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Thread: There Will Be Blood -- finally saw it

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    Stegodon EddyTeddyFreddy's avatar
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    Default There Will Be Blood -- finally saw it

    Thanks to Netflix, last night I watched There Will Be Blood, and was left with a curious mixture of feelings about it.

    Visually, it's superbly done. There were a goodly number of arresting images. You really get a feel for the brutal, gritty misery and toil of the oil pioneers. The story line is complex and highly original.

    And yet.... None of the characters really grabbed me; none of them made me care very much about what happened to them. Now, granted, I knew going into it, from reading reviews when it first came out, that the main character wasn't going to be very sympathetic, but even the ending didn't evoke anywhere near as much emotion as I suspect the film makers were going for.

    It's probably me, rather than the film, that's lacking, but it just didn't work for me to the degree I was expecting given all the rave reviews it got.

    Oh, and that insect-buzzy sorta-music got annoying as hell after a while.

    Thoughts? Agreements? Indignant rebuttals? Bring 'em on!
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    Elephant
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    Default Re: There Will Be Blood -- finally saw it

    Haven't watched it yet, but it was another of my rentals for this week. Will probably see it tonight or over the weekend.
    No cage, thank you. I'm a human being.

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    Stegodon EddyTeddyFreddy's avatar
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    Default Re: There Will Be Blood -- finally saw it

    Excellent. Please come back and let me know what you thought, even if -- especially if you strongly disagree with me.
    "Dude, your statistical average, which was already in the toilet, just took a plunge into the Earth's mantle." ~ iampunha

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    Default Re: There Will Be Blood -- finally saw it

    I don't know if it means anything, but it is such a spectacle to behold. I think a lot of meaning could be read into it (about relationships and loneliness and god) but really, the effect it has on me, is awe. Daniel Day Lewis as Plainview in that movie is my favorite performance. He portrays so much desperation and bitterness -- I find it incredible. I just don't know if there is another actor that could have done what he did. If another actor plays Plainview, it might not have been an ultimately interesting movie. The way it all works on screen in the end makes it one of my personal favorites though.

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    Stegodon
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    Default Re: There Will Be Blood -- finally saw it

    My wife and I had different reactions to Daniel. I thought of him as a flawed protagonist - he had a lot of character flaws, but I generally found him sympathetic and understood why he did what he did. After the movie was over, my wife said he was one of the best depictions of true evil she had ever seen. I didn't think of him as evil at all.

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    Stegodon
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    Default Re: There Will Be Blood -- finally saw it

    Quote Originally posted by EddyTeddyFreddy
    the ending didn't evoke anywhere near as much emotion as I suspect the film makers were going for.
    Actually, I don't think that's what they were going for at all.

    This is one of the most Kubrickian movies not directed by Kubrick I have seen in quite a while. It stands back, seeing its characters clearly, giving us insight into their emotions and motives, but not asking us, at all, to identify with them in any way. It is a clinical dissection, not a sympathetic experience. It's a very different way of handling narrative, and it asks the audience to watch it likewise. Some people don't enjoy doing that; they want to "get into" the story, to imagine themselves perceiving events through one or another character's eyes, to experience the film as if they're a participant. Kubrick, and in this film Anderson, doesn't make movies like that, and doesn't want the audience to watch them that way. We are supposed to stand back, observe, ponder, consider, and mull. We are supposed to leave the theater (or eject the DVD) thinking, not buzzing with subrational emotional stimulation. We can have an emotional reaction to those thoughts, and to whatever realizations and conclusions we might find, but we are generating that emotion inside ourselves, rather than taking it straight from the film.

    Does that help?

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    Default Re: There Will Be Blood -- finally saw it

    Quote Originally posted by Cervaise
    Quote Originally posted by EddyTeddyFreddy
    the ending didn't evoke anywhere near as much emotion as I suspect the film makers were going for.
    Actually, I don't think that's what they were going for at all.

