Mark Bold

There is blood, and it’s all over the floor just at the end of the movie, just when I thought Daniel Day-Lewis’ performance had somehow lost its way, and the story had arrived at an all too abrupt ending.

Day-Lewis is easy to criticise because he is so far beyond the abilities of just about every other actor making a living in the movies. Every one of his films is a must-see simply because each one of his performances is entirely compelling. And especially so Daniel Plainview, the silver prospector turned oilman in There Will Be Blood. The entire film is about him, and that it is billed as an epic, takes place across decades of time and every shot is a giant historic panorama only serves to underline the enormity of this man’s talent.

The best aspect of the film is what we don’t know about Plainview. What we do know about him we know immediately from the silent opening: the hazardous solitary work in grim mines, the injuries and determination, the wordless acceptance of the struggle of life. And this grim determination grows throughout the film, it’s his calling card, it’s why he becomes so malignantly successful. But what we never really understand about him is the best part of Day-Lewis’ subtle performance. It is the battle with the religious fervour of Eli Sunday, from the initial refusal to join hands in prayer, through beating him up in a seeming revenge attack for the injuries to Plainview’s adopted son, to the final bloody confrontation that adds such a depth to the character. A facile filmmaker might have contrived a source for this anger; Paul Thomas Anderson leaves it to the towering abilities of his leading actor to create a truly complicated human subject.

But the contradictions implode at the end, out of all proportion; the millionaire languishing in a lonely mansion until fateful visits from both his adopted son and then his preacher adversary push the subtlety aside. The madness, the slight quirkiness and determination of Plainview explode in apparent overacting, and there’s blood, “milkshake” and an Oscar.

In the later scenes of Irreversible, we are perhaps being asked by the filmmakers (dir. Gaspar Noé) to identify the decision without which none of the prior consequences would have occurred. The story is told in ‘real time’, yet this time is reversed so that effect precedes cause and hence each decision and action can be seen in the context of its repercussions. That the ultimate action in the film is an extremely brutal and explicit murder, revenge for a similarly barbaric rape, means that the shocking nature of these scenes remains with us as we trace events back to the beginning of the evening.

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