USA 155m, Colour
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson; Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Burt Reynolds, Julianne Moore, John C. Reilly, Heather Graham, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Don Cheadle, William H. Macy, Thomas Jane

Boogie Nights is the fictional story of an emerging pornographic film star in the 1970s, played by Mark Wahlberg, whose special talent is discovered by director Jack Horner, who wants to elevate the adult film industry by making more artistic films.  As the idealistic director, Reynolds portrayal is near perfect. Wahlberg also gives a superb performance as the up-and-coming Dirk Diggler.  Set design, music, costuming and great dialogue give this film an incredibly realistic look and feel. While there are a number of serious themes which underlay Boogie Nights, there are a good many amusing moments which provide some entertaining relief (Klaus Ming November 2009).

There are certain films that seem so wide in scope and epic in proportions that they kind of make other films seem a bit pale in comparison.  I don’t want to necessarily say that they are “the best movies there are,” but they certainly make you contemplate your life, as well as other movies and how you view those.  Magnolia was easily one of those films.

The movie is long and wandering, and yet intimate and precise.  It deals with every day, real life issues, but tackles them as one might approach an epic journey, as well as adding on aspects of unreal, magic, and abstract vignettes.  It is a film of contradictions, both in plot and production.

The film begins by discussing three classic urban myth coincidences, all shot beautifully and interestingly.  Unfortunately, I don’t think the movie itself quite tied back to those original ideas.  I was expecting some sort of major payoff, where everything converged nicely.  Like real life, there were minor coincidences and unexpected relationships, but never the magical dues ex machina i was expecting.  I understand why thematically  that wouldn’t have been necessary, but I still felt a little misled.

I don’t know if I loved all of the less realistic aspects of the film.  In one memorable scene, all of the characters, in their own private worlds, sing along to an Aimee Mann song.  The song was pretty and relevant, but… why?  I don’t know if the movie really gained anything from that sing-along session.  We get it: all of these characters lives and stories are interweaved, and they are all going through oddly similar things.  We don’t need to hear them singing a song like this in order to recognize that.  On the other hand, I thought the frogs were actually kind of interesting.  And the only reason it really worked was because of the way the characters responded to it.  People didn’t start freaking out or thinking that the world was going to end.  It was just something that was happening and they dealt with it accordingly.  They noticed it and took it in, but didn’t over-react or completely lose it.

Is it weird that one of the most interesting factors of this movie (to me) was its pretty strict adherence to Aristotle’s Unities?  Everything takes place in the valley in one day.  The unity of action has always been a bit fuzzy to me, but I think it could easily be argued that Magnolia adhered to this as well.  For a movie of its scope, Magnolia is also intimate and small in its own way.

Not really sure what else to say about it.  I’m still thinking about the connections and relationships, which is impressive no doubt.  The performances were all stellar, with special mention going to the old and the young.  PTA does a great job of managing this ensemble cast.  The recognizable stars did an awesome job of playing against their types, which is always fun to watch.  The movie doesn’t so much end as go on and on, like life.  It often feels like story lines are being neglected, but there is just so much going on at the same time (like real life), it is impossible to give the appropriate amount of focus to any one thing or person.

So, if you couldn’t tell, I really did love this movie.  It is FAR from perfect, but if anything I appreciate it for it’s ambition and unavoidable imperfections.  Probably the seminal PTA film, although I may still like There Will Be Blood more.  I’ll have to keep thinking about that one, though.

Punch-drunk Love is Paul Thomas Anderson’s smallest film– it isn’t an epic, or a mosaic, it is a romantic-comedy, a miniature masterpiece that barely tops an hour and a half. It is also, arguably, his most sophisticated film: It’s a love story, but also a parable for a particularly modern malaise, a film in which love is posited as the answer to loneliness, anger, and disconnectedness.

It’s also unwaveringly weird– the film involves not just a romance, but a mysterious harmonium and an airline scam involving Healthy Choice pudding. There’s Jon Brion’s score, of course– as odd and beguiling as any heard this decade, and as much a character as the ones played by Adam Sandler and Emily Watson– and, yes, there is Sandler himself, in a role that isn’t just dramatic, but dramatically different from any other he’s taken, before or sense, channeling his SNL mania and comedically short fuse into a troubling performance marked by severe alienation and obsession.

But it all has a purpose, and the film isn’t symbolic so much as richly suggestive. My favorite scene is when Sandler’s Barry Egan calls a phone sex operator, not for arousal, but simply as a final, last-ditch effort at establishing human connection. It’s devastatingly sad, profoundly off, and ultimately, oddly affirming. And then there are the several allusions to Robert Altman’s Popeye– clever homage, but also thematically enriching to the story being told.

But as acute as the alienation is felt here, Punch-drunk Love is ultimately an optimistic film. It’s the only romantic comedy I know of that portrays love in very concrete terms, not as purely a matter of feeling but as something that has real power, and real consequences. It’s a a heartbreaking, funny, and ultimately joyful little movie that is blissfully unlike any other that I’ve seen.

#7. Lost in Translation (Coppola, 2003)

'Syndromes and a Century'

It’s ten years now since Tony Soprano first waddled onto small screens around the world. In the decade since we’ve seen something of a revolution in the way that television shows are made and watched, with programmes like The Wire, Mad Men and Six Feet Under representing a new, smarter kind of television drama. Here in the UK, DVD box sets of HBO shows are phenomenally popular, in a way that could barely have been imagined fifteen years ago.

The HBO revolution is generally seen as having been a good thing for television, encouraging good writing, experimentation and ‘dumbing-up’ in what can be a pretty dumbed-down medium.

What’s less often explored is the impact that HBO has had on cinema. On the face of it, things don’t look good. There’s a widespread feeling among people of my generation that the cable channel has beaten cinema at its own game. Having stolen cinema’s clothes by incorporating cinematic techniques into small-screen storytelling, it has proceeded to create narratives of a length and complexity that cinema simply can’t rival. Most films have two or, at a push, three hours to tell a story. HBO dramas have at least ten, spread out across a season. You only have to dip into Mad Men to see how much pleasure its writers take in delaying, deferring and waylaying the kind of narrative developments that in a two hour film would have to come thick and fast every ten minutes. 

I’d like to suggest though, that things aren’t as bad as they might seem. Some prominent film directors (cough! – Martin Scorsese) have certainly had their fingers burned, but cinema continues to grow and develop in directions that are not easy for TV shows to follow.     

On a basic level, there are still plenty of genres that TV can’t really convincingly do. The action-adventure film is an obvious example. You can put a brutal fight or a chase through the streets into an episode of The Wire or 24, and you can even throw a Hollwood-style budget into filming it, but you’ll always be outgunned by what Hollywood can do on a bigger canvas, with big Dolby speakers. Can it be a co-incidence that in the last ten years the action film has re-invented itself, with the Bourne trilogy, a re-tooled James Bond, The Matrix, Christopher Nolan’s Batman etc.? Well, yes it could be, but you see my point.

