THERE WILL BE BLOOD/2007/PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON

Some people would call THERE WILL BE BLOOD boring. Normally I would just grab said person around the neck and strangle them until they took it back (TWBB being one of my favorite movies) but today I’m feeling a little more academic and so instead of murder- surely Daniel Plainview would appreciate that- I will attempt to counter that argument through a careful study of the film and how it uses passage of time, selective storytelling (I’ll explain that later) and both film allusion and historical allegory to reinforce the themes of the film and to broaden the scope of the story itself- making it just as much a universal tale of greed and avarice as a story about oil.

First off let’s take a look at the passage of time in TWBB. The opening 16 minutes (not 20 as those bored by it would have you believe) is for the most part completely without dialogue. Now that is not to say that it is SILENT. After all the word silent implies NO SOUND (right?) whereas the opening of TWBB is rife with sound design and a masterfully ominous opening to a game changing score by Radiohead guitarist Johnny Greenwood. In the silent picture days not only would you have gotten NO sound design of any kind (except maybe some theater employees behind the screen with a box of junk doing sound effects) but instead of a musical score you would have had an organist (earlier on it was simply a pianist) in the theater playing along with the movie, sometimes working off of a cue sheet of sorts, but often times improvising as he went along. It wasn’t until D.W. Griffiths groundbreaking THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915) that it started to become common for big budget silent features (the majority of silent films made back then were called 1 or 2 reelers equating to 20-40 minute “shorts”) to arrive at theaters with originally composed scores. So right from the start this criticism of the opening “20″ minutes being “silent” is completely hogwash. And what about those “20″ (really 16) minutes of boring, silent moving pictures? Well I suppose one could say it’s dragged out but when you think of it in terms of fitting a decade or so of this man’s life into a mere 16 minutes of film, WITHOUT RESORTING TO DIALOGUE TO TELL THE STORY, it is clear that P.T. Anderson is as masterful a filmmaker as there has ever been, especially when you consider that audiences today are the LEAST likely to make it any amount of time in a movie theater without numerous explosions or semi-explicit sex (let alone no dialogue) barraging them at every shaky-cam jump-cut. Similarly Stanley Kubrick (who P.T. Anderson draws from in several ways during TWWB) was met with the same early criticism of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. “The opening 20 minutes (actually 20 minutes in this case) is soooo boring with just a bunch of monkeys jumping around.”(my own quote) But again, when you think about it, Kubrick is telling the story of all of human development up to that point- a time frame of millions of years of evolution- in a matter of 20 minutes. Impressive stuff! And while we’re on the topic of Stanley, lets not overlook the very Kubrickean opening musical tone of the film and recurrent musical motif of those dissonant strings rising in unison and then trying to even out. That creepy, foreboding musical monotone that has become so popular in mainstream cinema since this P.T. revived it. Tarantino used it in INGLORIOUS BASTERDS (opening scene) and Han Zimmer uses it over and over again in THE DARK KNIGHT to give the Joker an uneven quality to him, hardly perceptible. Also Kathryn Bigelow utilized it in her oscar winner THE HURT LOCKER. Lest not forget however that Kubrick (notorious for using pre-composed music in his films) uses the same dissonant tone in both 2001 and THE SHINING at least. And as if the long sparse bowling alley at the film’s close weren’t enough (Anderson originally wanted to paint it completely white as an homage to CLOCKWORK ORANGE) you have the very distinctive ax swinging motion made so famous by Jack Nicholson in THE SHINING being employed by Daniel Plainview both whilst digging for silver in the opening scene and digging Henry’s grave towards the final reel of the movie (both with accompanying dissonant musical tone underlying them). This is a clear awareness on Anderson’s part of what came before him in film and the utilization of it in order to create more depth through the use of loaded imagery.

Just like in many great films it’s not only what you are SHOWN in TWBB that helps shape the story but also what you DON’T see that shapes your perception- or what I here will call selective storytelling. Mentioned by Tarantino in an interview once as a good example (he cites this movie as one of the main impetuses for him to finally make INGLORIOUS BASTERDS) we have the stretch of land Plainview has to drag himself over from the mine where he’s broken his leg back into town in the opening sequence. That unspoken, unseen image of Plainview slowly and painfully dragging himself along miles of rocky, dusty terrain pulses through the movie as the underlying human urge to will one’s self further onwards. No horse? No friends? No family? No problem. Self interest. The American way! I like to think Plainview carries this sentiment with him in the form of his limp- a battle wound of sorts. No crutch necessary! But perhaps the most touching of all sights unseen- or in this case sounds unheard- is Plainview’s son going deaf (from the very thing driving his father’s greed) and only then Plainview being able to say “i love you”. If he had taken the time to learn how to speak sign language (or expressed his love BEFORE his son was struck deaf) he maybe could have salvaged his relationship with H.W., but rather Plainview sees fit to throw a check at the problem. To buy a solution. Again, the American way. If you then look at the religious way to “fix” a problem- to pray for miracles- which is what Plainview blames Eli for not being able to do (while disbelieving his ability to do it anyways) ultimately you have the main thematic struggle of capitalism vs. religion- where I think it’s safe to say capitalism wins out in this story. Finally of course you have the misleading character of Henry who you first think is someone he is not. Yet another permutation of non-information (in this case let’s call it mis-information) that allows the filmmaker to take his characters in unexpected directions; as when Daniel meets Henry, who he initially DOES believe to be his blood brother, he indeed experiences a “second wind” and shows us a friendlier side than we’ve yet seen of this dark, mysterious character. Albeit friendlier for Plainview means rather than silently scowling you he drunkenly shares his hatred of mankind WITH you. It is only when Plainview discovers Henry’s lies that he backslides to his primal urges. One can only assume that such an extreme reaction could only be the result of optimism and rekindled feelings of brotherly love (any love for that matter) on Plainview’s part. After all, if he didn’t care one way or another, what does it matter if Henry lives or dies? Indeed Plainview is so hurt and ultimately embarrassed for having been taken in on this con game that he sees no choice but to destroy the evidence and take one step further towards complete solitude. One can easily imagine Plainview finally promising himself to never care for another soul after this incident and as we know from Plainview’s stubborn selfishness, he’s just the kind of person to keep it.

And how ’bout that oil? Well let’s just say it’s no coincidence, nor very subtle, to name one of your main characters H.W. when the story revolves around the American obsession with oil as a means to money and power at the turn of the century. But ultimately that’s all secondary. One could go on and on about the many different facets of the film and how they ultimately feed into the underlying themes and overlying story ect. but the truth of the matter is that when it comes to the greats like Kubrick and P.T. Anderson these filmmakers are telling stories whose scope is larger and more encompassing than the average movie goer is used to dealing with these days and because of that it may be a decade or two until THERE WILL BE BLOOD ages enough to be appreciated for the masterpiece that it is.