There Will Be Blood.... Eventually

Today, I took in one of this year's five Oscar nominees for Best Picture, There Will Be Blood. I've already seen two others, Juno and Atonement. This movie didn't measure up to either of them.

There were certainly some things to recommend about There Will Be Blood. Daniel Day-Lewis is extremely compelling. The moments in which his character lets fly with the full force of his anger are actually few and far between, but it's there boiling beneath the surface for almost the entire film, and it works to add a great deal of tension to the movie. Paul Dano (best known for Little Miss Sunshine) is also very strong here. He does an excellent job in portraying the early 20th century version of a televangelist, and at occasionally letting you glimpse beneath that veneer.

In a combination of interesting directing and cinematography, the film has several very strong sequences that tell the story visually. The entire first reel has not a single spoken word of dialogue in it, playing out almost like a silent movie. And peppered throughout the movie are several sequences with single camera takes and methodical pushes in on a character; very often they're full of tension and dread.

The music is very jarring and unsettling, and I mean that as a compliment. From the opening sustained chord that sets your nerves on edge, it's the perfect backdrop to the mood the story is trying to set.

So, with all this to praise, what's the problem? The script and the pacing. This is a two hour, forty minute movie, and it says nothing that couldn't have been said in a little over half that time. The main character is a real sonnavabitch. We "get it" in pretty short order. In fact, it's actually quite compelling to watch for the first hour or so.

But then the narrative we've been watching almost seems to be put on pause. Characters we've been watching thus far are shunted off screen uncermoniously, and an entirely new subplot is introduced to consume around 45 minutes of screen time. It ends up somewhere arguably interesting, but takes its sweet time getting there, and getting "back to the plot," as it were. It then meanders around for another 45 minutes or so before finally getting the final act.

In some ways, were it not for the grand scale and budget of it all, you might think this movie was actually three or four episodes of a one-hour television drama, stitched together and run back to back. The characters (mostly) remain the same, and there is an ongoing narrative of a sort, but the plots of each individual "episode" within the whole almost serve their own masters more than the whole. And they're in no particular hurry to do so.

I started out really enjoying the movie, but my attention and patience waned as it plodded on. In the end, it felt like a C+ overall.