Daniel-Day Lewis Archives - Words and Movies Podcast

There Will Be Blood (2007) – Review

Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) makes his pitch with his “partner” H.W. (Dillon Freasier).

When he was promoting his solo album Nothing Like the Sun, Sting gave an interview to Rolling Stone. One of the questions he was asked was why he had turned away from the type of music he had made with The Police, and instead towards what the interviewer seemed to criticize as “art rock”, to which Sting replied, “Having made some of the simplest and most direct pop music, I don’t know whether I want to do it again.” I wonder if something similar happened to Paul Thomas Anderson. In his first four feature films, Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and Punch-Drunk Love, Anderson had told stories that were emotionally direct, using bravura filmmaking and what seemed to be a deep, empathetic connection to, and understanding of, his characters, as well as of pop culture, to draw you into the characters and world he was depicting. However, after Punch-Drunk Love failed at the box office (despite being well received by critics), Anderson seemed to go in a completely different direction in his films after that. His movies have become more emotionally distant, especially in how the main characters are portrayed (the bravura filmmaking style has remained, though)*. Also, as it happens, the next four movies Anderson made since Punch-Drunk Love centered on conflict between two characters, which also is a conflict of two completely different world views, and they get resolved differently in each film. Finally, while Boogie Nights was a period piece, the other films in Anderson’s more direct period are set in the present day, but his last five films are all period films, set (mostly) in different times of the 20th century. Normally, of course, I prefer movies that hit me on an emotional level, but I’ve liked all of the movies Anderson has made since he went in this new direction, especially the first one he did, There Will Be Blood.

Loosely adapted on the novel Oil! by muckraking socialist writer Upton Sinclair (Anderson has said he only used the first 150 pages of the novel’s 528 pages, but he does borrow such elements as a preacher character, a father/son conflict, and a character loosely based on tycoon Edward L. Doheny), the film starts in 1898 New Mexico, where Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) starts out as a silver prospector. Over the next several minutes of the film, there’s almost no dialogue as we see Plainview break his leg and endure various other failures before he finally strikes it rich, not only in silver but, a few years later, oil. During this time, he also adopts the young baby son of one of his workers when the worker dies in a drilling accident. By the time 1911 rolls around (about 14-15 minutes into the film), Plainview has a small but successful company, and goes from town to town in California, presenting his adopted son, H.W. (Dillon Freasier) as his “partner” so he can present himself as a family man (his real partner is Fletcher Hamilton (Ciaran Hinds)), to get people to let him drill for oil near their lands. One such piece of land Plainview goes to is in Little Boston, California, where the Sunday family lives. Paul Sunday (Paul Dano), one of the sons of the patriarch, Abel Sunday (David Willis), had already alerted Plainview to the oil around the land in exchange for a price. When Plainview visits the family, Paul’s twin brother Eli (Dano, who replaced original actor Kel O’Neill two weeks into shooting), a preacher, forces Plainview to agree to spending more money than he wanted, but Plainview ends up getting the land, except for a farm nearby owned by William Bandy (Hans Howes). The already frosty relationship between Plainview and Eli deteriorates even further when Plainview breaks his promise to let Eli bless the ground before drilling commences, and accidents happen during drilling, including a blowout that causes H.W. to lose his hearing. Plainview eventually does get a pipeline built and rights to Bandy’s land, but is forced to humiliate himself at one of Eli’s services by making a public repentance of his sins. Plainview becomes even further alienated when a man name Henry (Kevin J. O’Connor) shows up, claiming to be his brother, only for that to not be the case.

Plainview sits while his oil field burns.

Sinclair’s novel focused on the son and was along his usual lines of critiquing capitalism. Anderson seems to do the latter, except that by shifting the focus to Plainview, he’s doing it from the inside. Anderson has said he took inspiration from John Huston’s classic tale of greed, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and you could argue Plainview is cut from the same cloth as Humphrey Bogart’s character, Fred C. Dobbs, is Dobbs had survived but had become even more paranoid and isolated than he was. There’s also a bit of Michael Corleone in there, especially in how, as Coppola did in the first two Godfather films, Anderson is tracing the gradual fall of someone. The major difference, of course, is we saw Michael’s humanity before his fall, while there’s very little of that in Plainview (as he tells Henry, when he thinks he’s his brother, “I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people”), except maybe his relationship with H.W.

