Announcing my Paul Thomas Anderson Blogathon and Tribute-Month

It’s hard to believe but we are coming up on the fifteenth anniversary of Hard Eight, the daring first film that introduced us to writer/director extraordinaire Paul Thomas Anderson. In the decade and a half since his first feature, Anderson has given us some of the greatest modern American films in memory. While his output (five features, a handful of shorts and music videos) has been relatively small, the films and characters P.T.A. has brought us have become incredibly iconic and special to many...myself included. I have wanted to do something special in connection to P.T.A. for awhile so, considering how rich and densely populated his work is, I am going to be holding a month long tribute here throughout September.
To go along with my own tributes I am jumping back in to the whole Blogathon craze (my first venture in since my M.I.A. on DVD month back in early ’09). So, starting on September 13th and ending on September 19th, I am asking for any and all submissions concerning P.T.A., his films, his characters, soundtracks and actors…namely anything you might connect, good or bad, with the work of Paul Thomas Anderson. Submissions can be as long or as short as you’d like and they can be new or old, so feel free to dust off an older article that you have written if you care to. Ideally I would like to publish your complete pieces here (and, of course, you can post them at your own blog as well) and link back, but if you prefer I use just a snippet with a link back that is fine as well. Feel free to start emailing me (my email is located under the "About Me" tab in the upper left corner) your submissions or links as soon as you will like but I won't post them until that week of the 13th.

Even if you choose not to submit I hope that you might grab one of these nifty banners for me and place them somewhere on your site to alert anyone who might be interested in contributing. I’m looking at this as a way to not only celebrate all things P.T.A. but also to increase traffic to your sites and mine and make some new blogging buddies as well.













September is a milestone month for me as it is my last month as a single man (I am getting married in early October) and I wanted to make it a special one so a blow-out tribute to my favorite modern filmmaker seemed fitting. I hope to get many contributions and make my own tributes among the best things I have ever done in awhile…thanks and I hope many of you will participate.

Paul Thomas Anderson Blogathon: J.D. Lafrance on Magnolia

***J.D. Lafrance has, in the past few years, become one of my favorite writers. Over at his blog, Radiator Heaven, J.D. wows me week after week with his incredibly well-thought out and meticulously researched pieces that combine a sharp film criticism with a dedicated historical slant. J.D. has a an obvious real passion for cinema and its history, and his articles are always such a real pleasure to read, so I am thrilled to start off our Paul Thomas Anderson Blogathon with this terrific long piece on Magnolia. J.D. guides through the history of the film and offers up his own sharp critical take on it. It's a splendid look at what I consider Anderson's greatest work and an ideal opener for the Blogathon. Thanks to J.D. and don't forget to put Radiator Heaven on your daily-stop list. It's one of the web's best.***

MAGNOLIA
By J.D. Lafrance



Along with Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson started making films during an exciting time for American independent cinema. The 1990s saw an explosion of talented filmmakers produce some of the most fascinating work to come along in some time. Some of the diverse talent included the Coen brothers, Allison Anders, Steven Soderbergh, Richard Linklater, and Gus Van Sant to name but only a few. Among the best and the brightest from this decade would have to be Anderson and Tarantino, two filmmakers steeped in encyclopedic film knowledge and with all kinds of talent to burn. They both started off with lean, character-driven crimes film – Tarantino with Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Anderson with Hard Eight (1996). Then, they capitalized on the notoriety of those films to each make one that was a rollercoaster ride with tons of flashy camerawork brimming with the confidence of the brash, young Turks that they were. The result? Tarantino made Pulp Fiction (1994) and Anderson made Boogie Nights (1997). Both films were massive hits, wowing critics and audiences alike. So, were Jackie Brown (1997) and Magnolia (1999) signs of maturity from Tarantino and Anderson? Both films divided critics and underperformed at the box office but, for me, they remain their most personal and intimate examinations of the relationships between people.

Partway through Magnolia, former quiz kid Donnie Smith (William H. Macy) tells a patron (Henry Gibson) in a bar, “I’ve got so much to give, but I just don’t know where to put it. I have trouble knowing where to put things…” These lines sum up Anderson’s ambitious epic perfectly for it is a film filled with the most extreme examples of love and pain in its rawest forms. Like Donnie, the film wears its heart on its sleeve in what I feel is the filmmaker’s most personal film to date. However, at times, Anderson has trouble knowing where to put things and the film threatens to collapse under its own ambitions – juggling multigenerational storylines, a musical number and a freak occurrence right out of the Bible. What holds the film together is its big heart as represented in part by Aimee Mann’s songs that are used throughout, most notably at one of the film’s show-stopping scenes. In some respects, Magnolia is an epic love letter to the films of Robert Altman (in particular, Nashville and Short Cuts) that explores the interconnected lives of several diverse and fascinating characters in the San Fernando Valley.

Even the film’s prologue is ambitious and epic in scope as it tells of three incidents of chance and coincidence from the past as narrated by none other than David Mamet regular Ricky Jay. However, as the prologue winds down, the narrator makes this telling comment about the last incident: “This is not just ‘something that happened.’ This cannot be ‘one of those things’ … This was not just a matter of chance. These strange things happen all the time.” Many have wondered what exactly this amusing and amazing prologue has to do with the rest of the film. I think that those last few lines of voiceover narration are the key, as if to say, what you are about to see is not a matter of chance and that no matter how fantastical things get they’ve happened before.

We are introduced to a fascinating collection of characters. There’s Frank T.J. Mackey (Tom Cruise), a slick infomercial salesman pushing a how-to guide on having sex with women called, Seduce and Destroy. His estranged father is Earl Partridge (Jason Robards), an old man dying of cancer and who is being taken care of by Phil Parma (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a kind and caring male nurse, while his beautiful wife Linda (Julianne Moore) deals with the pharmacy to get more medicine for her husband. Jimmy Gator (Philip Baker Hall) is the veteran host of a long-running children’s game show called What Do Kids Know? He cheats regularly on his wife and is also dying of cancer. His estranged daughter Claudia (Melora Walters) is a cocaine addict who picks up men and has sex with them. She does this to numb the pain she feels as a result of her father neglecting her for years. So much damage has been done that she won’t even talk to him when he tells her he’s dying.

Jim Kurring (John C. Reilly) is a police officer and a nice guy looking for that special someone. He’s a decent man that loves his job and feels like he can make a difference. Donnie Smith (William H. Macy) is a washed-up former quiz show whiz kid that is now a failed electronic salesman recently fired from his job before he goes to have braces that he does not need, put on his teeth. Stanley (Jeremy Blackman) is a very smart boy that appears on What Do Kids Know? but he’s very unhappy as he’s being forced to do so by his overbearing father (Michael Bowen) who’s only interested in advancing his own acting career at the expense of his son. Stanley is under all sorts of pressure by his father to be a winner and this clearly has taken its toll on the poor little guy – he’s a nervous wreck and obviously headed for a meltdown.



There are all kinds of fascinating references to the Bible contained within Magnolia. From little things, like Donnie muttering something about the “sins of the father” while throwing up in the bathroom of a bar, to Stanley who appears visually like an angel after he attacks Jimmy Gator on the set of their game show. There is a shot where he is framed in a way that looks like he has wings because there is a large medical logo behind him (also a reference to Earl, the dying patriarch?). Could this boy be an angel that makes the rain of frogs happen? When he breaks into the library, he pours over books on the genealogy of angels, meteorology and a few others. Was he using the book on angels to find his power that allowed him to invoke the plague? Most significantly, the film is littered with references to the numbers “8” and “2.” Look closely during the game show scene and someone can be seen holding up a sign that reads, “Exodus 8:2” which refers to a line in the Bible that talks about a plague of frogs. This is only one of many references, some obvious, some subtle that littered throughout the film like Easter eggs.



