This is one that bears viewing after viewing. Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood signalled a more stringent move away from the dark ensemble comedy-dramas that had made him popular in the late '90s than his 2002 experiment Punch-Drunk Love. And this one, oddly, felt like a markedly more honest and appropriate employment of his filmmaking strengths. Drawing comparisons to Stanley Kubrick's infamous works, this stark and stunning drama stripped away most of the political overtones of Upton Sinclair's novel upon which it was based, rendering the story of an oil baron's greed and his feud with a small-town religious zealot a more primal affair. And, as such, it accessed an altogether more disturbing, vivid overtone of its own, about human nature and the depths to which we will sink in order to rise ever higher and higher. A technical masterpiece without question, it features career-best work from artists such as sound designers Tom Johnson, Michael Semanick and Matthew Wood, cinematographer Robert Elswit, actor Daniel Day-Lewis and composer Jonny Greenwood, not to mention Anderson himself.
No comments:
Post a Comment