God™ (Seikan)

A year ago, I seemed certain that Malick's The New World, ponderous, grand, and romantic in all senses of the terms, would remain the pinnacle of cinema for me. For those who know me well, they also would know that I regarded the best performances of all to be under the belt of the nonetheless superb Ralph Fiennes. Well, Paul Thomas Anderson reached into the depths of his imagination and conjured this motherfucker, and I'm not sure I'll be turning back any time soon. Simply put, this is the new pinnacle of cinema for me. At once it pulls you into a sense of brooding uneasiness, the kind of dirty dawn-of-the-20th-century look that films like The Proposition perhaps overkilled in style seems to be the perfect setting for the monster we come to know as Daniel Plainview, in what isn't so much a performance as an act of God as Daniel Day-Lewis laces up his acting boots and engages us with quite possibly the greatest individual performance ever put to celluloid. Daniel Plainview is a character that simmers. He is distrusting, paranoid but confident. Hard-working, you never see him not working in some way, shape or form. He is determined, and he is also a product of a broken childhood, though we never see this. At the start of the film, we are subjected to fifteen minutes of dialogue-free silver-mining as Daniel Plainview suffers a nasty fall, breaking a leg but discovering silver in the aftermath. He literally claws his way to civilisation from his remote mine just to pick up some money, and discovers that the habit of sleeping on the floor is a lot more preferable to that of sleeping in a bed. The habit stays throughout. Some years pass, and Daniel Plainview has decided to focus on the blossoming oil industry. A coworker dies and he adopts his son, a "bastard from a basket", and raises him as if he were his own blood. He starts his own business and starts looking for ways to expand his enterprise. Of course, this opportunity comes in the form of Paul Sunday, who may or may not be the brother of a later character in Eli Sunday... he could be the same person? Enticed by the idea of rich oil fields, Daniel moves to a remote town where he buys out all the land, promises them all a great future from the oil industry, and subsequently ploughs in, making a mint despite his adopted son's subsequent deafness in an accident that bursts his ear drums at an oil mine. Daniel's relationship with his adopted son H.W. is complex in that he clearly cares for him, and clearly shows some love for him, but the love gradually erodes as he starts to express seething hatred for the people around him. He utterly despises people, seen by him to be devoid "of any good". He is murderous when it comes to mocking his family, and he never goes back on his threats. His charisma is unparalleled, his work ethic ruthlessly efficient, and his loyalty to himself in every way scary. You literally walk from the cinemas shivering after quite possibly the most disturbing final line in any movie. Daniel Plainview is the representation of a good man driven to evil things by greed as a result of ambition, and his lack of faith in anything but money. He is a pitiful, self-loathing wreck at heart, and his fall from grace is detailed by his slow deterioration into maddening distrust, his riches peaking with his anger. Not nearly challenging his performance, but challenging his character, the Eli Sunday character, played by Paul Dano, is a hysterical and wretched evangelical pin up boy who throws his mock church into any normal day situation, and interjects into Plainview's oil business with religion aplenty (responding to a wailing sermon by Eli, Daniel Plainview remarks "that was one God damn Hell of a show!") and yet equally, as you will see later on, tainted by his desire for money, he and Daniel are the perfect enemies, both driven by money, but using different excuses to attain it ? religion and business respectively ? which is perhaps not surprising that it evokes subtle hints at present day political climates surrounding both the oil industry and the religious sects of the world. There Will Be Blood slices into your soul and draws crimson aplenty. It shimmers with its magnificent imagery and its score, minimalist in approach by the talented Jonny Greenwood, accentuates this flawless imagery. By the end of the film, you keep figuring that it's a film for and about Daniel Day-Lewis. He just owns it. He lights up the screen and occupies everything that matters about the film on his own. He destroys the people around him both in character and in terms of performance. All the best dialogue in the film belongs to Daniel Day-Lewis, and the biggest impressions made on the audience are by Mr. Day-Lewis. The last era covered in the film is particularly heart-breaking, and Day-Lewis is given his ultimate chance to shine, uttering what could well become the most famous film line of all time in order to mock and belittle the visiting, doomed Eli Sunday, "I... drink... your... MILKSHAKE!" The last scene showcases the kind of character vintage Jack Nicholson would've relished taking a shot at, though not even he would've been able to have pulled it off with quite the finesse of Daniel Day-Lewis, proving once and for all that crafted thespianism rewards, and that Day-Lewis could well be the best actor of his generation. There Will Be Blood takes everything that was good about the epics of decades gone, and everything that's good about films of new, and turns it into an ultimatum on film. It's perfect. It's genius. It's flawless. The performances are pitch perfect, with a lead who just couldn't NOT blow you away if he tried. This is the absolute best cinema has had to offer, and may well have to offer. In a magnificent year for films, this emerges the best, and subsequently the best film I have ever seen.

Never before has there been such a blatantly visual experience like this. Doing away with typically overglorified dialogue and exploding with the kind of subtle references to modern day events, we are drawn to the idea of a pure, innocent love between two vastly different people whom have no common language. Their partnership stretches across the globe, with all the mumblings of John Smith to go with his eerily powerful philosophies on the "primitives" of America. On the other hand, Christian Bale takes a character that could've been unlikeable and makes a truly sympathetic, loveable character out of him. But the film belongs to the radiant Q'Orianka Kilcher. Her youth and brilliance in what is her debut feature film role is so perfected in its lengthened gazes and caring embraces that you seem intoxicated by the idea of this primitive girl adjusting to this... the "new world". Amazing. I don't think I ever felt this way about a film since I was a child. I am at Terrence Malick's command... THIS... THIS is sheer mastery. The greatest film ever made.