    This is one of the most Kubrickian movies not directed by Kubrick I have seen in quite a while. It stands back, seeing its characters clearly, giving us insight into their emotions and motives, but not asking us, at all, to identify with them in any way. It is a clinical dissection, not a sympathetic experience. It's a very different way of handling narrative, and it asks the audience to watch it likewise. Some people don't enjoy doing that; they want to "get into" the story, to imagine themselves perceiving events through one or another character's eyes, to experience the film as if they're a participant. Kubrick, and in this film Anderson, doesn't make movies like that, and doesn't want the audience to watch them that way. We are supposed to stand back, observe, ponder, consider, and mull. We are supposed to leave the theater (or eject the DVD) thinking, not buzzing with subrational emotional stimulation. We can have an emotional reaction to those thoughts, and to whatever realizations and conclusions we might find, but we are generating that emotion inside ourselves, rather than taking it straight from the film.

    Does that help?
    Interesting take on it. I just saw it for the first time a few weeks ago, and had somewhat of a similar reaction as EddyTeddyFreddy. There is a lot of Kubrick in the musical score, for sure. It was annoying in a fashion, but mostly it helped to establish a very unsettling feeling, which I appreciated. I thought it perhaps was driving more of the emotional content of the film than almost any other element. There were also many, many long shots that at times were very effective and at other times were just tedious (where Kubrick seemed to be able to consistently use such shots effectively without evoking a tedious feeling, at least for me).

    But to come back to your observations, what is it that you think we were supposed to come away thinking? I just wasn't sure what that was when I popped the DVD out of the player.

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    Stegodon EddyTeddyFreddy's avatar
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    Default Re: There Will Be Blood -- finally saw it

    Thanks, Cervaise; that's a take I hadn't considered. I don't watch a lot of movies, so don't have the cinematic background to do those sort of analyses of how a particular movie-maker might approach a given story. Hentor, you're right about the unsettling nature of the score!

    Thanks to all who've responded; you've given me a good deal to mull over. I might even watch it again some day, to see how I'll see it with your comments in mind.
    "Dude, your statistical average, which was already in the toilet, just took a plunge into the Earth's mantle." ~ iampunha

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    Oliphaunt
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    Default Re: There Will Be Blood -- finally saw it

    I put together a whole long post that got eaten by the board outage. :x

    The gist of it was that I think the movie works best if you see it in a theater because then you don't have any distractions and you get locked into the tone of the movie, and that it works better that way. I waxed philisophic about art and the intention of these things and tied it into kubric and Brecht and other wanky stuff too, but...

    yeah.

    I like it though.

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    Stegodon EddyTeddyFreddy's avatar
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    Default Re: There Will Be Blood -- finally saw it

    Well, I did watch it on a large-screen TV, with the lights off in the living room, so..............

    Heh. I see what you mean.
    "Dude, your statistical average, which was already in the toilet, just took a plunge into the Earth's mantle." ~ iampunha

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    Stegodon
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    Default Re: There Will Be Blood -- finally saw it

    Quote Originally posted by Hentor the Barbarian
    But to come back to your observations, what is it that you think we were supposed to come away thinking? I just wasn't sure what that was when I popped the DVD out of the player.
    I don't know either, I only saw it once.

    Seriously, I need another viewing before I'll feel anywhere near qualified to offer any thoughts on that question.

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    Oliphaunt
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    Default Re: There Will Be Blood -- finally saw it

    Quote Originally posted by EddyTeddyFreddy
    Well, I did watch it on a large-screen TV, with the lights off in the living room, so..............

    Heh. I see what you mean.
    Yeah, I even said at one point that it doesn't matter how nice a viewing room you have set up in your house because you always have the option of walking away for a second. With There Will Be Blood the tedium and the horror and the violence and the akwardness are all equally important, but people have a tendancy to just take a break durring tedious bits of movies. When you see it in a theater you have a lot less choice, you just have to watch him chipping away a rock for what feels like 25 minutes.