Alongside this big noisy transformation, there’s also been the kind of quiet growth that you’ll always find going on in cinema if you look hard enough, with new directors searching for new cinematic directions.

Film-makers like Alexander Sokurov, Claire Denis, Carlos Reygadas and David Lynch, to name but a few, have spent the last ten years staking out their own unique cinematic territory, producing work that wouldn’t fit easily onto the small screen. And then there are those like Paul Thomas Anderson who, having had the multi-layered, ensemble style of his early work (Boogie Nights, Magnolia) so convincingly appropriated by TV drama, has set off to plough new, equally exciting cinematic furrows. There Will Be Blood is a character study, sure, but a character study of such all-encompassing, deranged energy that it clearly belongs up on the big screen.

'There Will Be Blood'

Perhaps most strikingly different from anything HBO has to offer is the work of the Thai film-maker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, a man whose name, if nothing else, would put you well ahead in a game of Scrabble. David Thomson once described his first viewing of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet as ‘the last moment of transcendence I had felt at the movies’, and I have to say I felt much the same after my first viewing of Apichatpong’s 2006 film Syndromes and a Century.

In it, the director tells two mirrored stories of love, one set in a rural and one in an urban hospital. We, the audience, drift languidly, dreamlike through the film, overhearing gentle conversations and witnessing private, unguarded moments. What at first seems like a collection of trivial, unimportant moments gains weight through repetition and the change of perspective and, slowly, steadily, becomes compelling. It is a ‘difficult’ film, I suppose, but an easy one to watch, and infused with a uniquely Buddhist sensibility (in case you’ve ever wondered what Buddhist cinema might look like).    

Apichatpong’s earlier work contains the same intriguing mix of languor and mystery. His 2004 film Tropical Malady begins with an intense friendship between a soldier stationed in the countryside and a young local man. The relationship is possibly homosexual or possibly not – in the context of the film it doesn’t really matter – but it does contain from the start something primal and non-human: in one distinctly odd scene the young man is seen sniffing the hand of the soldier. Like Lynch’s Lost Highway, the film fractures in the middle, and we find that the young man has now become a ‘beast’ who the soldier must pursue through the jungle and kill in order to protect villagers’ cattle. As the two characters retreat further into the jungle they encounter talking glow-worms and the ghost of a cow, and the director draws on old Thai myths about shape-shifters and shamen. 

'Tropical Malady'

If these two films sound a bit trippy then, erm, that’s because they are. But they’re also powerful and moving in a way that is uniquely cinematic, and that helps to distinguish the cinematic experience from the televisual one.

Narratively then, with its ten hour plus running times, HBO may well have backed cinema into a corner. But to speak of an exhausted, half-dead art form is to assume that cinema is about nothing but narrative storytelling. Storytelling is important in cinema, obviously, but it’s always been capable of much more than that. At its best it can achieve something that cannot be found on TV, something spiritual and transformative (and I don’t mean Transformers – The Movie).     

So, while I love The Sopranos and Deadwood as much as the next box-set owning 31- year-old, I’d suggest that if you’re looking for the future of cinema, you should probably look elsewhere.

Primitive, a video installation by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, can be seen at the FACT Gallery in Liverpool until 29th November.

There has been a lot of lists running around the web about the best movies from 2000-2009. The sad fact of the matter is that none of the lists have been truly correct. I am a movie aficionado, so making this list will not only be a walk in the park for me, but it will also provide you with the movies that actually were the best from this period. It gives me great honor to present to you the top 30 best movies from 2000-2009…

1. Mar adentro (2004) Director: Alejandro Amenábar
2. Sideways (2004) Director: Alexander Payne
3. Match Point (2005) Director: Woody Allen
4. The Pianist (2002) Director: Roman Polanski
5. There Will Be Blood (2007) Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
6. Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain (2001) Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
7. American Psycho (2000) Director: Mary Harron
8. A Beautiful Mind (2001) Director: Ron Howard
9. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003) Director: Peter Weir
10. Adaptation (2002) Director: Spike Jonze
11. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) Director: Ang Lee
12. Donnie Darko (2001) Director: Richard Kelly
13. Lost in Translation (2003) Director: Sofia Coppola
14. Juno (2007) Director: Jason Reitman
15. Y Tu Mamá También (2001) Director: Alfonso Cuarón
16. Casino Royale (2006) Director: Martin Campbell
17. The Departed (2006) Director: Martin Scorsese
18. El laberinto del fauno (2006) Director: Guillermo del Toro
19. A History of Violence (2005) Director: David Cronenberg
20. Superbad (2007) Director: Greg Mottola
21. Babel (2006) Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
22. Dogville (2003) Director: Lars von Trier
23. In Good Company (2004) Director: Paul Weitz
24. Wedding Crashers (2005) Director: David Dobkin
25. Grizzly Man (2005) Director: Werner Herzog
26. The Aviator (2004) Director: Martin Scorsese
27. Old School (2003) Director: Todd Philips
28. The Dark Knight (2008) Director: Christopher Nolan
29. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) Director: David Fincher
30. Up (2009) Director: Pete Docter, Bob Peterson

THE TRAILERS FOR THE TOP 3 BEST MOVIES OF 2000-2009

Punch-Drunk Love (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2002)

Hello all.

Punch-Drunk Love is the only of the ten films on this list that is not typically considered a “great” film. It is a personal favorite of mine, and belongs in my top three of all-time (in terms of favorites, not best). When I was first getting into movies, as I was adding movies to my Netflix queue, I remembered how everyone seemed to really enjoy Boogie Nights so I added that. I then decided to check out what other films that director had done, moved on to Magnolia, and then saw Punch-Drunk Love on the list. I had a very distinct memory of people hating that film (but loving the other two) and I thought this was interesting. I added it anyway and it quickly became my favorite of P.T. Anderson’s filmography. It is far from his best but what a wonderful film. It is extremely well-constructed, from the opening dissonance to the beautiful closing sequence; every minute of this film is pure joy for me. I have a smile on my face from start to finish EVERY single time I watch it.

Adam Sandler gives what I consider to be his best performance of his career. I think The AV Club put it best in their review, “In Punch-Drunk Love, all those qualities that comprise the Sandler persona—the simpleton’s innocence, the pained inarticulateness, the propensity for violence—have been sharpened and magnified.” If you’re a fan of this film, then please read that fantastic article on it. Sandler’s ability to display rage is beautifully showcased in this film. The word “dissonance” has already been used once in this review and could be easily used twenty more times due to the fact that this film centers on discord and conflict. The two most important elements of the film aside from Sandler’s performance, are sound and color. This can be seen from Sandler’s blue suit against the blue wall to the way in which sound intrudes and interrupts the entire film. One of my personal favorite features of this film is Sandler’s missteps in grammar, when not nervous he is a well-spoken person but when faced in a new or unwelcomed situation that could not be further from the case. “They don’t get open…” while talking to Watson for the first time and “it’s very food…” while at his sister’s house are great examples.

