(Editor's note: I hereby, as of this date and with this post, copyright the phrase There Will Be Butt as a title of the inevitable porn film knockoff of every Hollywood blockbuster.)
I saw There Will Be Blood. While I found it to be somewhat overrated, it is still excellent.
If anything it suffers from the excessive god-this-is-the-finest-film-ever hype that surrounds it. But it remains an outstanding film. The final 20 minutes (SPOILER COMING) felt rushed and perfunctory – the stereotypical "descent into madness" that Hollywood Law dictates must end all films about bitter, somewhat evil loners who have trouble relating to other people. Yawn. Seriously. I felt that the character was far too self-posessed for the audience to plausibly swallow the idea of him turning into a drunken lunatic sitting in an empty mansion and firing a shotgun at nothing in his underwear. How he transitioned from Daniel Plainview (first 2:15 of the film) to Crazy Old Daniel (last 20 minutes) in about 10 or 15 years is left unstated. I suppose audiences, and particularly American audiences, aren't capable of accepting a movie about a compelling but vicious asshole who loses his internal battle of Good vs Evil without a "happy ending", i.e. said character ending up pitiable, miserable, and despondent/insane. For most oil tycoons of that period, their lifetimes of cruelty and avarice worked out just fine.
Pretty sure they were happy with it.
And if you're the sort of person who cares about this, the film had next-to-nothing to do with the book. To call it a "loose" adaptation is generous. The only thing they share in common is the presence of crude oil. The novel, unsurprisingly given Mr. Sinclair's complete lack of subtlety, is about H.W. turning into a Socialist after 10 years of watching how his father treated his workers.
Yeah, that's not quite what the film was about.
Peggy says:
I was also confused as hell by this movie. I thought that Daniel Day Lewis was AMAZING, but nothing else really made much sense to me. It made me feel pretty stupid, actually, having heard all of the hype about how GREAT it was going to be–and then coming out of it just thinking, "WTF??!"
I am still confused about what (besides the acting and, ok, the costuming) is so OMFGAMAZING about this movie.
Brandon says:
I personally thought it was one of the best movies I've seen in the past few years, and it's my clear favorite for this year. DDL's performance was part of it; I also liked the eerie soundtrack; the visuals were astonishing; and the sense of suspense and dread was palpable. The movie kept me entranced throughout, and it seemed to fly by. It was really like nothing I'd seen before on film, in a good way.
I do agree with you about the ending. I felt it seemed somewhat divorced from what had preceded it. I would have been more satisfied with him dying alone in his mansion. Maybe it will make more sense to me after a second viewing.
By the way, I think PTA was pretty clear that the movie was very LOOSELY based on the Sinclair novel. I think that's one reason why he chose a different title. I'm quite happy that he decided to eschew Sinclair's overtly political message in favor of an intimate character study.
JDryden says:
I think…and actually, I give PTA credit for not ramming this down our throats–my comment to my companion as I left the film was how nice it was not to have my intelligence insulted for a couple of hours…I think that the 'descent into madness' is meant to be the result of Having Won, and therefore Being Done. (Spoilers–does anyone care about Spoilers in a Character Piece?) The pipeline is built; Plainview's dream of bringing in the ocean of oil is realized, and he'll never have so great a success again. From the guy we see nearly killing himself alone in a pit in the middle of nowhere at the start of the film, he's pulled off the Great Big Strike that he's been chasing his whole life. Other successes will follow, but they'll be faint echoes of this one. And since from hereon in it's all about maintenance rather than ambition–since all he's had all this time is ambition–what's left? It's been clear throughout the whole film that it's not the having, it's the getting, and once the getting's got…Yeah, it felt more like a coda/epilogue than part of the actual story, but it worked for me because it confirmed what I'd been worried about the whole time, which is "What if this guy wins?" Hence the brutal act of the end–the assault comes because his last real enemy/competition wusses out and now he's *really* got nothing left to struggle against. He's done.
I think.
Batocchio says:
It's one of my top picks of 2007.
But Anderson gets final cut, and pretty much chooses his projects. Plainview losing it has ripples earlier in the film, although I agree the jump is one of the least successful parts. (SORTA A SPOILER) In a cut scene, Plainview is living in a tent in his mansion, using a bucket as his latrine. He's detached from the land. In any case, Anderson's choices are his, including any cliches, but the finale certainly has some elements that are anything but cliched. If nothing else, it's worth seeing for Day-Lewis, who's riveting.
Samantha says:
Although "butt" was not included, I thought this was a fairly comprehensive list of "OTHER THINGS THERE WILL BE, IN ADDITION TO BLOOD" from McSweeney's:
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/lists/7MeredithRodkeyandScottRodkey.html