far less meaningful than I had thought.

4. Following on the previous comment, I was thoroughly convinced that Eli and Paul were the same person (a la Fight Club). Eli is demonstrably unhinged through much of his screen time, so to add schizophrenia to his delusions of grandeur, religious visions, etc., is hardly a difficult leap for the viewer to make. I also came to believe (perhaps wrongly), after the scene where Eli attacked his father, that the idea that Mary was beaten by her father for not going to church was misinformation, and that it was actually Eli who dealt the beatings in that family. Upon reflection, this could all be wrong, and an analysis of the source suggests that this is all wrong – in the book, Eli and Paul were very different – Eli the preacher, Paul the Bolshevik, and that the father was an abusive evangelical.

5. Victoryrose’s strange assertion that DDL was kind to his competitor by sending him East is not supported within the text of the film, and I strongly believe just the opposite - that that scene was showing DDL try to throw competitors off the scent. Evidence: DDL had not yet bought up all the land in the area at that point. If they had purchased the pivotal final hold-out’s farm, for instance, and moved quickly, they could have impinged on DDL’s take, too. Based on what we know, there’s no reason to assume that’s anything but him pretending to be kind while misdirecting competitors. Also, he did his best to buy every single lot of land that he could. Why wouldn’t he have bought to the east if he thought there was oil there? It’s possible that there could be reasons, but now you, in coming up with them, are writing bits of story that don’t exist on screen. Stop that. Now, granted, it’s not explicit that he was misleading them, and the counter-interpretation is possible, but Occam’s Razor would suggest that he was being manipulative, not kind.

6. Further, the idea that DDL’s speech to Eli at the end was a) entirely factual b) not intended to fuck Eli’s mind and c) internally consistent seems to me to be a trifecta of misinterpretation. He’s a proven liar (just seconds before, he lied to Eli to get him to renounce his faith - but NOW he’s telling the truth? Do I have a President for you…), so a’s out. He IS, in that very scene, fucking with Eli, and when fucking with his mind fails to satisfy him, he beats Eli to death, so there goes b. The story he tells Eli about paying Paul $10,000, and that Paul is now a successful oil magnate on his own seems unlikely, if not flat-out untrue – and there goes c. What possible motive would he have to pay Paul additional funds? When did he pay him? After he struck oil? How’d he pay him? Why? Isn’t it odd that the amount is the same as the amount promised Eli? Isn’t it odd that the money set Eli upon his course to “success” (which he then, for reasons we’re not told, failed to maintain) and, similarly, that the same amount also set his brother on the path to success - as DDL’s competitor? The whole “tough-love” thesis about DDL throwing his “son” out to make him a competitor seems an incredibly creative reading of a straight-forward competitive, vindictive son-of-a-bitch character - so it seems counter-intuitive to think he would turn Paul Sunday into a successful oil man for no reason. Isn’t it odd that no one in the film ever mentions Paul? And what is with the enormous double-take when DDL meets Paul for the “first” time and Eli’s weird, coy manner in that meeting? You mean to say the Director, threw all of that weirdness and unease in and then didn’t exploit the fact that both interpretations were likely? As a director, it’d’ve been easy to show DDL writing a check to Paul Sunday for $10,000 and boom – ambiguity ended. I think he left the ambiguity in on purpose. So, what’s more likely – that DDL is a lying, competitive, cynical, exploitative, murderous, swindling weasel of a man with occasional moments of tenderness, or that he’s a kind, gentle soul who’s been put in some difficult situations that he resolves, with great reluctance, using his .22, a bowling pin, the occasional outrageous lie and his not-inconsiderable charm? I’m going with the former, not the latter. And was anyone else slightly creeped out by the scenes between DDL and Mary? I kept thinking he was going to molest her.

7. I could not wait for this movie to end. From the opening, laughably ominous shot of the hills with the sub-Kubrick screeching on the soundtrack to the final murder, I found this film tedious, pretentious and genuinely ugly in look, character and story. I hated just about everyone on screen, and found myself looking at my watch roughly every five minutes. I thought the soundtrack was ludicrous, like some child had watched 2001 and the Shining and thought – ah, dissonance heightens tension! More dissonance = more tension! Unlike 2001, however, there’s so little at stake here, all it did for me was heighten the fact that these (Anderson, Greenwood) are a bunch of amateurs when it comes to film, aping without understanding the classics. Someone mentioned that this film’s antecedent was Citizen Kane. Whoever wrote that deserves to have every film they see in a theater replaced with a classic from the oeuvre of Eddy Murphy in prosthetics. That’s like saying Law and Order’s antecedent is Fritz Lang’s M. Having something in common (uh, Kane and TWBB both have a larger-than-life protagonist?) doesn’t make one the antecedent of the other. And comparing crap to classic does not ennoble the crap. I felt like the time jumps here were not calculated flashes forward to bring us through an epic story, but an impatient auteur skipping, mercifully, what could have been hours more trudging through the lives of people that I dearly wanted to die.

Sad suitcase kitty hates bad movies.

“found myself looking at my watch roughly every five minutes”

unless you have night vision, that is pretty rude.

your ramblings don’t prove or disprove anything that anyone else said. you just took longer to talk in bigger circles.