Now as to why this is a film that made me love film, this was the first film that, at least by casual viewers, is disliked yet I love. There are other films that I like/enjoy that are not mainstream favorites but I adore this film (I cannot emphasis that enough) and a good deal of people absolutely hate this film. A little side-note: watching this film with headphones on is quite the experience, one that I recommend. This project has been a blast so far, which I suppose is obvious because what can be more fun for a film enthusiast than revisiting his favorite films?

Thank you for reading!

Misleading Teasers

I so wanted to see this film at the cinemas, but before I could get around to it, it was gone.

Having seen it, I will say one thing. The film had very little to do with what seemed to be peddled in the trailers. All I went on was Daniel Day-Lewis reprising a scary bastard in the mold of his Bill the Butcher from ‘Gangs of New York’, meeting the incendiary topic of how the oil barons came to be. The film is partially about that, but a surprising amount of it is a picaresque where you find yourself rooting for this bastard of a hateful man to be able to drill his wells and make his pipeline and beat the big bad Standard Oil and so forth, all on the account of his seeming humanity of adopting the baby son of one of his companions. But more on that later.

What’s Good About It

You can spend a long time looking for a film that’s deeply satisfying to watch. It doesn’t come along regularly and when it does, you’re always taken by surprise. I expected the film to be more grim, but it is more darkly funny than grim. The film oozes with good craft and good writing, and there are moments in it that you know you won’t forget.

Even the much parodied “I drink your milkshake” scene at the end is full of surprise and invention. There is something deeply baroque about the narrative and the story’s concern that you don’t quite expect the turn of events. In the end, we are faced with a main character who is at once a protagonist for the forces of industrialisation come full circle to venting his fury at the humiliation once exacted from him. It’s morally complex and deeply thought-provoking, and any film that leaves you with a cathartic resonance like that is great.

What’s Bad About It

Not much. It’s a trifle long and you’re never sure which part of the plot the central conflict is meant to hang upon, but then it’s fun to sit there and wonder where all the drama and fracas is going. It’s a great film. Picking faults with this one is picking nits and not worth the time. Go watch this thing if you haven’t seen it.

What’s Interesting About It

The character of Daniel played by Day-Lewis adopts an orphan who he then uses to pitch his image as a family man. Several times in the film, he makes the explicit point that the adopted son is there for show, but goes on to show great passion as a father. Daniel’s ploy works in most parts of the film as he pitches his deals to land owners and sets forth to dramatic effect.

We see many scenes where Daniel shows love and care for his adopted son H.W. (whose real name we never learn), that we as audience are also sucked in by Daniel’s apparent humanity. His rage at Tilford in defense of how he runs his own family and how he accepts Henry as his half-brother (until he finds out he’s not his brother) all build towards our understanding of the man that allows us to root for his interests in the story. In other words, we as the audience are just as big dupes as the people who buy his “me and my son H.W.” routine. It’s an interesting construct.

What’s also interesting is the dogged exploration of the physicality of drilling for oil. We see a progression of skills and apparatus applied to the task as we visually understand the difficulty of drilling for oil. In as much as oil has underpinned our modern civilisation, it is this very technology that has underpinned the oil business itself and it is a fascinating view. It’s a film that goes to the core of materialist dialectic as it plays out in American soil.

By the way, I own shares in a company that makes drill bits for these things. Howard Hughes’ immense wealth started from making such drill bits. It’s a good business to be in as we exhaust oil reserves, hunting ever more for the final reserves. I’m oddly comforted by this film.

I Drink Your Milkshake

This is the scene that leads up to the milkshake analogy:

Eli Sunday: Daniel, I’m asking if you’d like to have business with the Church of the Third Revelation in developing this lease on young Bandy’s thousand acre tract. I’m offering you to drill on one of the great undeveloped fields of Little Boston!
Plainview: I’d be happy to work with you.
Eli Sunday: You would? Yes, yes, of course. Wonderful.
Plainview: But there is one condition for this work.
Eli Sunday: Alright.
Plainview: I’d like you to tell me that you are a false prophet… I’d like you to tell me that you are, and have been, a false prophet… and that God is a superstition.
Eli Sunday: …but that’s a lie… it’s a lie, I cannot say it.
[long pause]
Eli Sunday: When can we begin to drill?
Plainview: Right away.
Eli Sunday: How long will it take to bring in the well?
Plainview: Should be very quick.
Eli Sunday: I would like a one hundred thousand dollar signing bonus plus the five that is owed with interest.
Plainview: That’s only fair.
Eli Sunday: I am a false prophet and God is a superstition. If that’s what you believe, then I will say it.
Plainview: Say it like you mean it.
Eli Sunday: Daniel…
Plainview: Say it like it’s your sermon.
Eli Sunday: This is foolish.
[long pause]
Eli Sunday: I am a false prophet! God is a superstition! I am a false prophet! God is a superstition! I am a false prophet! God is a superstition!
[pause]
Eli Sunday: Is that fine?
Plainview: Those areas have been drilled.
Eli Sunday: What?
Plainview: Those areas have been drilled.
Eli Sunday: …no they haven’t…
Plainview: It’s called drainage. I own everything around it… so I get everything underneath it.
Eli Sunday: But there are no derricks there. This is the Bandy tract. Do you understand?
Plainview: Do you? I drink your water, Eli. I drink it up. Everyday. I drink the blood of lamb from Bandy’s tract.

It’s a fantastic scene, and it’s surprising to see that this is actually what the central conflict in the film is about. While the narrative meanders over the vast tracts of Daniel’s Oil empire, it comes down to a single pipeline, and the pipeline must be built through the land of a man who asks Daniel to join the church. The event is clearly the greatest humiliation visited upon a proud man and it happens so close to the end of Act 2 that we just don’t see it as the turning point.

That Daniel doesn’t and will not find succor from the baptism is obvious. What is not is the amount of seething hate he harbors for 20 odd years to visit upon Eli with vengeance; and it is a brutal, nasty, blood-curdling, dark, volcanic fury of vengeance. Daniel Day-Lewis is even scarier than Bill the Butcher; there is absolutely no ‘give’ in the most emotionally sadistic scene I’ve seen. And the thing is that it’s so breath-taking because it is during this very scene we are shown what very matter for which we’ve been watching the film.

I don’t know how many films or scripts that can pull this sort of thing off where they keep the audience sucked in for 140minutes without actually giving away which shell the pea of dramatic concern is sitting under, and then unloading with a furious finish. It’s a remarkable achievement.  I’m hard pressed to think of another film that does the same thing.

