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USA, 2007
Directed by: Paul Thomas Anderson
Screenplay: PT Anderson
Production: JoAnne Sellar, Daniel Lup and PT Anderson
Cast: Daneil Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Ciarán Hinds, Dillon Freaser
Music: Jonny Greenwood
Duration: 158 min
Sacrifice, Devotion and Power
By: Ricardo P. Nunes
Director Paul Thomas Anderson joins hands with Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano to found a classic
There are, with several variations, some definitions of what is after all a classic; the only unanimous point, however, is that only time can prove it. Perhaps this, time, is the only attribute that is lacking for director Paul Thomas Anderson's There will be Blood (There will be Blood, USA, 2007) to be a classic since its debut. Based on the novel Oil, released in 1927 by Upton Sinclair, a socialist and naive author - which, from the 1920s onwards, would be almost a redundancy - takes on a much deeper, and grander, dimension in his adaptation to the screen. In brutal times and places, like the end of the century. XIX in the deserts of California, poor man Daniel Plainview (another majestic interpretation of Danial Day-Lewis) begins his ascent from digger with nails full of dark earth to oil magnate without ever abandoning the brutality of the past, to which he may have been a of the main engine fuels of your will power.
the dignity of deserving
At that time, another form of self made mand graced the continent, that of men relentless in their quest to gather the devotees of an entire community around their messianic churches. The clash between these two forces will set the tone for the film; but not only in its symbolic, ideological dimension, but in the very and even literal bodily grappling of the individuals who represent them, Plainview and Pastor Eli Sunday (Paul Dano, in a no less exquisite performance). Other ecstatic variables complement the unfolding of its suspense, the scenario composed of long shots as if ever imminent of fire, blood and outbursts of madness, as well as almost imperceptible details in the plot that suggest something of an extreme autobiographical experience in the lives of those who conceived it , as the character who uses the subterfuge of confessing the crimes he allegedly committed in his previous life to gain Plainview's trust in the face of such, albeit false, sincerity, but which will later be betrayed by a lapse of memory that obviously never possessed; or that of the guy who loves a child because he knows that with him by his side it's easier to be accepted into the properties he visits to scrutinize the underground. Besides, the incidents, and the unpredictable, and the reproach, and the images of the ever-present memories of those who want to conquer the future in order to bury their own past.
Plainview, the inescapable cycle of loneliness
In an 1835 book, Alexis de Tocqueville hinted that America's luck lay in having been able to reconcile its religiosity with the kind of freedom required by liberal dogmas, unlike the French Revolution. In Black Blood, as perhaps in American history itself, these two driving factors of its development seem to try to make a sort of accumulated accountability of mutual resentments. As in the poems of Walt Whitman, considered by many to be the literary founding father of the United States, as well as the Great Gatsby, Paul Thomas Anderson's film embodies something of that classic dimension as it encompasses and translates on a grand and lasting scale the spirit of a nation. In short, a classic, even a classic, does not cease to belong to its time, that is, to any time that it considers it to be; therefore, we can declare, without fear of future judgment, that Thomas Anderson's film is already a classic for the simple reason that it was born in this category.
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