infy REVIEWS: There Will be Blood

Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film is silent for most of the first reel. Rather than dumping the exposition on us in a classic but sloppy fashion, PTA unfolds his masterpiece deliberately. The opening scene sets the tone for the unprecedented level of craft in both performance and filmmaking to follow. We open on a vista of scrub brushed hills. Not only are we seeing the harsh, untamed environment for the first time, this image is introduced by Jonny Greenwood’s challenging and emotive score. Without context, the frame is pregnant with menace. Cut to black. Up on a dark figure. He swings a pick axe furiously, sparks fly with every blow. In the bottom of a crude shaft, he pauses. Leaning down he picks up a shard of stone, turning it over in his hands. He leans into the light, spitting on the stone, revealing its dark center. The figure lights a long fuse and begins pulling himself up from the shaft via rope. The harsh light of day reveals the top of the shaft, a crude beam the lone support as he hauls himself into the sun. Exhausted he begins pulling up his tools hand over hand. Leaning over the edge of the shaft the charges detonate, sending a plume of gray dust into the air. Descending into the shaft with the rope around his waist he slips, plummeting through the darkness, his body crumples against the unyielding stone. Regaining consciousness he pulls himself up against the wall, his left foot mangled. Plucking a freshly blown stone from the rubble, he spits again, revealing the dark hues within the stone. Putting the stone in his shirt, he begins his beleaguered ascension; his useless foot dangling awkwardly. Greenway’s score races to a fever pitch, violins scream seemingly reverberating in the confines of the shaft. The battered man rolls out of the shaft into the desert heat. Lying on his back, the stone safe in his shirt, he pushes against the dirt with his good leg, moving a few inches at a time. As the gravity of this hits us, the camera glides higher revealing no life for miles. Terror grips us as the violins peak in intensity. As the camera glides even higher the score becomes impossibly more intense and we see it. In a flashpoint moment of simultaneous panic and awe we see the first frame of the film again. In context. And it becomes clear, this is cinema.

I’ll spare you the dreaded spoilers but I will speak to the experience of watching PTA’s latest work. Through the entire piece, you are acutely aware of the filmmaker’s touch. The moments belying the staggering genius of all involved are too many to recount here. Rather than layer the film with tired motifs and tropes meant to evoke a time or a place, this film brings us back by presenting they characters and setting in the grandeur they demand without winking to the audience once. I did not see the final cut, but I like to think I saw Anderson’s “wish list” cut. Given the two teasers out now, the first spot without the greenband is most inline with the spirit and tone of the film. Without having seen the latest efforts from the Coen brothers, or Ang Lee I don’t feel comfortable saying it is the best film of the year. I can say comparing this work to films of a genre, or the competing slate of an awards show is to cheapen it and all it achieves.