Sunday forces Plainview to publicly confess his sins.

On the opposite side is Eli Sunday, and if Plainview represents the logical endpoint of unchecked greed in business, Eli represents his opposite number when it comes to religion. Eli may seem at first to be a lowly preacher, but in his own way, he’s as sick in the soul as Plainview is. Whereas Plainview at least tries to charm the people he’s trying to do business with, Eli, while at first trying to be charming, is out to pretty much browbeat them into submission. He does have a calm exterior at first, but underneath burns a fury that comes out when he feels he’s been betrayed, and that especially comes out in the scene where Plainview reluctantly agrees to repent for what Eli claims to be his sins. Eli is almost possessed as he goads Plainview into confessing that he abandoned H.W. (part of what makes the scene so powerful is the suggestion you get from Day-Lewis that he’s right). And when Eli goes to try and extort money from Plainview near the end, his breakdown is just as dramatic, and as chilling to watch, as Plainview’s is.

The infamous “I drink your milkshake!” scene.

Unlike his previous period piece, Boogie Nights, which luxuriated in period detail from the late 70’s and early 80’s, the world Anderson depicts here is pretty sparse. Production designer Jack Fisk and cinematographer Robert Elswit emphasize the barren nature of the California landscape, and Elswit uses a lot of low lighting, especially in the night scenes with Plainview. Anderson and Elswit haven’t abandoned tracking shots, of course; there’s a terrific one at the blowout where H.W. loses his hearing, and we see Plainview running back with him. But for the most part, they use a lot of close and medium shots; even though the movie is of epic length (158 minutes long), this is a character study first and foremost, and those close-ups and medium shots are a way of peering at those characters up close. The score by Johnny Greenwood (of Radiohead fame) is also very different from your normal period film; even though he uses orchestras to play his music (the BBC Concert Orchestra, to be precise), Greenwood emphasizes dissonant sounds, especially in the scenes where Plainview first strikes oil, and the closing credits. This perfectly captures the emotional states of the characters. That’s also true of the classical pieces Greenwood uses in the movie, such as Brahms’ Third Movement of his Violin Concerto in D Major and Arvo Part’s “Fratres for Cello and Piano”.

Day-Lewis won his second Best Actor Oscar for his performance here (his first was for My Left Foot; he’d win his third for Lincoln), though he also had a lot of detractors for what people saw as a hammy performance (one of my co-workers at the last video store I worked at especially felt this way). I, however, thought it was riveting, and worked for the character. Day-Lewis is broadcasting his charm to hide the fact it’s facile, which is what many people who are trying too hard do (people who are naturally tough don’t have to act that way). Where he’s subtle is in showing how the hatred inside him is eating away at him inside, and that’s done mostly through his eyes. Dano may not be Day-Lewis’ equal in acting stature, but he holds his own in their scenes together, and carries himself not only as a preacher, but as a sham. To counterbalance Day-Lewis and Dano playing big, there’s a stillness to Freasier in his performance, even before his character goes deaf (as an adult, H.W. is played by Russell Harvard, an actual deaf actor). And the dependable O’Connor and Hinds are also very good. I can understand those who felt left behind at the direction Anderson went with starting with There Will Be Blood, but I think it may be his best work.

*-Only the main character of Inherent Vice is someone who can be seen as accessible. With his most recent film, Licorice Pizza, Anderson seems to have returned to more accessible characters and more emotionally direct films.

Reel 74: The Wages of Greed

Sure, Gordon Gekko told us all that greed, for lack of a better term, is good. And that film sometimes takes the blame for a bunch of unfortunate things that took place in the 1990s.

But there are films out there which note that there’s a darker side to greed (and, to be fair, Wall Street also carries that message; it’s just that people kind of overlooked that part). And in this episode, we look at a pair of films which are years apart from a production standpoint, but whose characters are more or less contemporaneous.

