There Will Be Blood
dir. Paul Thomas Anderson
2007


"They tampered in God's domain."
-Dr. Ed Wainwright, Beginning of the End

"Jesus fucking Christ."
"No, detective, Pierce Morehouse Patchett."
- Bud White & Pierce Patchett, LA Confidential

"Do you know those men? Do they work for me?"
"Everybody works for you, Howard."
Howard & Noah, The Aviator

Daniel Plainview, the man himself will take pains to tell you, is a plain-spoken man. Direct. He means what he says and says what he means and he likes a man who does the same.

Daniel Plainview is an oil man. He has many wells producing, many more under development and a big enough bankroll to keep looking for more until...well, he's not sure.

Eli Sunday is a man of God, as righteous as his cause, as stalwart as his flock, he stands for and by the good people of Little Boston. He'll tell you himself, plainly, that he is a servant of the Lord, sent to walk among us that he might rid the world of the demons of unholy oppression.

What unfolds between them in Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood is a chess game of peculiar handicap: all kings and pawns, no queens.

There Will Be Blood is, on one level, a retelling of the "great man" theory of history, in the vein of Citizen Kane, The Aviator and Patton.

But there's something missing from Thomas' formulation. Not in the sense of something that should be added in to make a better film, but in the sense of a noticeable break from easy formula.

Watching There Will Be Blood is like looking in the mirror and finding your nose missing. Sunday and Plainview simply do not do what "great men" in these stories are supposed to do.

Blood is Kane without Rosebud, The Aviator without lunacy, Patton without a moral cause. Sometimes great men are great men simply because they have a talent and nothing better to do.

And I emphasize "men." In this piece, Anderson has not only knocked out the leg of comfortable "great" cliches, but he's knocked out one of his own legs as well: women.

In Boogie Nights and Magnolia, Anderson demonstrated a real talent for complex, multi-character stories and multi-layered relationships, especially between men and women and between parents and children. The lies we tell to maintain relationships that then morph into new relationships because of those lies which then necessitate new lies culminating in a moment of truth...and so on.

We get none of that here. Women, and even most of the other men, seem to exist mostly to be asked to leave the room or serve food.

We are with Plainview from beginning to end. We learn little to nothing about what anyone else thinks of him. As for Plainview, he seems to have no other emotion than searing contempt for humanity in general and Eli Sunday in particular.

At a business meeting, a fatuous oil executive tries to convince Plainview to sell his acreage, suggesting that the generous offer could allow Plainview to spend more time with his son. Plainview plunges into a rage, threatening to slit the man's throat in his sleep for "telling him how to raise his family."

"Why are you acting this way?" the executive asks. "Why are you threatening to kill me at a business meeting?"

Similar scenes in Citizen Kane or The Aviator are used to highlight the audacity, the megalomania, the lunacy, the bravado, etc. of the character. Here, it just seems nuts.

It takes a moment for us to realize that, for all the time we've spent with Plainview, we have no idea why he's threatening to kill a man who just offered him exactly what he wants: enough money to be done with people for all time.

At its heart, There Will Be Blood is a tale of damnation, of hollowness, of lack no wealth can offset, of a thirst too powerful for any oil to quench, of blindness too profound for any desert sun to penetrate, of deafness so complete no word of love can be heard over the silence of your own heartbeat.

Truly, this is no country for old men. Or young men. Or women of any age. Pets and children, too, should stay clear. Wild animals might have a shot, but it's probably not worth taking.

Sagebrush, that's what this is a country for. Sagebrush, and lots of it.

Three stars. Jason Plainview says he WILL DRINK UP YOUR MILKSHAKE!!!

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
2007
dir. Sidney Lumet

"Am I my brother's keeper? Yes I am!"
- Nino Brown, New Jack City

"We're speaking about it as an idea. We're not actually talking about it as a robbery."
"As a robbery? No."
- George and Dave, Glengarry Glenn Ross

"Bad day. Fuck it."
- McManus, The Usual Suspects

Sidney Lumet has been directing films since my father was in high school, so I won't waste much time fawning over his resume.

Suffice to say:

The Pawnbroker, Fail Safe, Serpico, Network, Dog Day Afternoon, Prince of the City

If you haven't seen these movies, put your Netflix queue on danger money now, baby.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is a heist-gone-wrong-cum- family-drama about a pair of brothers Andy (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) and Hank (Ethan Hawke) who conspire to rob their parents' jewelry store. Andy, the more dominant of the two brothers, harasses and bullies Hank until he agrees to do the job.

I don't think I'm spoiling much by telling you that things don't work out as initially planned and the situation goes from bad to worse as Hoffman and Hawke try to fix the un-fixable situation.

Lumet was a child of five when Sigmund Freud published Civilization and Its Discontents. I have no idea if he ever read this book, but it could very well be the prototype for his body of work. He excels at capturing petty and mundane desperation.

Andy's discontent seems to stem from brief glimpses of happiness. He lives a humdrum life, doesn't really connect with his wife, is bored and distracted at work and has picked up a drug habit. On the other hand, he lives a peaceful life, doesn't really fight with his wife, has a high-paying job and a hobby he enjoys.

He can envision his life as it should be, yet happiness eludes him by the thinnest of margins. In chasing the dragon's tail he's dug himself just a little too deep for a savings plan and couple's therapy to do the trick.

The film is structured like a Quentin Tarantino production of Rashomon (which Lumet directed for television in 1960), moving back and forth through time and showing us the same moments overlapped from different points of view.

Unlike Tarantino, however, Lumet uses the time-shifting device to draw the audience deeper in to the emotional intensity of the story as it unfolds. He shows us one side of a conversation and then lets it sit as we watch the events leading up to the other side.

In this way, the story jumps like a duck between two increasingly hot hot plates. As the walls close in around the characters, we are left with no viable options: Sidney wins again.



Three stars. Jason sez, your money is no good here, Hank.