There Will Be Blood (10 out of 10)

At this point, it’s pretty clear – if it wasn’t before – that Daniel Day-Lewis is batshit crazy. However, it’s also fairly obvious that Daniel Day-Lewis is the most gifted actor of his time.

We all know that genius manifests itself in different ways. Some people are blessed with what I would call “normal genius,” in which natural talent and perseverance come together in order to produce something truly extraordinary. Edison had his lightbulb. Einstein had his theory of relativity. Even in the performance arts, you have Anthony Hopkins and his brilliant turn in The Remains of the Day, or Steve Carell and his impeccable comic timing in “The Office.” And let’s not forget the sublime James Van Der Beek in everything he has ever done in his entire life.

But then, some people are bestowed with “mad genius” – there’s no denying that these guys are fucking brilliant, but the results are not quite as practical. There’s a bit of an edge. Normal geniuses invented water balloons. Mad geniuses realized that you could also fill water balloons with pee.

Indeed, maybe you need to be somewhat off-kilter to achieve the kind of mad genius that Day-Lewis demonstrates in There Will Be Blood. After all, Marlon Brando and Klaus Kinski – two actors comparable in acting style to Day-Lewis – were both crazy as fuck. Howard Hughes pissed in jars. Hendrix basically pissed acid. Van Gogh chopped off his left ear. Hemingway shot himself in the face.

Let’s think of it this way. Tim Duncan is the greatest player currently in the NBA. He’s won four titles, consistently puts up 20 points and 10 rebounds a game, and plays outstanding defense. He has accomplished all this even though his best teammates over the last decade were a rapidly aging David Robinson and fucking Tony Parker (who should thank God every day that he plays with Tim Duncan). In basketball, Tim Duncan is a normal genius. Kobe Bryant, as much as I hate the fucker, is the mad genius.

In most ways, Tim Duncan is the superior player. However, Tim Duncan will never, ever, ever drop 83 points in a game.

And that’s how it is with Daniel Day-Lewis. I consider Tom Hanks to be one of the greatest actors of his time. No one plays the everyman quite like Tom Hanks. But Daniel Day-Lewis could play most of Tom Hanks’ roles and still be pretty damn good. Tom Hanks would never in a million years be able to pull off Daniel Plainview. In terms of acting, Tom Hanks is Tim Duncan, the normal genius. Mad genius doesn’t even begin to describe Daniel Day-Lewis.

My big fear is that Daniel Day-Lewis is going to fall privy to the typecasting that he had managed to avoid for so many years. After all, this is the guy who rocked The Last of the Mohicans, The Age of Innocence, and My Left Foot, three vastly different movies each posing a unique set of acting challenges. Yet Day-Lewis is starting to gain a reputation for playing “crazy fucker” really, really well.

There are fearless acting choices, and then there are the completely off-the-rails acting choices that are Day-Lewis’ specialty. Yet with Day-Lewis, it almost never comes off like he’s chewing scenery. Even when Day-Lewis completely flies off the handle, it somehow makes sense. (“Draaaaaaaaaaaaaaainage,” indeed.)

It would be one thing if all Day-Lewis could do was play crazy, but Daniel Plainview isn’t even that crazy a performance. (It’s certainly not as balls-out insane as his portrayal of Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York.) In fact, the performance is basically one long slow burn, with only occasional glimpses of the madness that lies underneath. It’s only in the final ten minutes that Day-Lewis “lets ‘er rip,” and by that point, he’s fully earned the opportunity. He delivers the most vicious excoriating of a nemesis since Al Pacino destroyed Kevin Spacey in Glengarry Glen Ross. Seriously, it’s fucking awe-inducing.

It would be tempting to call There Will Be Blood the Daniel Day-Lewis movie, except that Paul Thomas Anderson is directing the movie, and it’s impossible to ignore Paul Thomas Anderson regardless of who’s in front of the camera. (Plus, P.T. is no slouch in the “lack of sanity” department. The guy dated Fiona Apple, for Christ’s sake.)

From the opening credits onwards, this is clearly a Paul Thomas Anderson movie, from his masterful use of long takes and tracking shots to his utilization of absurdism in brief, tantalizing snippets (up until that ending, which is essentially an absurdist explosion). Unlike Gangs of New York, this is a movie in which Day-Lewis’s performance is being embraced by a director who actually seems to be on the same crazy page. (I mean, I love Scorsese as much as the next film guy, but with Gangs, it seemed like Marty and Day-Lewis were making two entirely different movies.)

As with the rest of Paul Thomas Anderson’s movies, there is going to be an accusation of inaccessibility, which makes no sense to me. Paul Thomas Anderson is idiosyncratic, sure, but inaccessible certainly is not the word to describe him. There Will Be Blood actually presents a fairly straightforward message about the corruption of the American ideal, painting a devastating picture of how greed and crass commercialism rule the day, as the weak and/or passive get ground into dust. You would have to be pretty fucking dense to watch the movie and completely fail to grasp the liberal thematic elements.

Broad liberalism aside, There Will Be Blood is a deeply personal character study more than anything else. It is wrong to interpret the movie as mere anti-capitalist screed. More accurately, There Will Be Blood is against a certain brand of capitalism: capitalism without a soul. Indeed, Daniel Plainview may personify a grotesque version of the American Dream, but he remains strangely sympathetic in spite of his increasingly obvious lunacy because of how desperately he clings to the few familial bonds that exist in his world. When he finally succeeds in pushing away his son completely, he loses his tenuous grasp on humanity, and fully transforms into the capitalist monster he was always destined to become.

Daniel’s arc is deceptively poignant. And thus, when you say that Paul Thomas Anderson is inaccessible, what I actually hear is, “I am lazy.”

Aside from Day-Lewis and Anderson, Jonny Greenwood (of Radiohead fame) has been getting a shitload of acclaim for his discordant, unconventional score.

Honestly? I’m not the biggest fan.

I can’t help but think that this movie – already a masterwork as it is – could have been even better with an orchestral score proper. Sure, Anderson’s sensibilities are more in line with your Greenwoods and your Jon Brions. I realize that a composer like James Horner would not have been a good fit at all (although I happen to enjoy Horner’s work myself). However, what was wrong with Philip Glass or Thomas Newman? Greenwood is clearly going for some kind of fucked-up Morricone-on-LSD dynamic. Why not actually get Ennio Morricone?

(Then again, I essentially hate everything Radiohead did after “OK Computer,” so I may not be the most objective party on this matter. And besides, I can respect what Greenwood was trying to accomplish, even if it didn’t quite work for me.)

Let’s be real, here. Complaining about Greenwood is such a minor nitpick that I hesitate to mention it at all. When it all comes down to it, There Will Be Blood will be seen decades from now as one of the true masterworks to come from this decade, featuring the most talented actor of his generation, from an auteur sure to be seen as one of the greatest directors of all-time.

Seriously, don’t question. Just accept.