We start with The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), starring Humphrey Bogart, Tim Holt, and Walter Huston and directed by Walter Huston. Anjelica Huston isn’t in this one because she wasn’t born until 1951, I guess. The trio star as three down-and-out Americans who pursue gold in a remote mine in which others have given up hope. They face all kinds of hardships moving to and from the mine, and there are plenty of adventures in between.

From there we go to another film set at about the same time, but on this side of the US/Mexico border, in the American southwest. There Will Be Blood (2007), directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, stars Daniel Day-Lewis as a man who is determined to amass as much as he can, but it’s far too late when he realizes the price he pays for his success.

Both of these films also have the distinction of being source material for memes and pop culture gags. With Sierra Madre, of course, it’s assorted variations on whether or not any stinkin’ badges are necessary, and in Blood it’s the phrase “I drink your milkshake.” In both cases I’d be willing to bet all the money in my pockets (nearly 80 CENTS, friend) that most people don’t know the source material for either of them.

Finally, before I set you free to listen to the episode (because of course you’ve been riveted to this poetry I’ve been cranking out so far), I offer you this bit of music that we talked about during Part 2:

Yes, I will expect you to send me Thank You notes for bringing this music into your life.

COMING ATTRACTIONS:

Next time, we stick with the Old West with a pair of films that use that genre as an allegory for anti-Capitalist messages. (What?) Don’t worry; it’ll make a lot of sense before we’re through. First we’ll see McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), followed by The Claim (2000). Join us, won’t you?

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988) – Review

1968, of course, was a year where it seemed like the world was on fire. After the Tet Offensive that happened during the Vietnam War, while the North Vietnamese lost the battle, the battle itself convinced many in the U.S. the war could not be won, and the protests against the war increased significantly, not only in the U.S. (culminating in the notorious protests at the Chicago Democratic Convention), but around the world; the May riots in Paris that year being one of the more prominent examples. It’s important to remember, however, the protests that were happening that year weren’t entirely about the war, or anti-U.S. or anti-Western sentiment. 1968 was also the year of the “Prague Spring”, where, in Czechoslovakia, people were rebelling against the strictures of Soviet rule, and trying to reform the government to allow more freedom of speech, press, and travel. Unfortunately, the Soviet government did not take this lying down, and in August of that year, they invaded the country and restored the totalitarian government. It’s against that backdrop Philip Kaufman’s great film The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which he and Jean-Claude Carriere adapted from the novel by Milan Kundera, takes place.

Tereza (Juliette Binoche) and Tomas (Daniel Day-Lewis) after their wedding.

The film concerns Tomas (Daniel Day-Lewis), a surgeon in 1968 Prague, and an inveterate womanizer (his typical come-on line is, “Take off your clothes”). Though he sleeps around with a number of women, the one he always returns to is Sabina (Lena Olin), an artist. One day, while traveling to a small village, he meets Tereza (Juliette Binoche), a waitress at a bar. They soon fall in love and get married, and Tomas even encourages Tereza’s interest in photography. However, Tereza can’t stand the fact Tomas continues to sleep with other women. As if that wasn’t enough, when things in Czechoslovakia seem to be changing for the better, the Soviet Union sends troops and tanks in. Sabina, Tereza, and Tomas all flee to Geneva, where Sabina takes up with Franz (Derek de Lint, who played the collaborator in Soldier of Orange), a professor whom she likes, but doesn’t want to get emotionally involved with (among other things, as she puts it, “He doesn’t like my hat”). Tereza tries to sell the photographs she took of the invasion, but the magazine editors in Geneva consider the invasion old news, and suggest she take fashion pictures. Tereza tries to do so – she even visits Sabina, in a scene I’ll talk more about below – but finds herself unable to function in Geneva. She ends up talking Tomas in returning to Prague, even though the repressive government has been restored. Not only that, but Tomas cannot get a job as a surgeon anymore because he refuses to renounce a satirical article he wrote before the invasion criticizing the government (he gets a job as a window washer instead), and though Sabina has gone to America, he continues his womanizing, which continues to drive Tereza to despair, even though she has her own extramarital affair with an engineer (Stellan Skarsgard) she meets one night while at her old waitress job.