Hoy en PRINCIPIO Y FIN, un maravilloso final de la mano de Paul Thomas Anderson, el hombre que nos regaló Boogie Nights o Magnolia (la única película en la que Tom Cruise ha estado bien en su vida, por cierto). En “There will be blood“, Anderson nos sorprende con un registro inesperado, construyendo una epopeya trágica alrededor del petróleo, la codicia y la familia, sin duda una explosiva combinación. En este final, el monstruo Daniel Day Lewis y un deslumbrante Paul Dano bailan un dueto interpretativo que es puro gozo. Así, cuando el simiesco Daniel Plainview se enfrenta al showman Eli Sunday, nos recorre un escalofrío de felicidad, esa descarga que ocurre cuando ves lo mucho que están disfrutando unos actores. En fin, una delicia, como el resto de esta opresiva e intensa película.

Por cierto, atención a la banda sonora, firmada por el cabeza de radio Jonny Greenwood. Aquí una perla.

originally published in the middlebury campus

Indie auteur Paul Thomas Anderson was a critical darling of the late 1990s, with his films Boogie Nights and Magnolia firmly cementing his reputation as one of the most prominent rising directorial stars. His films tend to be paradoxical. They are dramatic, but have a strain of absurdist comedy running them. They are intimate, but have an epic vision. They are simultaneously about one person and all people. His latest release, There Will Be Blood, is different, though. Anderson jettisons the tongue-in-cheek humor one usually finds in his films and instead focuses on crafting a sweeping epic.

Using Upton Sinclair’s muckraking 1927 novel Oil! as a jumping off point, Anderson tackles the California oil boom, which we see between the early 1890s to the mid 1930s. Daniel Day-Lewis plays Daniel Plainview, as the film follows his rise from one man mining crew to a ruthless oil baron. The key to his success is the dusty backwater town of Bakersfield, California, a town where Plainview finds an ocean of oil waiting for him just under the ground and settlers all to willing to sell their land. The thorn in Plainview’s side comes in the form of a 19 year old boy (played by Paul Dano), a self styled preacher who, like most people in the film, is looking for money so that he might expand his small country church.

P.T. Anderson has made a film that some might find difficult to like. The characters are selfish, greedy, and nearly impossible to connect with. Even the character of the preacher, who in most other films would be seen as a protagonist, comes off as shrill and irritating. But those characteristics that most would find off-putting makes the characters fascinating, and because the film is so long its easy to see how greed insinuates itself into the very fiber of their being. Anderson is less interested in the social history of the California oil boom, but is instead setting himself to work on showing the dark side of the American success story. He and Day-Lewis have made a modern day Charles Foster Kane, a man who has set out to better his living situation, and in so doing loses touch with the rest of mankind as greed overtakes his entire world view. Day-Lewis delivers a titanic performance as Plainview. He allows himself to become Plainview, and pays little mind to whether or not the audience can connect with the monster he has created. It is one of the gutsiest and best performances in recent memory, and further cements Mr. Day-Lewis as one of the screens greatest actors. Also impressive is young Paul Dano as the irritatingly self-righteous priest, Eli Sunday. It takes a lot to stand alongside to Day-Lewis’ amazing performance, but Dano more than holds his own. As much as I would like to go through and praise every performance in the film, but space prevents it so I will just say, all the performances are fantastic, from Day-Lewis to Kevin J O’Connor as an interloper claiming to be Plainview’s brother.

I would be remiss if I failed to mention the score, by Radiohead guitarist Johnny Greenwood. His first foray into film scoring is fabulously successful. Drawing on influences from modern classical music he uses dissonant chords in the string section and unusual time signatures that, along with the stark cinematography of Roger Elswit, gives the film an unsettling feel.

I’m not sure if it would be correct to say that Anderson has grown as a film maker, he has always been a fantastically talented writer-director, but what is true is that this film has a drastically different feel from his other films. It is more mature, and he has a confidence in his images that some of his films seemed to lack at times. He allows his camera to linger on people as they work. Unlike his earlier films, he allows his characters’ actions to speak for them (in fact you have to wait for eleven and a half minutes before you hear a character speak), and it’s breathtaking. There Will Be Blood is a sensational film and one that marks the emergence of Paul Thomas Anderson as a mature filmmaker who is a force to be reckoned with.

After Magnolia and before There Will Be Blood, came Punch-Drunk Love in Paul Thomas Anderson’s arsenal of movies. In this dark and odd romantic dramedy, Adam Sandler plays Barry Egan, a childish adult man who is still shy around women and whose seven manipulative sisters criticize and torment him into uncontrolled bursts of anger. His wholesale plunger business keeps him busy, despite the fact that he never seems to do anything productive at his office. Rather, he spends his time exploiting a loophole in a special Healthy Choice promotion by buying large amounts of pudding in order to rack up millions of free frequent flyer miles that he has no specific use for (a story that is based off of that of “Pudding Guy” David Phillips). Boring and aimless as his life may be, Egan endures with only minimal broken glass windows and few crying episodes. However, all of that changes when an interested woman becomes intent on meeting him and a phone sex hotline operator becomes violently vengeful.

Adam Sandler performs like you’ve never seen him before, and at the same time- just like you’ve always seen him. His natural childish persona is preserved, but instead of being channeled into awkwardly unfunny jokes that would more likely be heard in a middle school cafeteria, Paul Thomas Anderson finds a way to use Sandler’s juvenile behavior powers for good. Together, the two create an air of loneliness and constant distress that manages to engage the audience and evoke a sense of sympathy for the protagonist. And with added exceptional performances from Philip Seymour Hoffman and Mary Lynn Rajskub, Punch Drunk Love is something that prevails in its own way.

Admittedly, the movie’s dream-like nature and unconvential quirkiness isn’t quite for everyone and some might come away feeling as if they simply didn’t get it. However, those who appreciate Paul Thomas Anderson’s general quality of work and are curious to see a different side of Sandler’s abilities will certainly be charmingly pleased. To give a fair evaluation, it’s not particularly a film that most will love or hate. Moreover, it’s simply a respectable piece of work that’s well worth a viewing, at least for the experience that Anderson creates.

Ani tytuł (lewy sercowy), ani plakat (poniżej), ani opis fabuły (A beleaguered small-business owner gets a harmonium and embarks on a romantic journey with a mysterious woman.), ani trailer (no, może troszeczkę), ani nazwisko reżysera (paul thomas anderson), ani TYM BARDZIEJ nazwisko sandler (adam sandler), nie są w stanie przygotować widza na ten film.

Ja spróbuję, choć może to zaowocować (dla czytelnika) nieznaczną utratą tych pięknych odczuć jakich doświadczyłem oglądając to dzieło.