There are so many themes that Anderson explores in Magnolia, chief among them the sins perpetuated by the father on his child. Frank T.J. Mackey confronts his father who is dying from cancer on his deathbed. It is an absolutely gut-wrenching, emotionally exhausting scene as the brash young man, in the prime of his life, is confronting his father who is at the end of his – in fact, he’s barely there at all – a ghost. Frank represents the second generation dealing with the sins of their father and how, in his case, he is ill-equipped to deal with it because he was never given the tools he needed as a child. This is arguably the greatest sin perpetuated by Earl because it was his responsibility and obligation to give his son the proper tools for life. As a result, Frank had to be the father that Earl never was and take care of his dying mother. Once she died, Frank was alone in the world and forced to grow up way too soon. No wonder he turned out the way he did. Frank aggressively preys on women because his lack of a mother figure growing up. She could have taught him to respect women. When faced with a strong woman – a television interviewer – that digs into his past, a chink in his armor appears exposing his insecurities and paving the way for a long overdue confrontation with his father. This is also echoed with Donnie whose parents exploited him on a game show when he was child and never loved him or taught him how to deal with life and so he grew up a confused man full of love but unable to know what to do with it.

Donnie is the older version of Stanley whose overbearing father forces him to do the game show, What Do Kids Know? Donnie is what Stanley will become unless he changes the way things are. If you think about it, the game show itself is a rather neat metaphor for one of the central themes of the film: children vs. adults. Even the title of the show has a rather cynical vibe to it, like something only an adult would say. Not to mention the show itself is life in a nutshell as it’s all about winning and losing. This is certainly how Jimmy Gator sees things, like when he tells a woman backstage, “I’m fucked. I’ve lost.” Of course, a game show host would see life as a game and in terms of winning and losing. In his eyes he’s clearly lost, not just because he’s dying of cancer but because he failed with his daughter as well. Thanks to his lack of love and guidance, Claudia turned out to be a drug addict unable to love someone else because she doesn’t know how.

The stumbling block between the adults and children in Magnolia is miscommunication. The adults either don’t listen to or understand children. For example, a little boy named Dixon (Emmanuel Johnson) raps a song that identifies the killer in a case Jim is investigating but he doesn’t make the effort to pay attention to what the boy is saying. In Claudia’s case, years of being an awful father cause her to push him away at a crucial moment in his life when he is facing his own mortality. In another example, the game show people and fellow contestants don’t listen to Stanley when he tells them he has to go to the bathroom and this results in an embarrassing moment for him and for the show. All of these examples make me think of another key line from Magnolia as Jimmy says at one point, “the book says we may be through with the past but the past ain’t through with us.” I always interpreted that line to mean that if we don’t learn from our past mistakes then we are condemned to repeat them. And you can see the younger generation – Claudia, Frank and Stanley – trying to break the repetitious cycle and not make these same mistakes.

Anderson's film takes the best elements from his previous work – the emotional core of Hard Eight and the ambitious scope of Boogie Nights with an amazing ensemble cast that features regulars like John C. Reilly, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Philip Baker Hall (all of whom portray completely different characters than they had done in previous Anderson films) and new additions like Jason Robards and Tom Cruise. Cruise, in particular, is nothing short of a revelation. He plays the ultimate misogynistic pig bastard. Think of a more outgoing version of Jason Patric's character from Your Friends and Neighbors (1998) and you get an idea of the intensity and sheer ferocity of Cruise's motivational speaker/sexual predator character. He drops the superstar shtick and becomes Frank, complete with frat boy swagger and blowhard bravado as he spews out memorable gems like, “Respect the cock and tame the cunt!” to his receptive audience of men like some kind of profane Tony Robbins motivational speaker. He even nails the faux concern his character shows an audience member who recounts a story about a woman that rejected him. His dog and pony show is full of bluster as it parodies some of his gung ho protagonists from films like Top Gun (1986) and Days of Thunder (1990).



Julianne Moore starts off playing a shrill, bitchy trophy wife but it quickly becomes evident that her character is coming apart at the seams as she realizes that the man she loves is rapidly dying before her eyes. There’s a scene early on where her attorney levels with her about Earl’s condition and as he’s telling her, Anderson keeps the camera on Moore so that we see the emotions play over her face: fear, disbelief and so on. Over the course of the film, she does an incredible job of convincing us that Linda really does love her husband and will do anything to help him. Jason Robards delivers an absolutely heart-wrenching performance as a dying man full of regrets and tired of living with so much pain. He does such a good job of conveying someone in incredible agony that it is hard to watch some of his scenes.



And finally, John C. Reilly plays a bumbling yet well-meaning police officer. In a film that features a lot abrasive characters, Jim provides the film’s warm, emotional center. Watch the way he deals with an irate black woman whose apartment he is investigating. Despite her belligerent attitude, he is patient and courteous. The same goes for the first time he meets Claudia, investigating a noise complaint as she has her stereo up way too high, which incidentally, so is she – coked to the gills. Their burgeoning relationship is the heart and soul of Magnolia and you find yourself rooting for these two people to find each other in this turbulent world.



Melora Walters is also fantastic as she conveys an incredible vulnerability of a person deeply wounded emotionally. Claudia tries to desensitize herself with drugs and meaningless affairs and it is Jim who finally reaches her and he shows her that there are decent people in this world. The final image of Magnolia, a reaction shot of Claudia, is perhaps the single most amazing and heartfelt image in any Anderson film.

It is no secret that Anderson loves working with and writing for actors. Each and every character as their own unique arc so that by the end of the film they all have undergone a dramatic change, some pivotal moment or decision that has changed their lives forever. And that is truly something when you realize how many characters and subplots he is juggling in Magnolia. It really is a marvel of editing and Anderson establishes a fascinating tempo of montages with quickly edited shots of the various storylines followed by a series of scene with long takes and then follows them with quick edits and so on. He claimed that Magnolia was structured somewhat like “A Day in the Life” by the Beatles: “It kind of builds up, note by note, then drops or recedes, then builds again.”

After making Boogie Nights, Anderson had wanted to make a film that was “intimate and small-scale,” something that could be made very quickly in 30 days. During the long editing period of that film, he started getting ideas for Magnolia and started writing down material. He started with lists of actors and music. At the time, he was listening to Aimee Mann’s music and ended up using her two solo albums as a basis and inspiration for Magnolia. Certain lines of dialogue in the film came directly from her songs, like, “now that you’ve met me, would you object if you never saw me again?” which came from “Deathly.” (it also inspired the character of Claudia.) In addition, at the climax of the film, all the characters sing along to Mann’s “Wise Up.” Anderson came up with lists of images, words and ideas that “start resolving themselves into sequences and shots and dialogue.” The first image he had for the film was the smiling face of actress Melora Walters. Another early image that came to Anderson was that of Philip Baker Hall as her father and envisioning him walking up the steps to her apartment where they had an intense confrontation. As he started writing the screenplay, it “kept blossoming” and Anderson realized that there were so many actors he wanted to write for. Then, he decided to put “an epic spin on topics that don’t necessarily get the epic treatment.” He wanted to make “the all-time great San Fernando Valley movie.” Anderson ended up writing a 200-page script.

Before he became a filmmaker, one of the jobs Anderson had was working as an assistant for a T.V. game show, Quiz Kid Challenge, an experience he incorporated into Magnolia. He actually had the title of the film in his head before he wrote the script. He also did research on the magnolia tree and discovered a concept that eating the tree’s bark helped cure cancer. The rain of frogs was inspired by the works of Charles Fort and Anderson was unaware that it was also a reference in the Bible when he first wrote it into his script. He claimed that at the time he came across the notion of a rain of frogs, he was “going through a weird, personal time,” and started to understand “why people turn to religion in times of trouble, and maybe my form of finding religion was reading about rains of frogs and realizing that makes sense to me somehow.”



