What surprised me most about There Will Be Blood? It's not by Werner Herzog.
I do not mean that it is derivative; I mean that its epic-scale obssessions, the grime and grandeur of its characters' madness would not have been out of place in Fitzcarraldo or Aguirre, the Wrath of God. (By the finale, certainly, the upper hand in sanity between Daniel Plainview and Don Lope de Aguirre might have to be decided by a coin-flip.) It has the same elemental grip, towering oil fires and black apocalyptic rains. Perhaps for this reason, of the three films I've now seen by Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood is far and away my favorite. I don't know if it was the best movie of the year. I would have called Paul Dano a revelation more than Daniel Day-Lewis. But it etches in the right language. It dreams in blood and steel and bone.
I do not mean that it is derivative; I mean that its epic-scale obssessions, the grime and grandeur of its characters' madness would not have been out of place in Fitzcarraldo or Aguirre, the Wrath of God. (By the finale, certainly, the upper hand in sanity between Daniel Plainview and Don Lope de Aguirre might have to be decided by a coin-flip.) It has the same elemental grip, towering oil fires and black apocalyptic rains. Perhaps for this reason, of the three films I've now seen by Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood is far and away my favorite. I don't know if it was the best movie of the year. I would have called Paul Dano a revelation more than Daniel Day-Lewis. But it etches in the right language. It dreams in blood and steel and bone.
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