Napisany i wyreżyserowany przez Paula Thomasa Andersona film z Adam Sandler w roli głównej jest ‘psycho’. Określenie to zasłyszane i ukradzione od pana Wojciecha już dość dawno temu, najlepiej opisuje ten obraz. Jest dziwaczny i klimatyczny. Zaczyna się tak…

Barry Egan to troszeczkę opóźniony w rozwoju typ albo po prostu lekki psychopata. Jest samotnikiem i odludkiem, co może być spowodowane wyjątkowymi relacjami rodzinnymi (nie będę o nich pisał bo bym zepsuł niespodziankę!). Ma firmę która sprzedaje rzeczy (nie będę pisał jakie bo zepsułbym niespodziankę!) i poznaje kobietę…

Samotność i paranoje bohatera nie dość, że są bardzo sugestywnie pokazane dzięki świetnym kadrom, genialnej scenografii i pojebanej muzyce, to jeszcze muszę tu wspomnieć o aktorstwie Adam Sandler, czy raczej Adama Sandlera. Tak jest! Jest niezłe. Potrafił zagrać tego sympatycznego retarda z lekkimi tylko manierami swego standardowego performance’u. Dostał nawet za to jakąś nagrodę prawdziwą (a Anderson z tym filmem wygrał w Cannes!) i jak normalnie go nie znoszę, tak tu byłem pozytywnie zaskoczony.

Akcja, czy też fabuła filmu, jest pojebana. Mamy tu trzymający w napięciu psychologiczny thriller i wzruszający dramat obyczajowy, które przeplatają się z komediowymi gagami oraz absurdalnym humorem. Oglądając lewy sercowy, nie miałem pojęcia co się zaraz stanie do ostatniej minuty filmu. Czy to w wątku miłosnym, czy w kryminalnym, wszystkie postacie zachowują się tak specyficznie, że naprawdę nawet przez myśl mi nie przeszło by zastanawiać się nad tym co zrobią, czy co będzie dalej. Okropnie mnie to cieszyło.

W rolach drugoplanowych zobaczymy Emily Watson czy Luisa Guzmána, ale największym bossem w filmie jest Philip Seymour Hoffman, którego postać jest przepiękna i gdy się go widzi, należy przygotować się na piękne motywy. A jeśli już mowa o motywach, to ten film jest ich pełen. I to cudownych. Zaczynając od samochodu, brnąc przez ‘pianino’, restaurację, braci blondynów, czy wreszcie kończąc na ‘That’s that!’ i słuchawce telefonicznej, cały czas miałem wrażenie, że jestem w raju ‘motywów’.

Podsumowując, film zobaczyć trzeba. Jestem pewien, że niektórych totalnie zamęczy wizją, fonią czy fabułą (tych głupszych), a innych zachwyci pięknem, ale nawet jeśli należysz do tych pierwszych, totalnie warto go doświadczyć. Jest wyjątkowy. Taka trochę artystyczna, psycho-pojebana komedia romantyczna z aktorem debilem, gagami i kosmicznymi motywami, wyreżyserowana przez wybitnego reżysera. Raz jeszcze więc, ej weź to obejrz.

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mały gratis to króciuteńki filmik nagrany podczas kręcenia punch-drunk love przez P.T.A. na potrzeby ‘meatball series’ Adama Sandlera.

Similarly to Trent’s write up on his films that inspired him to direct, I wanted to explore pieces or body’s of work that made an impression on me through my growth as a human being as well as a creative artist. I wanted to approach these films and explore my appreciation for them, not for the stance of informing my opinion on them, but for the personal gain of identifying what makes them beautiful. Film making to me, the act of storytelling and in general creating a film, is compared (in my head) to being a chef, creating these masterpiece dishes that allow the person taking it in to fully be immersed in the flavor, texture, just overall story that the dish presents. Why is that dish so amazing? Is it the flavor combination? Balancing textures? The plating? Or a combination of everything that allows this unparalleled harmony to guide you through its journey. So in the same vein; films are crafted the same way. A perfect synergy of all the elements expressed by the creator’s personal identity. By embracing their own flavor, style, and themselves personally; they can spin these elegant masterpieces that become a fusion of great ideas and techniques, with their own character and intimacy.

Boogie Nights  | 1997

P.T Anderson’s outstanding picture about the rise and fall of a group of film makers in the (late 70’s early 80’s) porn industry. Now this picture was unique for me, and BN along with Magnolia are almost fused in my mind into one catalyst that in the same way inspired me to go to film school, and once there, inspired me to get out of film school. I felt at the time, that although they were giving their students the foundation necessary to understand making films, they were stifling the creativity by abiding by the curriculum.
So now then… I wanted to talk about Boogie Nights instead of Magnolia (I think they are both stunning pictures) because overall, I think that the energy, the love, the rise of the characters into this place of beauty, happiness and success is an unbelievably ride of unbridled passion. I think its a fascinating feat, to allow the viewer to participate in this journey, growing to love these characters, feeling their pain, in a context of (by today’s standards) derogatory, yet ultimately appreciated world.
The camera work overall is incredibly well executed, there is evidence of influence of other film makers in this work, including Scorsese; and PT really allows the camera to evolve into an entity to guide the story forward and utilizes coverage only when needed. On my first few passes of the film, my immediate appreciation on camera work fell into the opening sequence and other pieces of PT’s use of steadicam to open up characters in one entire sequence; But later my love for his camera work came in the form of more subtle pieces, artistically executed “battles” between characters, or beautiful environment compositions that express the era.
The performances are fantastic; each character is this perfectly designed piece that fits into the world that’s been created. They fill these niche sections of the film that are subtle but allow the entire picture to be as colorful and vibrant as it is. The actors really had a grasp on what they were trying to achieve, and what the overall vibe of the film was. Its beautiful to appreciate the individuality that each actor was given to meld with their character, but also stunning to know that PT understood his vision and was their to guide and love every actor so they could flourish within the environment.
Ultimately, the entire picture is a stunning piece of work; an entree that encourages you to savor every nuance of flavor and passion as you absorb it until the credit sequence. Every facet is well executed, and its obvious why PT continues to work with the same DP and editor on his recent pictures since BN. A stunning form of story telling that pushes itself to be intense and dramatic, but has the confidence to allow us to experience the fun and exuberance that the characters have to offer. Boogie Nights continues to be the film that I throw in while doing errands around the house, and end up sitting down and finishing it through. A brilliant film that has PT’s soul stitched through it, and a film that understands inside and out what it wants to be.

There Will Be Blood (2008)
Directed: Paul Thomas Anderson / Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano

Mereka bilang dia monster, iblis, ada yang bilang dia kejam, tapi dia hanyalah seorang pengusaha, dan juga seorang ayah. Ya, dia seorang ayah. Bukan ayah yang baik mungkin, dan bukan pula ayah kandung, tapi tetap saja dia seorang ayah. Dialah Daniel Plainview.

Bicara tentang There Will be Blood, maka kita wajib berbicara tentang Daniel Plainview, karena dialah inti dari film ini. Ia tak sekedar tokoh utama, yang menjadi objek pembahasan belaka. Ia adalah nyawa dan jiwa dari film karya Paul Thomas Anderson itu sendiri. Ia adalah selebriti kita, pusat tata surya bernama There Will Be Blood, dimana seluruh perhatian tercurah pada dirinya –juga kumisnya yang intimidatif.