Anderson cast several of his regular actors against type in this film. The character of Jim Kurring originated in the summer of 1998 when John C. Reilly grew a moustache for fun. He started putting together a not very smart cop character. He and Anderson made a few parodies of the Cops reality T.V. show with the director chasing the actor around the streets with a video camera. Actress Jennifer Jason Leigh was even in one of these bits. Some of Jim’s dialogue also came from these sessions. Anderson had wanted to make Reilly a romantic lead because it was something different and a role he had never done before. The actor even told Anderson at one point that he was tired of being “always cast as these heavies or these semi-retarded child men. Can’t you give me something I can relate to, like falling in love with a girl?”

For Philip Seymour Hoffman, Anderson wanted him to play a “really simple, uncomplicated, caring character.” The actor said of his character, “this guy really takes pride in the fact that every day he’s dealing with life and death circumstances.” For Julianne Moore, he wanted her to play a crazed character on several pharmaceuticals. The actress said of her character: “Linda doesn’t know who she is or what she’s feeling and can only try to explain it in the most vulgar terms possible.” For William H. Macy, Anderson felt that the actor was scared of big, emotional roles and wrote for him, “a big, tearful, emotional part.” Philip Baker Hall based Jimmy Gator on real-life T.V. personalities like Bob Barker, Alistair Beck and Arthur Godfrey.

Tom Cruise was a fan of Boogie Nights and contacted Anderson while working on Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999). He met the actor on the set of that film and Cruise told Anderson to keep him in mind for his next film. After he finished writing the script, the filmmaker sent the actor a copy. The next day, Cruise called him, they met, but he was nervous about the role; however, he ultimately agreed to do the film. The character of Frank T.J. Mackey was based in part on a recording that a friend gave to Anderson in 1997. His friend was teaching an audio-recording engineering class and recorded two of his students talking in a recording studio. They were “talking all this trash” about women and quoting a man named Ross Jeffries who was teaching a new version of the Eric Weber course, “How to Pick Up Women,” but with hypnotism and subliminal language techniques. Anderson researched Jeffries and his led to four or five other men like him. He also transcribed the tape and did a reading with John C. Reilly and Chris Penn, incorporating this into Frank and the sex seminar. Anderson felt that Cruise was drawn to Frank because he had just finished making Eyes Wide Shut where he played a deeply repressed character. Magnolia allowed him to cut loose and play someone “outlandish and bigger-than-life.”



Anderson had met Aimee Man in 1996 when he asked her husband, Michael Penn, to write music for Boogie Nights. She had songs on soundtracks before but never “utilized in such an integral way.” Anderson heard some demo tracks from a new record that she was working on while writing his script. She gave Anderson rough mixes of a few songs and found that they both wrote about the same kinds of characters. She ended up writing “Save Me” and “You Do” specifically for Magnolia.

After the critical and commercial success of Boogie Nights, New Line Cinema told Anderson that he could do whatever he wanted for his next film and he realized that, “I was in a position I will never ever be in again.” He convinced New Line Cinema to give him final cut on Magnolia. Head of production Michael De Luca made the deal and granted him final cut without hearing an idea for the film. However, when it came time to market his film they had bitter arguments. Anderson felt that the studio didn’t do a decent enough job on Boogie Nights and did not like their poster or trailer for Magnolia. So, he designed his own and cut together a trailer himself. Even though he got his way in the end, Anderson realized that he had to “learn to fight without being a jerk. I was a bit of baby. At the first moment of conflict, I behaved in a slightly adolescent knee-jerk way. I just screamed.” In addition, he also wrote the liner notes for the soundtrack album and pushed to avoid hyping Cruise’s presence in the film in favor of the ensemble cast.

Not surprisingly, Magnolia had its share of supporters and detractors among film critics. USA Today gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four and called it "the most imperfect of the year's best movies.” Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and wrote, “Magnolia is the kind of film I instinctively respond to. Leave logic at the door. Do not expect subdued taste and restraint, but instead a kind of operatic ecstasy.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "B+" rating, and Lisa Schwarzbaum praised Cruise's performance: "It's with Cruise as Frank T.J. Mackey, a slick televangelist of penis power, that the filmmaker scores his biggest success, as the actor exorcises the uptight fastidiousness of Eyes Wide Shut ... Like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction, this cautiously packaged movie star is liberated by risky business.” The Los Angeles Times’ Kenneth Turan also praised Cruise: "Mackey gives Cruise the chance to cut loose by doing amusing riffs on his charismatic superstar image. It's great fun, expertly written and performed, and all the more enjoyable because the self-parody element is unexpected.” In his review for The New York Observer, Andrew Sarris wrote, “In the case of Magnolia, I think Mr. Anderson has taken us to the water's edge without plunging in. I admire his ambition and his very eloquent camera movements, but if I may garble something Lenin once said one last time, 'You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs'.”



However, in her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “But when that group sing-along arrives, Magnolia begins to self-destruct spectacularly. It's astonishing to see a film begin this brilliantly only to torpedo itself in its final hour," but went on to say that the film "was saved from its worst, most reductive ideas by the intimacy of the performances and the deeply felt distress signals given off by the cast.” The Observer’s Philip French wrote, "But is the joyless universe he (Anderson) presents any more convincing than the Pollyanna optimism of traditional sitcoms? These lives are somehow too stunted and pathetic to achieve the level of tragedy.” Time magazine’s Richard Schickel wrote, “The result is a hard-striving, convoluted movie, which never quite becomes the smoothly reciprocating engine Anderson (who did Boogie Nights) would like it to be.”

Magnolia is a polarizing film because so much information, so many characters and so many storylines are thrown at the viewer that it is bound to alienate some. Also, the intensity level of this film is so high for so much of the running time that it tends to leave one exhausted. It’s not a film that requires you to be passive. It engages you and challenges you and for that reason I feel that it is an important film. By its conclusion, every character’s life has changed in a very dramatic way and the whole film builds towards this life-changing event with their emotional states heightening as they head towards a complete transformation. This is reached during the climax with the rain of frogs. We come back to Macy’s line, “I’ve got so much love, but I just don’t know where to put it,” which, if you think about it, ties the film together. Magnolia is grandiose, overblown and too ambitious for its own good but I wouldn’t have it any other way. It is quite brilliant, actually, because it refuses to play things safe as it examines the dysfunctional relationships between children and their parents in an unflinchingly honest way.

Paul Thomas Anderson Blogathon: Jeffrey Goodman on Hard Eight

***Director Jeffrey Goodman is among my favorite young filmmakers in America right now, so it's a real pleasure to offer up this piece he wrote on Hard Eight for our Paul Thomas Anderson Blogathon. Jeffrey's extraordinary debut film, The Last Lullaby, is one of the best neo-noirs of the past decade and I urge anyone here who hasn't already seen it to track it down immediately. I have had the pleasure to interview Jeffrey here before and I can now call him a friend, so it's a real treat to have him offer this up for us here. Jeffrey is currently planning his follow-up to The Last Lullaby, Peril, and he has his own blog everyone should check out, which is located here.***

