There Will Be Blood

Someone told me they signed up for a film class after seeing There Will Be Blood. It's that kind of film. In it, everything has so much character, down to things environmental – sere landscape, searing light, and insidious oil – I was reminded of everything cinema can be. Especially the light. Look for the cross in the church of Eli Sunday, and ask yourself Has salvation ever looked so burning? Today so many movies look like video games or a series of monochrome color swatches (this is a warm scene, this is a cool scene), Blood always looks like film.

Blood traces the rise and fall of Daniel Plainview; a man whom greed drives, then devours. There's room enough in the complex structure of Blood for three main plots, each based on Daniel's relationship with another character: H.W. Plainview, Daniel's adopted son via a sort of anti-Immaculate Conception; Eli Sunday, a preacher and showman weirdly reminiscent of modern televangelists; and Henry Brands, a con man. The heart of Blood, an opposition of similar men, is between Daniel and Eli, whose games of power escalate to some of the title's promised gore. Director Paul Thomas Anderson found the perfect actors for these roles, Daniel Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview and Paul Dano as Eli Sunday, and the best scenes are when both actors are onscreen, each playing off the other. To these two men, Capitalism is a form of bullying, and maybe murder (hardly surprising considering the film is loosely based on Upton Sinclair's novel Oil!), and Christianity is only another form of capitalism.

Well acted, well shot, good script, interesting themes ... Blood slots neatly into film criticism and history as a masterpiece. David Denby has already proclaimed it as “... work that bears comparison to the greatest achievements of Griffith and Ford.” It's such a nice (both pretty and precise) film that it seems mean to bring up that a film about white men and their big, gushing oil towers (shooting oil, the film's anti-semen: black instead of white, destructive instead of creative), may not be the direction American cinema should head. And yet, might there be a queer reading of Daniel Plainview? Certainly, there is a complete absence of women in his life, and all his relationships are with men. When Daniel suggests a trip to get some girls, it is his male companion who gets drunk and chases women. Daniel stays sober and alone. Perhaps Daniel is not attracted to women? We're given no solid evidence either way. We do see that what Daniel comes to truly love is the domination of others, to the point of losing his humanity. What makes this process of loss so interesting is that Daniel seems to have genuine warmth, even joy, in him at the beginning of the film. At the end I wondered whether this initial impression was only an illusion.

Juno & Sweeney Todd

Neither Juno nor Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street are much good. Both films are so high concept I can hear the pitches ...

• Juno: “an 'indie' comedy where a teenage girl with a strong mind and a dry wit gets pregnant—laughter and touching moments ensue."
• Sweeney Todd: “Johnny Depp has killer hair (hah!), again," or perhaps "a hair raising (hah!) tragi-comic musical."

Not much is made of what must have seemed amazing scripts. At least both films feel like they're trying to be something interesting, partial credit for effort. However, both films are still Hollywood product trying not to be. Juno is as independent as post-Nike acquisition Converse, and Sweeney Todd is as goth as Hot Topic. The fact that I know exactly what brands to assign to these films clues us into how purely they are each aimed at a specific style. It's all there in the clothes.

Neither film, for being so dependent on music, really works with its music. Sweeney Todd just has too much of Johnny Depp singing—I like my musicals musical. Juno lacks an ear in a different way. For example, there is a sound montage near the beginning of Juno that uses about five different songs in less than three minutes—it's confusing and manipulative. The soundtrack to Juno uses some excellent artists, but they crutch up the plot too much and none of their edge is present in Juno, especially my beloved Sonic Youth.

The acting in both Juno and Sweeney Todd is competent, but never good. Michael Cera was way, way better in Arrested Development, and I'm pretty sure Ellen Page has more in her than this. As for Sweeney Todd, what's going on with Johnny Depp anyway? I can tell he's hungry for something great, something immortal. I think he just needs the right director. After Edward Scissor Hands, it seemed like that director might have been Tim Burton, but that's not turning out to be the case. (In Sweeney Todd, after all, characterization is mostly left to an actors hair—ineffective, however befitting the subject matter.) Johnny Depp needs someone to do for him what Wes Anderson did for Bill Murray. I would advise Helena Bonham Carter similarly, as in Sweeney Todd she retreats from the grandeur she displayed in Fight Club and Big Fish or her flirtatious elegance in Conversations with Other Women into mere likeability.