Diangkat dari novel ‘Oil’ karya Upton Synclair, film ini mengetengahkan kisah perjuangan Daniel Plainview hingga ia menjadi saudagar minyak yang sukses di Amerika Serikat, di awal abad ke 20. Ia adalah pria bertekad baja, yang pantang menyerah dan sangat kompetitif. Ia adalah perpaduan unik dari manusia yang tegar, tegas, berwibawa, temperamental, dan bisa berubah menjadi sangat kejam. Ia adalah pria yang sulit dimengerti, dan dia lebih senang dianggap demikian. Yang jelas, ia adalah pria yang sulit disukai oleh semua orang.

Daniel Plainview dibawakan secara luar biasa oleh Daniel Day-Lewis, yang membawakan seni olah peran yang memukau. Boleh dikatakan, aktingnya dalam film ini adalah salah satu performa akting terbaik dekade ini, untuk kategori aktor (bersanding dengan Forrest Whitaker di The Last King of Scotland). Day-Lewis sukses memancarkan seluruh kompleksitas Daniel Plainview. Lihatlah betapa murkanya Daniel saat ia marah; namun lihat pula betapa kentalnya rasa cemas yang terpancar, saat H.W – putranya – mengalami kecelakaan. Pesona iblis-malaikat terpadu sempurna, harmonis, di dalam sosok manusia fana bernama Daniel Plainview.

Kharisma adalah salah satu aset besar yang dimiliki oleh Daniel Plainview. Kharisma sejati, yang memang terpancar berkat wataknya. Kharisma itulah yang membuat Daniel disegani, ditakuti, bahkan dibenci. Kharisma itu terpancar lewat caranya bicara, caranya berjalan, caranya meninju orang, hingga caranya mengedutkan kumisnya, serta menitikkan air matanya. Sekali lagi, Day-Lewis sukses mengerahkan seluruh kemampuannya, solid, dari awal hingga akhir. Bahkan kita akan tetap menaruh respek pada Daniel Plainview meski ia kotor dan dekil berselimut minyak hitam pekat.

Daniel Plainview beserta putranya datang ke sebuah kota kecil di California untuk melebarkan sayap perusahaannya, setelah mendapat info dari Paul Sunday (Dano), bahwa kota kecil tersebut memiliki pasokan minyak yang banyak. Tidak banyak kendala yang dihadapi oleh Daniel untuk membuka tambang minyaknya di sana. Kendala terbesarnya datang lewat wujud Eli Sunday, saudara kembar Paul (yang juga diperankan oleh Dano).

Eli bukanlah seorang oil man seperti Daniel, bukan pula berasal dari perusahaan minyak saingan Daniel. Eli hanyalah seorang pastor muda dari sebuah gereja kecil di kota tersebut. Eli hadir dengan pembawaan yang tenang, sopan, dan alim. Inikah tokoh protagonist kita? Jangan terlalu cepat mengambil keputusan! Agamawan yang baik adalah mereka yang tak sekedar memahami ajaran hakiki agamanya, melainkan juga memiliki kecintaan yang tulus kepada Tuhannya. Tulus, bukan kecintaan fanatis yang berlebihan.

Layaknya Eli yang menjadi ‘ancaman’ bagi Daniel Plainview, Paul Dano pun berhasil menjadi ‘rival’ akting bagi Day-Lewis. Tidak sehebat Day-Lewis mungkin, tapi setidaknya ia memberikan performa akting yang apik dan terkadang over-the-top sesuai tuntutan cerita. Hadirnya Eli sebagai pastor, tak berarti membuat film ini terjebak menjadi film tentang si baik melawan si jahat, dimana si jahat akan kalah pada akhirnya. Syukurlah karena Synclair – dan Anderson – tidak membuat kisah ini sebagai kisah tentang agamawan mukhlis yang berhasil menaklukkan ‘iblis’. Sekali lagi, jangan terburu-buru menganggap Eli sebagai rohaniawan yang putih bersih bak malaikat. Dalam sekejap, tanpa basa-basi yang tak perlu, Eli bertransformasi dari pemuda santun, menjadi sosok yang paling dibenci (namun selalu ditunggu) kehadirannya.

Ini adalah kisah tentang manusia beserta ego dan ambisinya, yang berhadapan dengan manusia lainnya, yang juga memiliki ego dan ambisi. Ini bukanlah cerita tentang hitam melawan putih, iblis melawan malaikat, kebatilan melawan kebajikan. Ini adalah kisah tentang pertentangan dua manusia yang dipersenjatai oleh ego mereka masing-masing. Adu hantam ambisi tak terelakkan lagi, dan yang kuatlah yang akan keluar sebagai pemenang. Pada kasus ini, pepatah Homo Homini Lupus – mau tak mau – adalah benar adanya.

Sebagai sutradara dan penulis naskah, Anderson membuktikan bahwa ia adalah movie maker yang memang patut diperhitungkan. Sebagai ‘pendongeng’ di film ini, ia tidak terburu-buru menuturkan kisah dari novel Synclair tersebut. Dengan sabar Anderson merajut jalinan cerita yang ada, hingga semuanya berjalan apik, meluncur dengan alur yang terjaga, walau durasi panjang memang tidak dapat dihindarkan.

Dan berkat jasa Robert Elswit, sebagai sinematografer, Anderson berhasil menangkap ‘kejam’nya dunia yang sedang ditantang oleh Daniel. Elswit berhasil menampilkan California yang terik, tandus, kering, berdebu, liar, ganas, dan tak ramah; sekaligus menghadirkan suasana kepasrahan total sang alam di kala malam, dengan kekontrasan yang menawan. Elswit layak diganjar Oscar.

Dan terakhir, mari kita bicarakan tentang judul. Kenapa Anderson memilih judul ‘There Will be Blood’? Karena ‘Oil’ terdengar terlalu sederhana? Mungkin saja. Tapi, sepertinya Anderson menginginkan sebuah judul yang tak hanya impresif, namun juga dapat merepresentasikan ‘kekejaman’ yang ada. Kejamnya hidup, kejamnya wilayah Wild West, juga kejamnya Daniel Plainview. Dan ‘There Will be Blood’ terasa sebagai judul yang tepat. Terdengar bengis, keji dan intimidatif. Semua sensasi tersebut dapat kita rasakan saat menonton film ini.

Akan tetapi, bagi saya pribadi, judul ‘There Will be Blood’ itu sendiri saya anggap sebagai ‘janji’ dari Anderson, yang memang akan menghadirkan adegan berdarah di film ini. Memang, tidak ada adegan darah yang menyembur dahsyat, layaknya minyak bumi yang menyemprot ke udara. Namun, setidaknya Anderson akan menampilkan adegan bersimbah darah, sebagai konklusi final dari seluruh ‘kebusukan manusia’, yang terakumulasi hingga akhir film.