HARD EIGHT:
Jeffrey Goodman


Let me start by saying, I’m not one of these guys that knows Anderson’s cinema all that well. I haven’t even seen all his films. But I’ve always been intrigued by him, his knowledge of cinema, and the legion of die-hard fans he’s been able to rack up along the way.
While watching Hard Eight for the first time, I was struck by a few different things. First off, the way that Anderson’s managed to build a cinema family around himself. He’s used several actors numerous times, even been the one to establish them. John C Reilly, Philip Baker Hall, Melora Walters, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman all show up here, and numerous other times in his subsequent films. He’s also already using here in his debut, cameraman Robert Elswit, who has since worked with him on all his features and Jon Brion who has scored all his work with the exception of There Will Be Blood.
I had always heard that Anderson really loved Scorsese and Altman. And while there are certainly hints of both (think Goodfellas and California Split), I see more of Tarantino’s influence here than anyone else. And of course this makes great sense given the context. We’re in 1996, two years after Pulp Fiction had exploded on the scene, and Tarantino had become a veritable cinema rock star.
Anderson chooses to cast Samuel L Jackson, who I think turns in one of his most
memorable performances. He also chooses to start the movie in a diner, which is of
course quite reminiscent of both Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. He also seems to share QT’s love for words (mannered but sharp and effective) and his mixture of humor and violence. See Jackson’s final scene to get a real feel for this. Anderson might be post-modern. There’s undeniably a self-consciousness to some of his work, particularly his use of the steadicam and how he likes to have the camera push in on his actors in a way that’s somewhat unmotivated by the action. But he’s not as blatant with his pop-culture references as Tarantino nor the slew of other people in his generation that jumped at making a “crime film” after Pulp Fiction.
I would also offer that Anderson proves from the beginning to have a real skill and feel for actors. The performances are very strong across the board, and I would give special mention to Hall and Jackson.
My only real complaint about the film is the ending. I just felt a little let down by it. It didn’t pop or register for me in the same way as most of the rest of the film. But as a first-time filmmaker myself, it’s striking to watch Hard Eight and Anderson’s confidence right out of the gate. This film doesn’t seem like a debut. It seems like someone who already has a complete understanding of film language and is using it however the hell he wants.

Paul Thomas Anderson Blogathon: Jason Meredith on Boogie Nights' "One Last Thing"

***It was only within the past year that I discovered the wonderful world of Jason Meredith's Cinezilla, one of the most adventerous, entertaining and informative films sites on the web. Jason and I have a lot of similiar tastes, so I was thrilled when the films of Paul Thomas Anderson proved to be yet another common interest. I find Jason's piece, an excellent and personal look at one of the greatest scenes in P.T.A.'s canon, to be particularly moving as it reminded me of how I felt the first time I saw Boogie Nights in a theater that opening night. This scene (which mixes references from both the world of cinema (Putney Swope) and real-life (The Wonderland Murders) is still one of the most brilliantly directed and acted moments in a film I have ever seen, so I am thrilled that Jason chose to pay tribute to it.***



ONE MORE FOR THE ROAD:
Jason Meredith

I first saw Boogie Nights in a freezing cold cinema in Helsinki, Finland. The temperature was so low I had to wear my jacket and gloves inside the theatre in an attempt to keep some warmth. Perhaps that’s how the ice cool Finns roll, but in a way it made the perfectly ironic setting to consume a movie that takes place in the warm, sunny California, as butt naked actors and actresses of the adult industry got their boogie on.

The Baltic chill held a tight grip on me throughout the movie up to that punch in the face at the very end of the movie, the scene where the shit hits the fan and the dream is shattered once and for all – the scene titled “one last thing”. A violent, raw and shocking scene that ends in a blaze and had me breaking out in a sweat, but also a scene that acts as a catharsis for Dirk Diggler, born Eddie Adams.

Dirk [Mark Wahlberg], Reed [John C. Riley] and Todd [Thomas Jane] decide to pull a fast one on Rahad Jackson [Alfred Molina] - a man whom Todd claims has ”more money than God and twice as much coke, cash and smack”. After filling up a bag with baking soda the three men take off to Rahad’s place to set their plan in motion… but Todd has a hidden agenda. As they seem to have settled their shifty move on Rahad, Todd whips out the gun he has with him and demands that Rahad take them to his safe in the bedroom. Rahad’s bodyguard pulls his gun, Rahad runs for cover, Todd shoots the bodyguard and Rahad blasts Todd in the gut with a shotgun. Dirk and Reed run from the house.



Now this scene could have been a random action sequence much like many others that we have seen before. But there are some great devices used here to enhance the moment and make it the most intimidating scene of Boogie Nights. Splendid techniques that elevate it above average and deep into masterful. Establishing something of a red flag as the men get out of the car, Reed notices that Todd has a gun with him.





Todd takes out a .45 AUTOMATIC PISTOL and loads a cartridge.

DIRK

What the fuck is that?

TODD

It's a big gun.

DIRK

I know, but why?

TODD

Just in case, just in case. Let's go.

The dialogue also let’s the audience in on the “pending threat” as we from earlier know that Todd sometimes get’s a tad out of hand. Todd has obviously played the plan out in his head and imagined that something could go wrong, so he has come armed. Combining that with a substance abuse it’s a fast track to chaos, we know that the shit can hit the fan at any time, and we don’t want that. We really don’t want that, as it could put a fast end to our empathetic characters that we have been following so far.




Entering Rahad’s house the tension rapidly shifts into the red as a young Asian boy, Cosmo [Joe Chan] seemingly unaware of the three men who just entered the apartment, continues to toss fire crackers randomly around the place creating a disturbing and intimidating mood above the loud music an obviously coked out of his mind Rahad is screaming along.

They're greeted by a man in a silk robe, slightly open to show some bikini briefs and a thin sheen of sweat covering his body: RAHAD JACKSON (late 40s).

Off in a corner of the room, a YOUNG ASIAN KID is casually throwing some FIRECRACKERS around.



Rahad is DANCING around by himself to NIGHT RANGER, "SISTER CHRISTIAN." He spots the men;

The track "Sister Christian" is significant for what is about to happen. It’s a song that Night Ranger’s drummer Kelly Keagy wrote after coming home and realising that his kid sister was now a young woman. The metaphor is there; it’s all about maturing, or coming of age if you will. This is precisely what is going to happen with Dirk Diggler in a few nail-biting minutes from now. Rick Springfield’s "Jessie’s Girl" and Nena’s "99 Balloons" work as poignant references to the burst of violence portrayed on the screen, a ironic statement that the party/Dirks non responsible lifestyle is over – "Jessie’s Girl" is all about not getting what you want, and "99 Balloon’s" about exaggerated force.





Greed is evil. Greed is deceptive, Greed is a devil, Greed need’s feeding... Greed is a pretty essential theme in Boogie Nights and it can be found in several arcs of the movie. The industry being the main one, as long as there is money to be made, there will be movies made. It’s the same greed that has The Colonel [Robert Ridgley] shift into video and leave expensive celluloid behind. The same greed that lures Dirk into the industry to start with - hunger for money, fun and excess of women and drugs. It’s also the same devil that motivates Todd into trying to swindle and rob Rahad of his drugs and money, and also what motivates Dirk being there as he can get his Corvette fixed with the money from the intentional plan. But it all goes terribly wrong and Dirk has a rude awakening.

There are some scenes missing from the shooting script at this point in the movie. One being the aftermath of the trip to Rahad - his death, but there’s also a scene that follows Dirk as he escapes from the crime scene. This lost scene tells the story of how Dirk, now fleeing the hazy world of the adult industry, which has come crashing down around him, seeks refuge at the only place of comfort he has left. Home, back to his mother, the only person who really cares about Eddie, and has no interest in his alter ego Dirk. Arriving at the place he once lived and preparing to go face to face with his parents, possibly to beg for forgiveness, the door is opened by a young woman who he knows from childhood. Sheryl proceeds to tell him that his parents have been killed in a hit and run accident and tries her best to console him. The missing scene also reveals the driver to be Johnny Doe, a young guy who was the next hot item in the adult industry, a second protégé of Jack Horner. In an earlier missing scene Reed tells Dirk that Johnny Doe was killed in a car crash. Dirk hardly reacts and goes back to the lines of coke on the mirror in front of him. Ironically the industry that made Dirk, also erased his one bond in the outside world.

The missing scene goes on to have Sheryl comfort Dirk, she praises him and points out that he’s at least made himself a name, he succeeded in becoming someone. He’s no longer that little kid next door.


SHERYL LYNN

You made something of yourself, Eddie.

She smiles, nods, points to the living room.