    I also notice that people who saw it in the theater liked it a lot more than people I know who saw it at home, so I think that this supports my theory.

    My last point that I want to try to salvage is that I did not like this film when I walked out of the theater. Plainview is an aweful person. In fact everyone in the film is an aweful person, and deserve exactly what they get (more or less). But as time went by I found that the film stuck in my head and I couldn't stop talking about it. And I think that's the mark of good art. You don't have to "like" it, and sometimes you aren't supposed to like it, but it needs to effect you and stay with you. This film did that for me. In that way it's very much like Kubric.
    Kubric's genius was that he didn't try to tell you anything with his films, he just told a story and then said "So what do you think?" And that the audience walked away thinking was more important to him than what they were specifically thinking about. I think that There Will Be Blood managed to do something very similar.

    And I think that answers the question that Hentor asked. I don't know what PT Anderson had a in mind specifically, but I don't think that it matters. The film was too big to be that narrowly directed and I am positive that he knew it. It was just aimed at making you think about this story, and whatever conclusions you draw are totally ok. It had no agenda other than to get you thinking about this man's life. And then because of that we have conversations like this.

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    Why so serious? Tinker's avatar
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    Default Re: There Will Be Blood -- finally saw it

    Sympathetic characters are not necessary to a story. You don't NEED to relate to the characters.

    The film is about the victory of Capitalism over Religion. Satan wins. That's basically the point. It's brutal, bleak and there is no redemption.



    I was fortunate enough to attend a screening of it on the actual movie set in Texas at the first Marfa Film Festival last April.
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    Default Re: There Will Be Blood -- finally saw it

    My big question surrounding this movie: why the hell did everyone fixate on this "milkshake" shit? of all the things to turn into some snarky catchphrase, why this?

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    Default Re: There Will Be Blood -- finally saw it

    Quote Originally posted by Hentor the Barbarian
    There is a lot of Kubrick in the musical score, for sure. It was annoying in a fashion, but mostly it helped to establish a very unsettling feeling, which I appreciated. I thought it perhaps was driving more of the emotional content of the film than almost any other element.
    Musical score was by Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead.

    I guess some people are saying the shots were tedious. I do love Kubrick, but I was gripped by this film way more than 2001, and I had read that book before seeing it. I don't have a great attention span, but I have seen this movie 3 or 4 times and each shot completely captivates me every time. I guess its fair to say that this movie just GOT to me.

    But if say, Tom Hanks was the leading role, would it be good? I like Tom Hanks, but it is really the performance of Lewis and the director Andersen that captured that performance that makes this movie extraordinary.

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    Default Re: There Will Be Blood -- finally saw it

    Quote Originally posted by Tinker
    The film is about the victory of Capitalism over Religion. Satan wins. That's basically the point. It's brutal, bleak and there is no redemption.
    Hmm. Well, I suppose that could be. I sure didn't get that from it, largely because I didn't see Eli as really representing religion, and I didn't see Plainview as winning in the end. His last line, "I'm finished here" sounds like him saying he's finished, as in he's lost. That seems to be the case with all of the images of the loneliness, and of his last interaction with HW. And ending in the Great Depression doesn't seem like a good way to underscore the victory of Capitalism.

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    Elephant
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    Default Re: There Will Be Blood -- finally saw it

    Ok, I finally saw it last night, and thought it was great.

    I think the main thing that set this film apart from most others is that it was entirely focused on the 'what' of Plainview's life. The 'why' was left entirely up to the viewer. We never see into his thoughts, and rarely see any of his private moments. We don't see him wrestling with any demons except for when he's doing it in public, and he doesn't give any "this is why I am what I am" monologue. The viewer is stuck as a human observer, rather than the semi-omnipotent one that many movies allow. The way the film jumped forward by years at a time reinforced this.
    No cage, thank you. I'm a human being.

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