Monday, July 7, 2008
Last time, on There Will Be Blood:
Dan was having trouble determining how he felt about the film. On the one hand, he appreciated the artistry of the film, and thought it built to a very effective and memorable conclusion. On the other hand, he felt somewhat disengaged from large chunks of the story, and wasn't sure he agreed with the consensus on the film's greatness. He determined that he should take some time, and see the movie again down the line in order to better suss out his feelings.
Well, I finally watched it again, and I can say that my appreciation for the film went up in many regards, but that I still can't call it a great movie, consensus be damned. I know my buddy Patrick has really tried to convince me of it's greatness, but for me I don't think it goes beyond the realm of "really good." (Sorry buddy).
It's pretty wonderful on a technical level, and I'm also convinced that it's a lot funnier than people give it credit for, but there's too many ideas and themes that don't quite gel for me, and motivations and characters that I still don't quite understand. I definitely caught a lot more texture the second time through, but there were also things I better understood that, frankly, I think I should have understood the first time through, but didn't through faults in the storytelling. I didn't take notes, so I'm not going to laundry list them, but the most glaring is the confusion over Paul and Eli Sunday. They are twins, but Anderson never puts them in the same scene, and I know I'm not the only person who suspected that they were actually the same person pretending to be twins. It casts a weird shadow of ambiguity over a large part of the movie, adding a lot of unnecessary confusion to the first viewing. It's something that should have been more clearly addressed in the film. I suppose Anderson might have done this on purpose (Plainview's reaction to meeting Eli for the first time suggests this) but I cannot figure out what this would add to the film.
My hesitance comes down to something a little more abstract, though. Roger Ebert once said, when asked about the difference between a 3 1/2 and a 4 star movie, said "3½ is a very good rating, meaning all a movie lacked was an ineffable tingle at the base of my spine." And that's how I feel here. I enjoy, respect and even admire a lot of this movie, but it's just not giving me that charge I feel when I'm watching a movie I love.
4 comments:
One interesting thing I caught this time around that I didn't the first was the connection between Daniel telling "Henry" something along the lines of that he's built up his hatred for people piece by piece all his life, until now, when he's so fully consumed by hate he wants to make a lot of money just so he can be away from all people ever, and then at the end of the movie Daniel telling H.W. "I see, you've built up your hate for me piece by piece over the years." And it seemed really interesting to me, that he was projecting his hate onto H.W., assuming he hated or maybe wanting him to hate as much as he himself did, because he didn't like that about himself. Or maybe because he felt guilty for failing as a father or whatever, and so he had this image of the hateful son he felt he deserved. Or something like that. I'm probably reading way too much into it. But that line really got me this time.
One thing that still remains unclear to me in TWBB (and possibly intentionally so) is exactly how Plainview feels about HW. Occassionally I suspect that he cares about him, but I'm never sure. It does sound like he feels genuinely guilty in that scene where Eli forces him to say "I've abandoned my son."
But then there's the ending, where he cruelly tells HW that he's just an orphan he doesn't love. Is he saying that because he's always felt that way, or just because he feels betrayed by HW wanteing to start his own business? And what really confuses me is that the movie then has a flashback to HW as a boy, and I can't tell if it's supposed to be a memory of a happy time, or not. At first it looks like they are having a good time, but then Plainview gets mad or something? Or is he just fooling around? I can't really tell what's going on, which is frustrating because I feel like it's supposed to be the key to finally explaining there relationship.
Perhaps it's that HW loves Plainview, but Plainview never cared about HW? Or does that flashback contain genuine affection on Plainview's part? I dunno.
I think the reason for the end is yeah, the betrayal-feeling factor, excacerbated (sp?) by the alcoholism thing. And then the flashback, I think is supposed to be from H.W.'s point of view, remembering these happy times when his father seemed to love him, but then he's questioning those memories now, looking back on them and going oh wait...did he really love me? maybe i'm remembering it wrong, and then he sort of warps his memories to fit what he suspects now. i dunno. speculation.
PS we have the internet now.
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