SHERYL LYNN

I have all of your tapes . . . I've seen

all of your films . . . I knew you'd do

something special with it . . .

Dirk looks and sees that she has a collection of about 100 videotapes on a shelf . . . the Husband looks a little depressed . . . the Baby cries . . .
DOLLY IN A LITTLE ON DIRK.

CUT TO:

186 INT. JACK'S HOUSE - MORNING (LATER)

CAMERA holds on the hallway that looks towards the front door. It opens slowly and Dirk steps inside. He takes his sunglasses off and stands a moment.

OC we hear some noises coming from the kitchen. Sounds of someone cooking something. The SOUND from the television.

A few moments pass and Jack enters the HALLWAY and FRAME. Jack and Dirk stand a moment, looking at each other in silence. Dirk looks down, fiddles with his sunglasses, loses it;

DIRK

Can you please help me?




But this scene never makes it into the final movie and instead we go straight to Dirk going into Jack Horner’s [Burt Reynolds] kitchen, begging for help and finally see Evelyn [Julianne Moore] console him. Jack being the closest paternal figure in Dirk’s life it’s obvious that he would go to him. Also it’s now that Dirk accepts that Eddie is no more. He could metaphorically be dead alongside his parent’s. This scene in the movie has the same effect as the missing scene gives, as the outcome is that Eddie embraces Dirk, and accepts his life within the porn industry. Paul Thomas Anderson wraps up the all character with smile inducing conclusions, through joyful scenes and happy music. The Beach Boys "God Only Knows", another metaphor, as we don’t know where the next road will lead to. The movie is bookended with a long steady camera shot much like the one that opens the movie and introduces the characters. Now we see how they end up within the story’s arcs. Finally Dirk leaves us with that last image of his livelihood as he prepares for his next take, Eddie is dead, long live Dirk Diggler the living legend.

So through the fires of the violent shootout, Eddie looses his path –his identity if you like, and has to re find himself in the tabula rasa. From the same flames he emerges as the legend Dirk Diggler.


Dirk stands up, unzips his pants and lets his cock hang out. He looks at the REFLECTION of it in the mirror;

DIRK

I'm a star, I'm a star, I'm a star.

I'm a star. I'm a star, I'm a big

bright shining star.

He puts his cock back in his pants, does a final karate kick and walks out of the room, closing the door behind him.

END


I left that cold Helsinki theatre filled with warmth that Anderson had induced. Warmth that lead me to feel that this was one of the greatest movies I had ever seen. Paul Thomas Anderson, was absolutely a writer and director that I instantly fell in love with and I found myself questioning how he could ever out do Boogie Nights? Luckily for me Anderson was only just getting started, and pretty soon the heat would be back on again.

Paul Thomas Anderson Blogathon: Kevyn Knox on There Will Be Blood

***Our next submission, from writer Kevyn Knox, originally appeared at his excellent The Cinematheque. Kevyn has also recently included this look at There Will be Blood over at his great film blog The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World and he is kindly letting me reprint it here. Kevyn's long piece is a really passionate look at one of P.T.A.'s most astonishing works and I am hyped to have it included in the Blogathon. Like There Will Be Blood, Kevyn's piece is bold, exciting, audacious and inspiring!***

THERE WILL BE BLOOD
Kevyn Knox



Beginning with a buzzing disturbance straight out of a Kubrickian nightmare (or is it a Lynchian nightmare?) and ending in a Brechtian feast of gruesome delight that one has to see to believe, Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood is a monster of a movie - more monstrous than anything King Kong could ever dream of serving up. It is some sort of Orson Welles, John Ford, D.W. Griffith, Stanley Kubrick, John Huston, Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese, Sergio Leone, Erich von Stroheim monstrosity of a motion picture. A cinematic amalgamation of the whole of film history, with arms and legs and heads and horns of all those auteurs that came before him, Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood is a billion-eyed beast of a movie that goes far beyond anything any of us thought Anderson was ever capable of - or pretty much anyone was capable of. Movie y mano, Anderson venomously concocts a near perfect mixture of madness and mise-en-scene to create a motion picture of undeniable cinematic bravura.

Taking Upton Sinclair's Oil! (or at least the first few chapters and epilogue) and transposing it into a postmodern Citizen Kane, Anderson has perfected the very art of auteur filmmaking. Taking what he did with the essence of Scorsese in Boogie Nights and the spirit of Altman in Magnolia, Anderson has multiplied it a million fold with the biblical monster movie There Will Be Blood, and going beyond mere imitation or homage like De Palma or Tarantino, he has entered a magical realm of honest loving cinematic genuflection the likes of which we have not seen from an American director, with the lone blazing exception of David Lynch and his Mulholland Dr., since the days of the director driven cinema of the 1970's American New Wave. This is a bold new American cinema being born, Phoenix-like, from the bloody ashes of all that came and went before. As iconically American as Kane or Chinatown or Taxi Driver or Greed - and just as caustic - this motion picture is something truly incredible. This is something that cannot be missed. This is something superhuman, something supercinematic. To sound quite genuflectory myself - and I cannot help but do so (sounding more like a studio adman or perhaps Anderson's own press agent than the hard-nosed film critic I claim to be) - this is not only the best film of 2007, this may very well be, no make that this is one of the greatest films ever made. Ever.

As far as the story goes, it is a tale of old testament fire and brimstone - literally and figuratively. As pertinent today as it was when Sinclair wrote it in 1927, Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood is a staggering monster movie pitting God vs. Greed, and in the end, as is always the case, Greed wins. This is the story of the deceptively named Daniel Plainview, who we first meet in the dark numbing silence of a makeshift silver mine, then crawling on his back, shattered leg in tow, across miles of rocky terrain just to make his claim and finally as the explosively charged self-proclaimed oil man offering up his services to the throngs of genuflecting would be oil barons, all the time growing richer and richer upon the backs of these naive cash cattle with each successive bursting oil well exploding from the dry dusty ground as if trying to escape the very Devil himself, only to find an even worst beast above the surface.

Although blatantly modeled after Charles Foster Kane, from humble beginnings to self-exiled madness, Daniel Plainview, without the crutch of any sort of rosebud-esque sentimentality, is 100% pure monster, from top to bottom, from beginning to end. At one point, in a cinematic moment of Hellish Nirvana, as one of Daniel's wells explodes into an inferno straight out of revelations (his water is oil and it runs with the blood of all those around him) and his adoptive son, who is nothing more than a cherub-faced pawn, is nearly killed and left for deaf, we see Daniel silhouetted against the raging fire, covered in a skein of bloody oil, lording over his "creation" as if he truly were the King of Hellfire. As one watches this scene unfold, one surely begins to realize that perhaps this man, this Daniel Plainview is indeed the very Devil himself.



Played with a ferocity that surpasses even Gangs of New York's Bill the Butcher, Daniel Day-Lewis is an ever-simmering, constantly bubbling, potentially explosive demon of a human being as Daniel Plainview - Moloch devouring all that lies before him. Channeling John Huston's Noah Cross with each and every deep long breath and every hulking purposeful step (as I said before, his water is oil and it turns to blood in his own private 'Chinatown') Daniel Day-Lewis proves once again that he is the most intensely superhuman actor working today - and probably the most powerful since the early days of Brando. Full of spleen for the whole of humanity, Day-Lewis/Plainview (for the method actor and the demonic character become one entity throughout), with each demonstratively bold step, keeps his evil mostly in check, with only brief shocks of madness, until his full out direptitious mega explosion come the undeniably full-throttled bestial finale that will take everyone completely and utterly off guard with its absurd madness. In short, Day-Lewis/Plainview will drink your milkshake. He'll drink it up! (trust me, once you have seen this film, that reference will make sense to you, albeit in the most senseless way).

