there will be an oscar

there will be an oscar

A refreshing new movie to rehabilitate the unimaginative imagination of Hollywood, “There will be Blood” injects attention to all who witness its idiosyncrasies.   Love it or hate it, anyone will be left thinking on what they just watched.   Unlike the director Paul Thomas Anderson’s other movies (Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love, Boogie Nights) TWBB is loosely based on the Pulitzer Prize winning social activist Upton Sinclair’s novel “Oil!”.   Published in 1927, this writer is thankful for its loose ties with the movie considering Mr. Sinclair political interests would have made this film dull.   Especially since the main character Daniel Plainview, played by the best actor in the world Daniel Day-Lewis, is so politically incorrect.   Day-Lewis‘s act of a heartless oil monger is mesmerizing (though the performance is somewhat reminiscent of his character in “Gangs of New York”) to watch but more so when he butt heads with equally talented actor Paul Dano.   Dano’s conveniently named character Eli Sunday is a power hungry priest deluded with greed for easy oil money. This good vs. evil cliché is twisted around flawlessly with both actors hinting that neither is the good guy or the bad guy but one that has shades of gray darker than the other. We just don’t know who until the end.   The next character that seems more real than either Day-Lewis or Deno is Jonny Greenwoods’ performance.   Greenwoods’ score for the TWBB takes all the performances and adds the 10% that make up the 110%.   His use of string instruments capture the madness and twisted emotion that make a film a masterpiece.   A good example of this is the absence of any form of dialogue for the first 15 min or so of the movie, with only the score providing the discourse for the characters.   With an overall great cinematography, TWBB comes with my stamp of approval.