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There Will Be Blood – 2007 P.T. Anderson
- Perhaps the most ambitious film, artistically, of the 21st
- We’ve seen PT do Altman and Scorsese but I think this tends more towards Kubrick and Welles—but at the same time it’s his entirely—especially with the master backing it up as a companion piece in 2012. It makes it even greater
- Medication on capitalism, greed, and monomania
- Called by many the great American novel on film of the 21st century—so many of them saying “this thing will be studied”
- There’s a bit of John Huston’s Noah Cross (damn what a villain) in Chinatown with DDL and a little of Elmer Gantry in Dano’s full of shit evangelical preacher. Clearly Anderson brilliantly weaves and out on parallels of the two and the finale, which I’ll get to, is really a ritual suicide as Dano’s hypocrisy highlights his own
- It’s a behemoth as I said, the silent opening, the landscape architecture as character and metaphor, it’s physical and violent
- Set in California like all his previous work
- Another critic says “Kubrick directing Kane” and yet another says Malick directing Kane– I definitely lean Kubrick
- It’s not an overly accessible film to mass audiences. Despite the performances and set pieces Anderson is not interested in giving easy answers or placating anybody
- Radiohead’s Johnny Greenwood’s first score pairing with PT and it’s miraculous—there’s crescendo’ing and synthesized orchestra—it echoes 2001’s opening- we’re watching early man here slowly, piece by piece, put things together like the apes in 2001– and all done without words (15 minutes here to open)—it is a magnificent short film opening. Determination. Elliptically edited. Confident.
- Other references—filmed in the same location as Stevens’ Giant, the obsessions match nicely with treasure of sierra madre and von Stroheim’s greed
- I think you could argue that DDL squashes the supporting cast and it could benefit from someone a little larger in any of the roles—like how Pesci plays off De Niro in Raging Bull (despite me saying it doesn’t compare as much to Scorsese this is clearly PT’s Raging Bull if Boogie Nights is his Goodfellas). Tarantino complained about Dano. I can see that. But I can also support the idea that it’s intentional that nobody can stand up to Plainview and DDL.
- I alluded to it above but it’s a great companion to the master and vice versa
- Tarantino’s other complaint in a video intro I saw was that there were no set pieces—and that is ridiculous. The oil rig set piece is one of the greatest in contemporary cinema. The well coming in— that scene and the score accompaniment
- Complex relationship with son and brother (faux brother it turns out) as son surrogate—multiple layers of PT’s father/mentor obsession as an auteur
- The score manifests itself clearly- audacious—doesn’t want to hide in the background
- Hypocrisy and mirroring
- In many ways there are stretches much more stylistically quiet than Punch-Drunk Love but that’s ok because it’s an epic and there needs to a little more deviation
- The shot of DDL in water, isolation, after the “peachtree dance” test his brother fails. Pure genius.
- DDL’s achievement here can’t be overstated. It’s the greatest performance of the century to date. He was always going to be a great actor but this puts it on a different plane. It’s his raging bull performance
- Countless standout shots and sequences. The long tracking shot alone the pipeline with DDL reuniting with his son— both long in the length of take and long shot—
- Biblical references all over the place- “orphan from a basket”, the Dano twins,
- On top of all this there are a ton of black comedy moments with DDL and not just the perfect ending which absolutely smashes the viewer
- He’s also becoming (or perhaps always was) an alcoholic but he’s clearly deteriorating as the film goes on
- Ok it’s a little odd that Dano looks 28 years old at the end of the film when he should be about 50.
- “milkshake”
- Not as opaque as the master but it’s closer than I had realized—not a critique- just observation
- At separate points both Dano and DDL make each other bow to one another—they have different paths and things they follow (like the master like PSH with his religion and Phoenix with sex/drinking) but are looking for meaning
- It’s a bit of a stretch but unlike the bone used by the ape in 2001 to smash the head this ending has DDL with a bowling pin. It’s connected—and then the “I’m finished” with strings. Large. Bold. Brilliant
- An all-timer. Masterpiece

Drake2020-07-03T10:31:12+00:00
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PTA really outdid himself with this one I mean Boogie Nights and Magnolia are great but this one is a Masterpiece of epic proportions, everything from the writing to the Directing to the Acting is top tier no questions asked. Quite Possibly the finest film of the Century so far along with the finest Performance of the Century so far, Im very confident PTA will top this film eventually maybe with his next film about the high school student who is also a child actor set in the 70s.
Like Schindler’s List are underrating this Film it’s easily Top 100 Of All Time with everything Being Top Notch imo.
