There Will Be Blood is astounding
By The Prodigal Fool, published on 21 March 2009
We’d missed There Will be Blood at the cinema last year. What a mistake. This thing is a masterpiece. A beautiful, sprawling epic that is as hard-hitting as it is memorable.
Daniel Day-Lewis gets dragged out of retirement once again (the last person to entice him was Martin Scorsese for Gangs of New York) and, as ever, delivers a masterful performance. Powerful and always utterly believable, he’s still the finest actor working today. His performance in this film is monumental; it holds the whole thing together. But the direction by Paul Thomas Anderson is also impressive, as is the beautiful cinematography (who thought burning oil wells in the middle of the desert could be made to look so majestic, almost divine?)
The story is ultimately about the intertwined relationship between ambition and faith but it takes in so much more than that along the way: family – and in particular the complex relationships between fathers and sons, greed, and the beginnings of big oil – and big business in general – in the United States.
It’s one hell of a ride. As Straight-Six said it’s “singularly overwhelming in its focus on his obsession.”
And with that, I’m finished.
There Will Be Blood is astounding
We’d missed There Will be Blood at the cinema last year. What a mistake. This thing is a masterpiece. A beautiful, sprawling epic that is as hard-hitting as it is memorable. Daniel Day-Lewis gets dragged out of retirement once again (the last person to entice him was Martin Scorsese for Gangs of New York) and, [...]
A Prodigal 2009 reviewed: Happy New Year to you all « The Prodigal Guide
1 January 2010
[...] put fingers to keyboard in praise: Daniel Day Lewis’ unparalleled, career-defining performance in There Will Be Blood, the joys of seminal Western The Searchers; and the best damn drunk on celluloid: Annie’s Miss [...]