April 20, 2008
There Will Be More Bad Movies from Paul Thomas Anderson
I just watched There Will Be Blood. Began promisingly, lost its way in the middle, ended very badly. This is another movie, like Magnolia, that the critics loved and I thought was lame. As far as I’m concerned, Hard Eight was the first and last decent movie made by PT Anderson. Mick LaSalle got this bit right:
“Anderson doesn’t take the religious mind seriously enough to understand it, leaving Paul Dano [as the Reverend Eli Sunday] to play a generalized character who is somewhere between a freak and a phony. The scenes between Day-Lewis and Dano ultimately degenerate into a ridiculous burlesque.”
and…
“There should be no need to pretend ‘There Will Be Blood’ is a masterpiece just because Anderson sincerely tried to make it one.”
And the wonderful Stephanie Zacharek (one of the best movie reviewers out there, meaning I consistently agree with her) nails it:
“Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘There Will Be Blood’ is an austere folly, a picture so ambitious, so filled with filmmaking, that its very scale almost obscures its blankness. … The movie only pretends to be elemental and raw: It’s really tempered and wrought, to the point of dullness. … An epic has to expand as it proceeds; this one narrows. The movie has eloquence but no guts. Its vigor is the arty kind, and over and over again it raises questions and then acts as if the answers — or even the questions those initial questions lead to — are unimportant. … Over and over again, ‘There Will Be Blood’ drops hints about what its big ideas are supposed to be and then neatly skirts them.”
Well said, and it makes for a very unsatisfying movie.
April 20th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
i agree- first opening scene of him mining by himself w/ no dialog- thought- oh this is gonna be good. by the end- particularly the last scene in the bowling alley I was squirming in my seat pissed off that they let the actors ‘over-act’ and made it silly.
April 20th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
pete — yep, exactly. Great, great opening and all downhill from there, kind of like PT Anderson’s career (first Hard Eight, and then all that has followed).
April 21st, 2008 at 1:55 pm
common guys; “Boogie Nights” is a masterpiece,cult film.
To say PT topped out at “Hard Eight” is just not cool.
I agree with you about “There Will Be Blood”, but most guys I know around here in LA still go see PT movies,no questions asked.
April 21st, 2008 at 3:20 pm
manuel: I am decidedly un-cool and didn’t like Boogie Nights or Marky Mark’s paste-on penis. People in LA aren’t known for their independence or strong character. :-)
April 21st, 2008 at 9:43 pm
Still a better movie than “No Country for Old Men” which won best movie Oscar. The ending must be interpreted by the viewer, when he says “I’m done” it implies he is caught and goes down, note the change in the background music from the “paranoid” sounds which always appeared when he was onstage (the music thus describing his mind) to a classical tune, once it all ends for him. He had nothing more to live for. He’d done everything he wanted for himself.
April 21st, 2008 at 10:21 pm
grimal: He said “I’m finished” and then we were hit with the Brahms and the Gothic-lettered There Will Be Blood. Bah. I really liked No Country for Old Men, but I’m a sucker for anything the Coens put out.
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:21 am
fact is “boogie nights” is one of the most requested films by viewers of the Independent Film Channel,IFC 10 years after it was released in theaters.
I’m not sure what to make about your LA remarks except that for those kind or remarks coming from your lovely town as it pertains to films is akin to me preaching how to make peking duck. I’ve got more talented film artist living within 1 city block of me than I dare guess you do living 1000 square miles of you. :)
April 22nd, 2008 at 1:33 pm
I agree with critiques of the portrayal of religous people in this film. And where a great human struggle could have arisen from the elements of oil and earth, the religious side was presented as cartoon and thus the entire confict between Dano and Lewis did not seem real. It’s a shame because the entire angle could have made for a truly deep film.
However, I do feel Magnolia got a bunch of religious concepts right, from the nature of sin to the nature of judgement. Of course I am biased here as this film is in my top five.
Lately my two favorite directors, Ang Lee and Anderson, are making me have reservations, and only Capra and Eastwood leave me truly satisfied.
April 22nd, 2008 at 1:49 pm
@manuel: Yes, and that’s because they want to see the pasted-on penis and no other reason. Don’t be too defensive about LA … remember what Woody Allen said: “I don’t want to move to a city where the only cultural advantage is being able to make a right turn on a red light.” :-)
@Finn: I agree and that was Zacharek’s point about PT just touching on deep things and then skirting away. I like Ang Lee a lot but prefer Eastwood as an actor more than a director.
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:41 pm
whats wrong w/ u mao- don’t you realize if we all just moved to la and become film artists the world would be a better place. plus we all could go to starbucks and whine and boost the stock.
April 23rd, 2008 at 1:42 am
no defense taken; on the contrary…..not being talked about….now that’s bad. :)
April 23rd, 2008 at 7:02 am
Regret to hear you didn’t like it, Chairman. I think I recommended it to you a couple months back, when I was quoting Plainview talking to his faux brother Henry. Did you at least like the delivery of the line about “not looking past them to get all you need”? ;-\
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“I am finished” closing line; I thought he was telling his butler that he was done with his dinner. ;-\
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I didn’t really understand the movie, thinking there was something deeper that I wasn’t smart enough to get. Glad to hear that it’s possible there wasn’t anything deeper *to* get. Still, I enjoyed the movie and think it may be in my top 10. I still think about from time to time. The soundtrack and camera work (to the extent that I can appreciate it) riveted me throughout. But then I’m a sucker for anything remotely Kubrickian. I don’t think I’ve seen any other movies by this directer; perhaps I should see Magnolia.
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Has anyone here read Sinclair’s book, and how is that story vis-a-vis the one told by this movie?
April 23rd, 2008 at 8:22 am
Steve: Yeah, I liked a couple of his “speeches from a sociopath” … the soundtrack was interesting and sure, the camera work was often great, but it doesn’t make up for the story.
See Hard Eight before you see Magnolia, otherwise you may end up hating young PT and refuse to see his best work.
about Sinclair’s story, Hoberman wrote:
“There Will Be Blood is taken from Upton Sinclair’s panoramic 1927 novel Oil! (Actually, it’s a riff that draws on Oil!’s first few chapters.) Sinclair’s not- inconsequential muckraker anticipates John Dos Passos’s U.S.A. trilogy in its scope—beginning with the California oil boom of the 1890s, it marches through World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the development of Hollywood to the Teapot Dome scandals of the Harding administration. The amiable oilman is already rich and fixed in his ways; Sinclair’s protagonist is his sensitive young son.”
April 24th, 2008 at 7:41 am
Believe me, the Chairman is not known for his taste in film.
April 24th, 2008 at 10:10 am
ShaMao: Which movie(s) did we not see eye to eye on?
April 24th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
I saw “Street Kings” today by David Ayer. It was ok but nowhere as authentic as “Harsh Times.” Though Harsh Times was a commercial flop, so far it’s Ayer’s most authentic work for those who know what to look for.
April 27th, 2008 at 6:10 am
just had this forwarded to me- ‘There Will Be Bud‘
April 27th, 2008 at 8:26 am
pete: Great! Really enjoyed that… “when it comes to the clam bake, they won’t be there.”