There Will be Blood benar-benar menghadirkan suatu pengalaman tak terlupakan. Setidaknya, kita tidak akan melupakan sosok Daniel Plainview, lengkap dengan kumisnya yang perkasa.

En el 2007, uno de los mejores directores de los últimos tiempos estrenó la tercer obra maestra de su no muy prolífica carrera. Me estoy refiriendo a Paul Thomas Anderson y a Petróleo Sangriento.

Después de las enormes Boogie Nights (1997) y Magnolia (1999), Anderson se despachó con otra película magistral.

El film, que se inspiró libremente en la novela ¡Petróleo! (Oil!), de Upton Sinclair, publicada en 1927, se desarrolla en la California de principios del siglo XX, en pleno auge del negocio del petróleo. Allí, un minero pobre, Daniel Plainview, (Daniel Day Lewis) se transformará en un magnate multimillonario y ese será el punto de partida para contar una historia impregnada de poder, ambición, corrupción, religión, y por supuesto, petróleo.

En los primeros 15 minutos el director deja en claro que las cosas se hacen a su manera. Empieza el relato con una larga introducción en la que no hay una sola línea de diálogo y en la que se muestra el vertiginoso ascenso de Plainview. Narrativamente, uno de los comienzos más demoledores que se puedan encontrar.

Lo que sigue a continuación es un viaje perturbador a la parte más oscura del alma del ser humano. Esa parte que está gobernada por la codicia, la mentira y la falta de escrúpulos. Pero la historia es de por sí ambiciosa y también puede funcionar como una metáfora del capitalismo más salvaje. En ese sentido, se puede afirmar que estamos ante una obra anticapitalista.

Y la religión, representada por el personaje de Paul Dano (aquel joven actor que hiciera su aparición en Pequeña Miss Sunshine), no es más que la otra cara de la misma moneda.

Daniel Day Lewis, soberbio una vez más, da cátedra, mientras que su partenaire Paul Dano no se queda atrás y sale muy bien parado del duelo interpretativo. La fotografía y la banda sonora compuesta por Johnny Greenwood (guitarrista de Radiohead) sobresalen y se convierten en un protagonista más dentro de la película.

Petróleo Sangriento es un film épico y grandilocuente. Su título original nos previene: Habrá Sangre. Y vaya si la hubo.

Digging for Salvation

Hier sieht man zu, wie Daniel Day Lewis die Vorstellung seines Lebens gibt. Als besessener, wahnsinniger und konzentrierter ‚Oilman’ Daniel Plainview, der ohne Skrupel und schlechtes Gewissen in allem nur eines sieht: Das nächste lukrative Geschäft. Vor Mord (allerdings aus anderen Motiven als vermutet) und Wahnsinn (der ihn nicht von seinen Zielen abbringt) schreckt er dabei genauso wenig zurück, wie ihn auch Schicksalsschläge und Wendungen der Geschichte nicht zu verändern scheinen, er bleibt das Abbild des sturen Verfalls. Untermalt von einem stellenweise genial deplatzierten Score vom heimlichen Radiohead-Mastermind Jonny Greenwood gibt es eine einfache und fokussierte Story, deren Destillat nach zweieinhalb gleichwohl nie drögen Stunden eine Perspektive auf Schuld und Sühne, Rache und Revanche ist. Aber nicht nur Day Lewis brilliert, ein mindestens ebenso ausgezeichneter Paul Dano wird durch seine grenzwertig gestörte Vorstellung als Prediger und Sünder Eli Sunday hoffentlich auf eine große Karriere in Hollywood schauen. Bei der Filmlänge so narrativ und geschlossen zu erzählen ist eine Kunst, die von wenigen wirklich beherrscht wird. Paul Thomas Anderson kann sich spätestens jetzt auch zu diesen zählen. [22. Juli 2008]

9/10

Titel: There Will Be Blood
Regie: Paul Thomas Anderson
Genre: Drama
Länge: 158 Minuten
Produktion: USA 2007

Il cosiddetto film “minore” di Paul Thomas Anderson ruota intorno a Barry Egan (interpretato da un Adam Sandler inedito), un mezzo psicotico, in certi casi anche violento, sempre bistrattato dalle sue sorelle, come se fosse un clown da deridere. L’incontro con una lei, gli permetterà di prendere di petto la vita, portandosi alle spalle tutto il resto. Rispetto ai colossi “Booghie Nights”, “Magnolia”, certamente questo film è più piccolo, ma riesce a offrire uno sguardo completo alla storia che vuole raccontare, probabilmente con un linguaggio più sperimentale nel panorama Andersiano.

For one, let’s not think that There Will Be Blood is a departure for Paul Thomas Anderson, who loosely adapted the film from Upton Sinclair’s novel Oil!. It was Anderson’s whimsical, lovely Punch-Drunk Love (2002) that left behind the director’s admirable, but portentous megagoliath films Boogie Nights (1997) and Magnolia (1999). His last film turned towards crafting an almost expressionistic mise-en-scène, one built around a character, a world-view, a feeling, and not a smearingly glossy, over-broad narrative of grandiose linkage and showoffery. That most strange of Adam Sandler vehicles has as unified—and off-kilter—a film world as that of Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood: a style of cinema that finds its natural place as it tries to become accustomed to the eccentricities of the most eccentric of characters.

And Daniel Day-Lewis’ early 20th century oil prospector Daniel Plainview is indeed eccentric, showcasing a proclivity to absurd obstinacy and capitalistic tenacity, and blessed with a gift of gab that, when tied to the cut-throat business of the booming oil trade, soon reveals in the character a merciless hatred for the people around him. He even says as much, in a moment of rare, though clearly relished, frankness; Day-Lewis practically lavishly smacking his lips as he curls his words of condemnation and isolation to his nighttime confessor. But to get back to Anderson, with the inestimable help of regular collaborator Robert Elswtt’s naturalistic photography and Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood’s score (part Jon Brion’s avant-garde percussive work for Punch-Drunk Love, part the Penderecki/Ligeti of Kubrick), piece by piece he constructs his film around this oddity, this character of Plainsview.