Meanwhile, playing the antithesis to Daniel's fire demon is Paul Dano as the meek-willed young evangelist Eli, who wants his upstart church to be able to cash in on Daniel's oil boom. Stomped at as if a tiny bug by the giant shoes of Daniel, never able to defend himself against this goliath, Eli seems to be the very embodiment of sanctimony itself, but do not let that fool you, as with a glint in his eye, Eli is also the embodiment of the church, a church that wants its lion's share of the gold (or oil in this case) making it (the Church, organized religion, supposed Christian values) play out as just as evil as Daniel and his insatiable thirst for power and money. Using each other for their own cause, trying to prove which is master, God or Greed, Daniel and Eli are the crux of a battle between good and evil, right and wrong, God and Man. A war which has been raging since before time began and will be burning throughout eternity - long after Daniel's oil wells dry up and long after Eli's congregation dies off. The only question remaining is, which side is good and which side is evil - or is there even a difference?

And then there is the ending. Analyzed and theorized to death, Anderson's final twenty minutes of There Will Be Blood is so reelingly absurd, so dangerously deranged, so batshitcrazy that we may think we are imagining what we are seeing. That somewhere during the buzzing madness that underlies the entire film, we were seduced, hypnotized, poisoned or drugged and what we now are watching is some sort of fever-induced nightmare born of the mad blood that is Anderson's movie. We must be thinking to ourselves that this is not real, that Anderson would not end his film in such a preposterous manner. Yet it is just this ending, this Grand Guignol monster ripped from the death grip of Luis Buñuel, that turns this already brilliant thesis on religion, humanity (and cinema) into a work of mad art that will never be forgotten in the annals of film history. Just as Anderson has stripped bare such films as Citizen Kane, 2001, The Shining, The Searchers, Once Upon a Time in the West, Birth of a Nation, Greed, Chinatown, Taxi Driver, McCabe &Mrs. Miller, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Citizen Kane (yes I said Citizen Kane twice!), fifty, a hundred years from now, filmmakers not even born yet, not even thought of yet, will strip bare the bloody bones of Anderson's film and in turn will create a new American cinema of their very own - and the phoenix shall be reborn - again.



In sum, while many of Anderson's critics have called him and his film pretentious (probably the most oft-mentioned criticism about Anderson throughout his still young career) one must take that as cop out criticism by those who know not how to take this brave film. Beneath the mantle of a different kind of filmmaker - a lesser filmmaker if you will - pretension can easily take down even the best of intentions, but in the hands of certain auteurs - Welles and Kubrick come to mind immediately - pretension, or more aptly that which one perceives as pretension, can be the very backbone of a great film. In the hands of Paul Thomas Anderson (the heir apparent to Welles and Kubrick perhaps?) it is spun as if gold from the guts and groin of Rumpelstiltskin. To paraphrase Truffaut when writing about Johnny Guitar back in his Cahiers days, if one does not like Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood then they should never go to the movies again, for they know nothing of cinema.

With that already brazen statement, allow me to make an even bolder, brasher one now. I shall take a word that is tossed about so willy-nilly by studio admen all across the Hollywood hills and mainstream movie critics hoping to see their name in lights (aka as poster blurbs) that it has nearly lost all meaning, all sincerity, and I shall place this word where it should have been all along, upon the most revered pedestal of honour, only to be used in the most extreme cases of canonization. Taking this word - a word I have not used in describing a new film since Lars von Trier's Dogville four years ago, and Lynch's Mulholland Dr. two years before that (and capitalizing it for added impact) - I proudly proclaim at the very top of my lungs and from the very acme of cinematic worship, and with no shame at all in my voice, that Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood is a Masterpiece!! Nothing else need be said.

Paul Thomas Anderson Blogathon: Video Tributes from Greg Ferrara and Joseph B.

Cinematic gunslinger Greg Ferrara over at his wonderfully eclectic Cinema Styles has put together a video tribute for the blogathon focused on his favorite moments from Boogie Nights. Greg's thoughts on his terrific visual tribute can be read here. The NSFW video can be viewed at his original post or here at YouTube.

Also, Joseph B. at the extremely cool It's a Mad Mad Blog has posted a video tribute as well focused on his five favorite P.T.A. set-pieces. His choices are very solid and they can be viewed over at his site.

Thanks to Greg and Joseph both for contributing the blogathon's first video tributes!

Paul Thomas Anderson Blogathon: Edward Copeland on There Will Be Blood

***For the past two weeks I have been conducting an absolute Paul Thomas Anderson lovefest here at Moon in the Gutter. There is no denying though that P.T.A. does have his critics, so I am glad we have had a submission that reflects this. As much as I disagree with his thoughts on There Will be Blood, I have the utmost respect for Edward Copeland and his always interesting blog, Eddie on Film. This fiery anti-Anderson piece originally appeared at Edward's blog back in '08 and he has kindly given me permission to reprint it here.***



Up Through the Ground Came a Bubblin' Crud
Edward Copeland

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said that there are no second acts in American lives. I was thinking about coining the phrase, "There are no third acts in Paul Thomas Anderson films," except that in the case of There Might Be Blood, there isn't much of a first or second act either.

I think my father, who saw the film with me, summed it up best. "At first, I thought it was going to be about an oil war, then I thought it was going to be him versus the preacher, but eventually I realized it wasn't going to be about anything."

To paraphrase Bob Dylan's "Maggie's Farm," Anderson has a head full of ideas that may be drivin' him insane.

This isn't to say that There Will Be Blood lacks any positive qualities, because the cinematography by Robert Elswit is phenomenal. However, the film really is a thudding bore, so much so that parts of the annoying score by Jonny Greenwood seems to actually drone like an amplified tuning fork and bears an uncanny resemblance to that sound that used to accompany the old THX "The Audience Is Listening" promos played in movie theaters.

For most of the film, Daniel Day-Lewis' performance held my attention, despite the film's ponderous pacing and lack of focus. In fact, I was at first puzzled by the people who complained that Day-Lewis was over the top. I wished I'd never read whoever said Day-Lewis was aping John Huston, because every time he spoke that image did come to mind. Unfortunately, Day-Lewis' performance goes off the rails as the film drags on and he suddenly starts devouring the scenery as if he needed it for nourishment.

I can pinpoint the exact moment when he goes wrong: The scene where he's dining with his son and a group of rival oil executives are seated at a nearby table. For some reason, Day-Lewis begins talking out loud so they can hear while a cloth napkin covers his face.

I can only assume that by this point Day-Lewis was as bored with the movie as I was. The ham gets the better of him from that point on so by the time we get to the scenes of him as an aging recluse in a large Kane-esque mansion in 1927, he's stooping and shuffling around as if he's a cousin to Marion Cotillard's Edith Piaf, dancing across the two-lane bowling alley he's built in his home. Of course, as soon as we see the bowling alley, you have to know what's coming. It's not placed there by accident, so as Day-Lewis meanders around the bowling lane, you know that balls will be employed and pins will be used for other purposes.

So much is wrongheaded about There Will Be Blood, that I hardly know where to start. Do I complain about how the portion of the film involving Paul Dano's character covers 16 years, yet the actor looks no different in age in the 1911 scenes than he does in the 1927 ones? Do I ask why Daniel Plainview makes such unnecessary complications for himself? Do I ask what is the true deal about Paul and Eli Sunday? Are they twins? The same person with multiple personalities? It hardly matters anyway.

At one point, Plainview says that he doesn't like to explain himself and that seems to apply to Paul Thomas Anderson's film as well. Now many great films have been made that toiled in the soil of the ambiguous, but they aren't all as goddamn boring as There Will Be Blood. Do I debate whether the film is asking whether it's Daniel or preacher Eli Sunday who is truly the false prophet? Perhaps Anderson is the false prophet at work here and his proponents, many of whom I know well, like and admire, are the ones being hoodwinked.

