There Will Be Blood (2007)

I'm going to argue against celebrating this movie.

It isn't because it is not effective. It is. It is extremely honed so that every horse is hitched to the same plow, so that power is achieved.

It isn't because we don't marvel at the actorly gymnastics of Day Lewis. Its because it doesn't matter. I will truly forget this film in the sense that none of it will change me, indirectly lead me somewhere or trick me into some discovery. In preparation for this, I saw "Siberiade," another oildrilling epic where kinship is central and the drive to the earth is a retreat.

(The "blood" in the title is associated with family, not weeping veins.)

Elements of that Soviet film will stick with me forever, though the film has less explosive emotion. (It does have a far more dramatic oilrig fire — real instead of from ILM. And it has teasingly seductive songs, not the edgy, spineraising tension of here.)

The one element that should have grabbed me was undeveloped. Here is a man who we see is broken. There are no events to follow. He becomes a success and remains broken. The only story for us to seek is why. We know he had peculiar feelings for his sister and left home traumatically. That he prefers isolation of the most remote kind. That given any opening for bond, for blood: HW, the discovered brother, the child Mary, he will grab it with both hands and look for disappointment.

We know going in that the business of twins appeared only late, but it could have been central to this mystery of sucking and discarding both blood and oil. I really thought Anderson would exploit this ambiguity of identity. After all, he's made one and a half of the very best films which explores this. Films that are multilayered and reach out and penetrate instead of a barrelling locomotive.

So.

I would ask you to differentiate. First differentiate rubbernecking over a disaster from exploring and knowing a dangerous situation. Second, differentiate masterful storytelling from stories that have their own lives and catch fire in your heart.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.