It is noticeably an incomplete view of the man, as if from a book not with missing pages, as it is not that There Will Be Blood suggests other, off-camera parts of the man’s life and character, but rather it is a view of a book where the edges of the page leave off. It is artistically incomplete and fragmented, ideas gathered about this man’s dogged lifestyle and thoughts, his cruel, passionate character, but never truly brought together, strands connected, everything fleshed out to a reassuring depth of artistic perception. Anderson’s film is like a vision of notes he took on a Great American Epic, ideas and angles introduced but rarely followed through. Instead, we get a narrative that skips at will from the initially days of Plainview’s silver prospecting to the accidental adoption of another miner’s son, who takes Plainview’s own name under the initials H.W. (Dillon Freasier). The film finally moves elliptically to the older man’s fateful arrival at the promising field near the podunk town of New Boston. Here we seem to get at the meat of the film, Plainsview convincing a town that exploiting their bountiful oil will bring modernization and wealth all around, a promise that also suggests an inevitable clash with locals. The oilman’s nemesis takes the form of a young Christian minister, Eli (Paul Dano), who claims to be a healer and seems to threaten to turn the town, and potentially the employees of Plainview’s oil rig, towards a fevered fundamentalism.

We see snatches in Anderson’s sprawl: Plainview’s early injury in his mine and his wherewithal dragging his mangled leg along with his silver find to the assayer; brief moments of love, or at least care, between Daniel and his adapted son; the gab with which he wraps up an oil deal with a small town assembly; stuttered but never complete confrontations with Eli, and so on. It is not that the film moves at a montage-like clip as does much of Anderson’s two mega movies, but rather the narrative touches down at telling details, small and large, to suggest something of Daniel Plainview and the world he represents, and then moves on to another idea, rarely finishing the first.

Plainview is, like The Shining’s Jack Torrence, to which the film implicitly compares him, is as much a monster as a mystery. A man in a quintessentially American position, here the capitalistic prospector and entrepreneur (Torrence, the trouble writer, middle-class family man), he gradually turns monstrous—or, perhaps, reveals his monstrosity—piece by piece as he voraciously uses his passion to better his position. I do not wish I had take him at his own word, but Anderson does ets him explain himself in terms that leave little ambiguity to the character, his obsessive need to find a method to get the man out in the middle of nowhere, near only a representative and minimal amount of humanity. It is this mysterious drive and this mysterious misanthropy that is the center of There Will Be Blood’s appeal, and Anderson’s inadequate plotting often helps underline the gulf of understanding between Plainview and the audience. He seems to have a bit of everything in him, but with not enough given to us to explain him thoroughly.

Jonny Greenwood’s atonal score and Elswit’s long takes, many using tracking shots or the Steadicam and limited camera coverage, clearly present Plainview with an almost total strangeness. There seems little dissonant stylization as there was to Sandler’s idiosyncratic relationships in Punch-Drunk, or the slick, omniscient/omnipresent direction of Boogie Nights and Magnolia. Shot principally on location, There Will Be Blood views its subject with a fascination but also a kind of restraint or naturalism (a few shots early on, and a later, amazing confrontation at a restaurant, are covered like a Hou Hsiou-hsien film) that lets Day-Lewis’ rich acting dig itself into its own hole. Anderson holds back in muffled awe at the potential, growth, and finally the blossoming of Plainview’s warped character, of the mania that transforms from capitalistic fervor to psychopatholical in minute, elliptical shifts in Day-Lewis. As the film’s skittish plot and ideas fail to gel, it is only the presence of Plainview that holds the film together, and Day-Lewis’ fierceness makes up for, and helps cover, much of the film’s gaps and immaturities.

The perhaps inadvertent side effect of There Will Be Blood’s problems is that the discrepancy between the film’s knowing, considered distance and the oddness of its subject provides a gross dissonance in the film’s tone, producing a remarkable, ungainly strangeness, an inability to nail down purpose, meaning, and direction in even the most over-planned moments, the most over-scripted dialogs. Anderson has his plans, that’s for sure. The film has a propensity to hit its Biblical notes, its Kubrick influences, its doublings (brothers and twins, fathers and sons, mostly) as hard as it possibly can. Yet the film’s strangeness is so potent that the film escapes the aims of these over-determined structures, which seek to close the film off and seal in particular meanings, explanations.

The sprawl of the film, its somewhat ragged and unusual structure (perhaps sloppy), are where the film’s crevasses of mystery are to be found. In Day-Lewis’ swallowing of his ur-American comicbook villain from Gangs of New York into a more psychological and thereby more of-this-world, believably unhinged psychosis, and in the film’s avoidance or, as the case may be, eccentric versions of conventional or assumed plot high points are the film’s most powerful, strange visions. Eli and Daniel’s confrontations, breaks and re-unions between father and son, and inevitable oilrig disasters are not done as one would assume, an indicator both of Anderson not seeing his ideas through to the end, as well as his ability to idiosyncratically divert the film away from convention. How else to explain the turgid father-son concluding scene of the film juxtaposed against the brilliant grotesqueness of the final bowling alley showdown?

We can still see the old Anderson in There Will Be Blood, determined to control the film and the meaning, the experience itself, but thankfully we are blessed with the artist who grew into someone who could direct—believe it or not—the most plausible and lovely Adam Sandler romance ever to be made. We find someone embracing the strange; dedicating not just a film to it, but letting it, for the most, and brilliant, part letting that strangeness move and alter the film in frustrating, tantalizing, and often unknown and unknowable ways. The pleasure, then is to see this film, perhaps yet another re-invention of Citizen Kane (crossed with The Shining), find in its look at an American passion for moneymaking and adventure, its somewhat less fleshed out attraction to the security of the church, and both institutions bonds with human relationships and building foundations for tomorrow, a new weirdness, a freshness that finds in the these warped American archetypes evil itself.

Article can be found on The Auteurs website (http://www.theauteurs.com/film_articles/88)

Alexander Payne es uno de esos directores que le gusta escribir sus proyectos. No es el único ni el último, desde Spike Lee hasta Jim Jarmusch, Paul Thomas Anderson, Christopher Nolan, Quentin Tarnatino, Robert Rodríguez o el mismo Wes Anderson, esta tendencia divertida los hace especiales en esta camada de realizadores independientes que entienden el poder del guión y la inherencia del escritor en el producto final.

Recuerdo a Payne primero por About Schmidt de 2002 peli que le hice mucha fuerza para que Jack Nicholson se llevara un Oscar ese año, después vino Sideways en 2004 y un amigo me recomendó Election de 1999 porque seguramente me iba a encantar (efectivamente). El último rastro lo tuve en el 2006 cuando de la mano de otros creadores se hizo el collage de Paris, Je t’aime con su segmento 14ème Arrondissement me dejó completamente conmovido (de todos fue el que más me gustó).

En fin, había visto un par de avances en HBO de una nueva serie llamada Hung y  la cual vi el domingo pasado. Pues cuál sería mi sorpresa al descubrir que la había dirigido Payne y que todo el estilo de narración subjetiva y existencialista aparecía de nuevo ante mis ojos.

Al parecer Payne sólo hizo el piloto y después se dedicó a la producción ejecutiva de la serie. Por lo menos ese piloto es muy interesante, esperemos que el resto sea de la misma calidad que el entremés. Nunca me ha convencido demasiado Thomas Jane pero definitivamente Jane Adams la tengo presente desde Happiness de Todd Solondz en 1998.

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