There Will Be Blood (2007 Paul Thomas Anderson & scr)

"Do you remember seeing a snake?" I asked at the end of the film, "only there was a credit for a snake wrangler."
"That was to keep the snakes away" Q answered, most sensibly.
The film was dedicated to Robert Altman 1925 - 2006.

Here's the review from 7 December 2009:
'I think comparisons to Chinatown and Citizen Kane are perhaps a little overstretched.. lots of reviewers saying DDL based on John Huston (Q observed physical resemblance). We don't give a toss about Daniel Plainview whose sole mission is to get enough money to to get away from people.. Howard Hughes? But he was interesting.
I don't think I should be a film critic if my view is so different to the top critics, though I really liked the music (Johnny Greenwood from Radiohead) and as Q again observed, the first hour seemed more engrossing.'

Who wants to be a critic, anyway? I want to like something because I like it, not because I'm told to. Anyway, having enjoyed a tremendous run of PTA in the last couple of years, we find this much more rewarding, and particularly well made. And funny. The scenes between Daniel Day Lewis (who's absolutely terrific, and who definitely sounds like Huston) and Paul Dano (pronounced 'day-no' - who's also absolutely terrific) are particularly funny, especially the baptism and the film's finale, which ends with the brilliant and funny line "I'm finished".

Robert Elswit won the Oscar and you get all sorts of great technical stuff - magic hour, lighting by firelight alone, the stuff down the shaft, in the sea -- and then for some reason the night scene where Plainview kills and buries his 'brother' seems artificially lit -- why? Also, as Q remarked, "they haven't aged Paul Dano very well" (i.e. at all) - though I wonder if this is somehow deliberate, like the fact that the two viewings we see of Plainview's signature are very different.

The kids are good - Dillon Freasier (he sensibly stuck to just the one film) and Sydney McCallister (who did the same). With Ciaran Hinds, Kevin J O'Connor (Plainview's 'brother').

Score also features Brahams string concerto and work by Arvo Part, a contemporary of Gorecki and Tavener ("holy minimalism") - 'Fratres for Cello and Piano' is that piece that sounds really hard to play on a cello. Greenwood's own stuff was making me think of The Shining (there's a similarity to Penderecki in those brilliant strings).

All in all, though, I found it less astonishing than Magnolia and Punch Drunk Love and less funny than The Master and Inherent Vice but I loved its silent sequences and leaps through time. Edited by Dylan Tichenor.