One thing I never quite understand is the insistence some of his fans have about calling him P.T. Anderson. The credit on There Will Be Blood clearly says it was written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Is it possible some of his fans could be more pretentious than the filmmaker himself? During one outburst, Eli Sunday yells at his father that God doesn't love stupid people. I don't know if any part of that is true, but my guess is that if there is a God, he doesn't love stupid movies.

Paul Thomas Anderson Blogathon: Ratnakar Sadasyula on There Will Be Blood

***I was only fairly recently introduced to Ratnaker Sadasyula, a talented writer and film historian hailing from India, so I have only just begun reading his work. I can say that this really fascinating piece on There Will be Blood from his Seeti Maar-Diary of a Movie Lover is an extremely intriguing read. It originally appeared at Passion for Cinema and Ratnaker has been kind enough to let me reprint it here. I also wanted to mention that Ratnaker is hosting his own upcoming Blogathon, dedicated to Ridley Scott, that everyone interested should check out and contribute to.***



There Will be Blood
Ratnaker


"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth-" C.S.Lewis.


Spoilers Alert: Some key moments and scenes are discussed in the post, and could act as spoilers.


Did P.T. Anderson chance up on this quote from C.S.Lewis, at some time? Ostensibly, “There Will Be Blood” was based on Upton Sinclair’s novel “Oil” about the struggle between a oil baron and his left leaning son. Again have not read the book, so can’t really comment much on it. But if one takes a look at There Will Be Blood, the movie is primarily about the conflict between the ruthless, oil millionaire Daniel Plainview( Daniel Day Lewis) and the preacher Eli Sunday( Paul Dano). One a self made millionaire, who made it rich striking oil, another is a crusading preacher, fiercely proud of his moral superiority. Eli is obsessed with the teachings of the Lord and the Testament, Daniel is not an atheist, but the only God he truly believes in is Mammon. And while Anderson does not explicitly take sides, he clearly shows a soft corner for Daniel, as can be seen in the climax scene.

Anyway my interest in There Will Be Blood, had less to do with C.S.Lewis, though i liked Anderson’s Boogie Nights , Magnolia and Punch Drunk Love, and always been an admirer of Daniel Day Lewis. But my fascination for the movie was because of Daniel Plainview’s character, which referenced the Robber Baron concept. While i generally enjoy reading about the success stories of businessmen, i was always fascinated by some of the more legendary characters, or the “Robber Barons”, people like J.D.Rockefeller, J.P.Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, J.J.Astor, in effect the people who built America in a way. The actual origin of the term Robber Baron, came from Germany, to refer to the feudal lords, who illegally collected tolls from merchant ships traveling down the Rhine. In retrospect, it was later applied to the powerful business tycoons, mostly seen as the bad guys, swindling money, adopting illegal means, manipulating the system for their own ends, ruthless in their approach to their opponents. Most of them ran their business through monopolies and cartels, ruthlessly crushing out any form of opposition. But were the Robber Barons, really the bad guys? Or were they visionaries, who saw the future ahead? Were they actually more sinned against, than being the sinners? After all they were they not the very same men who built the great railroads, the telephone lines, the banking system that made America. Well the truth as they say is relative, or somewhere deep in between. Or again this could be my own view, somehow always have a sneaking admiration for these men, who started from nowhere, made it big, and earned their millions.

"Photography is truth. And cinema is truth twenty-four times a second"- Jean Luc Godard.

P.T.Anderson always has this love for the visual feel, or more specifically for the Steadicam moment. I have not seen Hard Eight, but Boogie Nights had one of the best shot scenes ever, where the camera drops in from top right on to the porno film community, as it slowly glides over the members present. Another great scene in the movie, was the one where one of the characters, Little Bill, finds his wife in bed with another guy, goes back, gets the gun and shoots both of them. Anderson again used the same tracking technique in Magnolia, where again the camera tracks and switches between the major characters at a TV studio. There Will Be Blood, has probably one of the best opening scenes of a movie, for almost close to 10 minutes, the characters, the story, the background everything speaks to us only through visuals. Anderson simply seemed to have let the camera take over, explore the characters, and let the viewer understand through it’s visual motifs and metaphors. Starting off with a hill in close up, and sky, covering the frame, then slowly a miner’s pick going up and down. It is the younger Daniel Plainview, prospecting in the desert, somewhere in New Mexico. Daniel relentlessly digging for the silver, the Mule dropping dead in the heat, Daniel discovering the ore, hauling it on his cart, falling down, getting up and finally lugging the cart across town.

Not one single piece of dialogue is spoken, but the entire visual sequence, setting up Daniel’s character here, some one so single minded in his pursuit of his goal, that nothing seems to stop him. Consider this you are in the desert, your cart has broken down, your mule is dead, its raining fire, you had a bad fall down, and yet all that seems to matter is getting the silver out. Again no dialogue, as Daniel watches the goings on at the lease office. The scene cuts back now to California, where Daniel and other workers are at an oil well, we know nothing of what really happened to the silver well, but going by the scenes, it could be assumed, he has sold it off. Again here, Daniel passes out, due to the fumes from the Oil Well, and we see one of the workers trying to wake him up. We feel that he is being revived, and yet the camera tricks us, closing up straight on a newspaper headline about an abandoned oil well somewhere in Pennsylvania, and before we know it, the men are working on a derrick that could pump out the oil. Another superb camera shot, the drill falling down the hole, and the camera angle zooming in, coming straight at the viewer. Leading up to one of the best shots in the movie, the huge log piece falling down, and impaling Daniel’s co worker, Ailman. Just love the way, the camera intercuts between Daniel’s expression of shock, the close up shot of the log hurtling down, and then Ailman being impaled, the blood splattering right on Daniel’s face. And then later on Daniel, taking Ailman’s infant son, HW, into his own protective care. It is only when Daniel begins to address some of the people around, that the silence is broken.



I don’t recall the last time, when the first 10-15 minutes of a movie, passed off without any dialogue, just pure visual imagery. Yes i could recall the opening shot of Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali and the opening scene at an abandoned railway station in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time in America. But in recent times, very few i would admit. For the first 15 minutes of the movie, it is the camera that speaks, that takes control, as it switches back and forth between the characters, establishing the relation, the background. Take the scene of Ailman being impaled by the log falling, no dialogues, no shouts, just the close up visage of Daniel’s shocked face, and later covered with blood. You feel the sheer terror of it all. The hard, miserable conditions under which the prospectors work, the dangers they face, everything coming through perfectly. Silence speaks quite eloquently just through the images, but yet the sound of silence can be terrifying. Especially when it involves some one like Daniel Plainview, who seems single minded in the pursuit of his ambition.

As Daniel addresses the people around him, we get to know he is richer now, the grubby visage, has given way to a more clean shaved, smartly dressed person, with an overcoat and a hat, the sign of a rich man. We do know that Daniel has made money through some of his oil wells, but for all his ruthlessness, it is apparent that Daniel, has no respect for the fly by night operators.

"You have a great chance here, but bear in mind, you can lose it all if you’re not careful. Out of all men that beg for a chance to drill your lots, maybe one in twenty will be oilmen; the rest will be speculators-that’s men trying to get between you and the oilmen-to get some of the money that ought by rights come to you. Even if you find one that has money, and means to drill, he’ll maybe know nothing about drilling and he’ll have to hire out the job on contract, and then you’re depending on a contractor that’s trying to rush the job through so he can get another contract just as quick as he can. This is… the way that this works."