This should be in the Top 100 on They Shoot Pictures Don’t They Website easily Everything about it is perfect from the writing to the directing to Daniel Day Lewis giving arguably the greatest performance of all rime(on a side note Paul Dano should have been nominated for an Oscar yeah he stood no chance of winning but he deserved a nomination).
I meant time.
I never noticed that Paul Dano’s character should look about 50 if not older (depending on his age) but still looks pretty young same for Day Lewis’s character he should look a lot older than he is at least late 60 early 70s.
As this was the only PTA film without a role for PSH, do you think anyone could have been recast as him?
I’m not Drake but PSH could’ve played the Day-Lewis role brilliantly if you ask me. I’m not saying I’d recast DDL, because why in God’s name would you want to do that, but PSH absolutely could’ve done it. It would be notable as the only time PSH was solo lead in a PTA film as well, in all the others he was either support (Boogie Nights, Punch-Drunk Love), or co-lead (Magnolia, The Master), and it’s actually arguable that Magnolia should belong in the former category but I digress. I haven’t seen Hard Eight but to my understanding he’s support in that one.
On the other hand he could’ve played Henry (the guy who pretended to be Daniel’s brother) as well.
Also, PSH could’ve appeared in Inherent Vice (which I have also not seen), as it was filmed in 2013, yet he did not.
@Harry- yeah @Zane has done some good work here. I don’t think you could pull it off the way it was written — but I’ve dreamt about PTA rewriting the Paul Dano part(s) in There Will Be Blood.
My 2nd personal favorite film of the 21st Century (after Zodiac) and the objectively best movie of the 21st Century (in my view)
My Bold Prediction:
This will be considered the greatest movie ever made in 20 years. You heard it here first!
@James Trapp- haha I love it. I’ll try not to delete this comment in future years and keep your prediction.
@Drake – appreciate it. But in all seriousness it took Citizen Kane 21 years to be recognized as # 1 in terms of Sight & Sound in 1962 Poll and Vertigo 54 years to hit # 1 in 2012 Poll. Obviously that is only one Poll but still. There Will Be Blood is 14 years old now but finished # 3 in a BBC’s 2016 Poll of the 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century after only Mulholland Drive and In the Mood for Love. A number of other lists had it in the top 3. To stand the test of time I think a movie needs an all time great performance(s), extraordinary artistic ambition, universal subject matter as opposed to movies that might be described as “issue movies” which don’t usually age well, a character or characters who have the ability to continue to mystify viewers; Kane, Vertigo, Raging Bull, and a number of other top movies have this last one. Enigmatic characters seem to have a lasting effect on audiences even decades later. I think this film checks off all those boxes
I mean I disagree with you – both Mulholland Drive and In The Mood For Love are better in my opinion – but this film is utterly fantastic as well. I’ll be thinking about whether it or Magnolia is PTA’s best film and they’re so close they’ll literally flip back and forth for me in seconds; one second I’ll say Magnolia and literally one second later I’ll say TWBB.
Now, if you want to call TWBB the greatest film ever made, I’ll disagree with you, but I won’t argue with you about it. It’s an utterly fantastic film. I could even see myself agreeing with you in the future, although I don’t find it particularly likely.
@Zane – obviously picking the greatest film ever is highly subjective and frankly the better way to look at it is probably in terms of Tiers rather than exact rankings but since people love to do lists (myself included) it requires selecting between extremely close films and In the Mood for Love is amazing, I have to see Mulholland Drive again, it’s been a while and I’ve only seen it once, although I did think it was great.
And of course different people naturally have different elements that are important to them. For me the Score and Cinematography are huge and I think TWBB is all time amazing with both along with the best performance since De Niro in Raging Bull, one of my other all time favorites. I mean there isn’t even a single word uttered in the first 15 minutes.
Question for anyone who wants to answer:
Is there a 4K DVD for There Will Be Blood? I have not been able to find one which is bizarre given that it would be one of the best films to watch in super high quality.
[…] There Will Be Blood– P.T. Anderson […]
Hey, Drake! Would you consider Daniel day lewis’ performance in There Will Be Blood his best one?
@Tozoco- I’ll be updating the pages for each of the top 100 actors. First few pages are out- but not DDL’s yet.
The opening 16 minutes are silent, no spoken dialogue just the score and diagetic sound. This got me thinking what are some of the greatest silent stretches in films not including silent films of course.
2001 and The Tree of Life have signficant stretches with no dialogue
Rififi (1955) and Le Cercle Rouge (1970) are both French Heist films that have incredible silent or very close to silent heist sequences. Rififi’s is near 30 min of a silent robbery and Le Cercle Rouge is not far off
Tarkovsky’s entire filmography have long silent sequences
Haven’t seen all is lost(2013), but according to wikipedia only 51 english words are spoken in the film. John Woo just released the dialogue-free Silent Night.