Something i always felt about the “Robber Baron” industrialists of the earlier era. These men were ruthless, broke the rules, operated using illegal mines, but fraudsters they never were. Yes they were money minded for sure, but they were not the fly by night, get rich quick kinda quacks, whose sole intention was to make money out of an existing trends. Every economic boom sees two kind of people, one who know the field in and out, and leverage the knowledge to gain out of it, and another who know nothing about the field, and use the boom mainly to make a quick buck. I still respect the former, whatever their means be, as for the latter, i have nothing but sheer contempt. For me Daniel Plainview, was the former kind, the man who rose from dirt, through his hard work, his enterprise to make it big in life. As Daniel further addresses the group, we can clearly see that he is some one who knows what he does, his sales pitch emphasizes to them, that he is the best suited person owing to his vast experience. Actually though it is here that the people in the room to whom he offers the royalty , who seem not to really understand his offer. He warns them about the “crooks and gamblers who are near”, in spite of which the people squabble among themselves about their share of the royalty. Something which Daniel is disgusted with and walks off with his now adopted son, H.W. But it does make me wonder , do we in our distrust of business, or maybe our hatred of the big businessman, at times fail to separate the wheat from the chaff, falling prey to hucksters who promise the moon, while refusing to heed the sane advice of people who have been there and done it?

Daniel’s hurry to dig the wells and get the royalty agreement done with, is not due to his desire to make a quick buck. Being an experienced “Oil Man”, he knows that sooner or later most of these wells would run dry, and he wants to get done over with it. Sure it is a purely commercial decision, but here the decision is not motivated by a get rich quick mentality, it is a smart decision taken on ground realities. I believe that the most successful business in life are those which understand the ground realities and take a decision on that basis, rather than building castles on thin air. Daniel gets one of the persons, Mr. Bankside to agree to the royalty. Another brilliant camera shot of the mixture of oil and water, gushing straight up at the camera. While Boogie Nights & Magnolia had some great visual shots, the visuals in There Will Be Blood were of an another class. Long range, wide screen, close up shots of the “black gold” rushing in at the camera, taking us right into the environment.



It is the meeting he has with Paul Sunday( Paul Dano in a double role), that brings in the main point to the story. Paul has already heard of Daniel’s success in digging the oil well, and he offers him a deal at his place, where oil is available, and adds in that Standard Oil, has taken the land there for good effect. The scene now shifts to the Californian Desert. In fact if one sees the locations at which the story shifts base, Pennsylvania, California, it was due to the fact, that most of the early oil strikes, took place in these 2 states. Paul has the gut feel of oil being there, due to what he has seen. In fact the dialogues involving Daniel negotiating royalty are interesting, in that they give an insight into how the industrialists often negotiated with land owners, something that is proving to be a real thorny issue, at most places in India. Again the camera sweeping up, showing the wide range shots of the desert, the train tracks riding along. It is clear from his encounter with the Sunday’s family, that they are religious minded, to the extent of questioning Daniel’s own beliefs. As in when Abel Sunday asks Daniel which church he belongs to, he replies back “Church of the World”.

Daniel was not referring per se to a Church by that name, it was more of a metaphorical statement by him, implying his interest in more worldly matters. But the meaning is lost on Abel, who actually believes that there is a church by that name, which he does not know about. Daniel drops in the hints, which Abel however is unable to decipher.

"We are told in the Book, not to discuss our faith with strangers, even if they are so nice and helpful. But according to our faith, we believe that we get to know a man through friendship and business- and we talk about faith later."

Clearly as I mentioned earlier, the only God Daniel truly believes in is that of Mammon. And he is more interested in the manners of the world, rather than any spiritual one. One of the best moments comes later, when after discovering the oil, Daniel negotiates with the Sunday family for the price of the land. He offers to take their ranch too. The particular dialogue when Mother Sunday, refuses to sell, the land, and then Daniel, assures her he is just taking it for a lease, is significant. Very rarely in a movie, you get to see the “give and take” involved in land deals, between the business men and the land owners, at such a close level.



What we have here is not a bad evil businessman taking over the land of an innocent family, it is two parties negotiating here. For all his religious persuasion, Eli Sunday is smart when it comes to negotiating with Daniel, he is no innocent boy in the woods. Especially the part when Eli negotiates a share of the mining rights with Daniel, ostensibly for his Church. Unlike Abel Sunday who is more religious, Eli is worldly wise, he manages to get the benefits for his Church, negotiating like any other proper businessman. Eli straddles two worlds, the religious and the materialistic, and he does it quite well. He smartly negotiates the best business deal with Daniel, all in the name of the Lord and the Church. Again the way Eli’s character is set up here is excellent, the fact that he is materialistic, worldly wise, something we observe when he covets Daniel’s car, implicitly.Eli also happens to crave for recognition, as in the part when he asks Daniel to ensure he is introduced to every one around during the inauguration of the Well.

One of the best scenes, not easy to watch, considering it’s rather graphic depiction, shows one of the workers, Joe being drowned head down in the oil pool. It is rather gruesome, especially the part when his flesh is ripped while being pulled out from the well. But this scene, actually is the catalyst for the conflict between Daniel and Eli. Eli already slighted at being ignored during the opening of the Well, feels that Daniel’s lack of faith, and that he has not blessed the dead man. At the basic level, beneath all his religious posturing, Eli is a man, who wants to be at the forefront, some one who needs to be seen as important. That explains why for a man of God, he tries to make his presence everywhere, be it negotiating with Daniel, faith healing some of the town’s citizens, or insisting on Daniel introducing him at the ceremony. Eli is as much of an egomaniac as Daniel, maybe even more so as when Daniel asks him , what the 3rd revelation is, he replies “Me.. I am the 3rd Revelation”.



Fact is that Eli’s egomania is a bit more dangerous, Daniel is a ruthless businessmen, seeking for his own self interest and money. Eli however believes he is the 3rd Revelation himself, he believes he is God. And when person believes he is God, and begins to act as if he is God, that can be the worst thing to happen. Something Daniel tells in plain terms to Abel

"I think Eli is a lunatic. And i think you are a weak little man. And i am glad to have your land and make a living off it where you couldn’t."

Another great scene in the movie where an explosion renders Daniel’s adopted son, HW, deaf. The camera work is top notch here, the shots of the well exploding, the flames, the oil spilling out. Again this scene proves to be the further catalyst igniting the conflict between Daniel and Eli. Daniel feeling Eli could cure his son, of his deafness, using his powers, in real, though it is just his frustration showing out. Many have considered the movie to be one where Daniel towers over Eli, and shadows him. I guess the impression was formed by the famous “I drink your milk shake scene”. To me Eli is the more dangerous of the lot, he is an egomaniac who believes himself to be God, and that can be the most potent combination of all. Look at the scene, where Eli takes on Abel, hitting him, frustrated at losing out on the money.

"Be quiet! Shut your mouth, Abel. It was your stupid son! It was Paul who told him to come here. I know it. He went to him, and he said “My stupid, weak father will give away his lots. Go and take him.”-and you let it happen."

Eli is the one who takes advantages of Daniel’s troubles to browbeat him, to confess him into being a sinner. And Daniel plays into Eli’s hands by his own actions, his murder of the person claiming to be his step brother Harry, which gives Eli the chance to humiliate him in the church.



There Will Be Blood is epic in it’s scope, the wide screen landscapes, the period settings, the larger than life persona of Daniel Plainview. It is not an easy watch, some of the scenes are really gruesome, especially the death of the work. Visually it is a work of art, the close up shots, the zooms, the awesome montages of the oil, water and the fire, creating a surreal imagery of nature’s power. But where it really scores overwhelmingly is in the conflict between Daniel and Eli, two obsessed, ego maniacal men, one seeking to control the land, and another seeking to playing God. One proud and arrogant about himself, the another convinced that God is on his side. Commerce vs Religion, two of the most potent forces that control the world. It is this fascinating morality play, that makes this movie so memorable.

And there is Daniel Day Lewis, literally towering over the cast, with a performance the defines superlative. Be it the scene where he breaks down attending to his adopted son after the blast, the scene where he confesses to being a sinner, or the famous “I drink your milkshake” scene, Daniel Day Lewis is just outstanding. Paul Dano is equally brilliant as Eli Sunday, the worldly wise preacher, who believes he is God, countering Daniel Day Lewis effectively in every scene with him.