In his previous movie, The Right Stuff, Kaufman edited his actors into historical footage when Alan Shepherd was greeted by President Kennedy after his flight into space. He does the same thing with the invasion footage, as we see Tereza taking pictures of what’s happening, and he does it even more seamlessly. Since Czechoslovakia was still under Soviet control at the time, of course, this archival footage was the only part of the movie actually shot in Prague (Lyon, France doubled for Prague for the most part), but because of how well Kaufman and the great cinematographer Sven Nykvist shoot the rest of the movie, it doesn’t feel out of place. Other than the revolution, the sexual escapades depicted here were the main draw of the movie, yet Kaufman and Nykvist don’t shoot them for easy titillation. The best example of that comes in that scene where Tereza visits Sabina to photograph her. There’s definitely an eroticism about the scene, especially when Sabina decides to turn the tables and photograph Tereza (and even uses Tomas’ come-on line, “Take off your clothes”), but it feels genuine rather than cheap or exploitative. The movie packs a lot into its nearly three hour running time, yet it never feels rushed, as Kaufman is able to keep a light tone to the whole thing, even with all of the events happening.

In Kundera’s novel, he tells the story in a non-linear fashion, and the characters are as much symbols as they are flesh and blood. The characters are still symbols in the movie, but the actors make them come alive. In later years, Day-Lewis would disparage his own work here, and I don’t really understand why, as he’s never seemed more relaxed on screen, or funnier (the closest he came was in the title role in Steven Spielberg’s LINCOLN). Even when he’s sticking to his principles in not renouncing that article, Day-Lewis acts it in an offhand way, and he has marvelous chemistry with his co-stars. Binoche was early in her career (her most notable movies before this were Jean-Luc Godard’s HAIL MARY and Leos Carax’s MAUVAIS SANG), and this was her first role in English, but she’s up to the challenge. It seems Tereza represents the “darkness” that’s opposed to the light, which is not only a conceit, but a reactionary one, but Binoche makes her into a full-blooded character instead, as a woman who wants to live where she’s comfortable, and just doesn’t understand why men cheat; it’s when she and Tomas are alone in the country late in the movie, with their dog and other friends, that she only truly feels happy. Sabina is arguably the biggest conceit of all – the male fantasy of the friend with benefits – but Olin (most known at the time for appearing in Ingmar Bergman’s FANNY & ALEXANDER and AFTER THE REHEARSAL) likewise makes her a believable character of flesh and blood. Actors often say their wardrobe helps them define the character they play, and I don’t know if that’s how Olin felt about the bowler hat Sabina wears, but she makes it an integral part of the character. There’s also good work from de Lint, Skarsgard, Donald Moffat (as another surgeon), and Bergman stalwart Erland Josephson (as a janitor). Kaufman seems to have lost his way after this (his only other good film that I’ve seen is the 2000 period drama QUILLS), but THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING stands as a great movie about sex, politics, and freedom.

Reel 70: Love During Wartime

Roughly two-thirds of this show’s life ago, we did an episode titled “Life During Wartime“, in which the war wasn’t always neatly spelled out.

In today’s episode, it’s Love During Wartime, and again the war isn’t quite so obvious, except that it’s referring specifically to the Cold War. We’re looking at a pair of films that each deal with a couple and how they respond to Soviet oppression. In both cases, it’s rather early in that oppression, but they’re still set many years apart.

In Part One we’ll be looking at 1988’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, directed and co-written by Philip Kaufman. Daniel Day-Lewis is a man who falls in love with a woman and eventually finds it in himself to change, however slowly, for her benefit. It’s a long, convoluted story that will run you through all of your emotions, no matter how cold-hearted you are.

Part Two is a more recent film. From 2018, it’s Cold War, a film about star-crossed lovers who seem to find themselves on the opposite sides of many different lines throughout their relationship, including the Iron Curtain itself. They’re together, then they’re separated, but they manage to find their way back together. Was it worth it for them? We’ll leave it to you to decide that part.

COMING ATTRACTIONS:

Episodes 71-73 will be all about spycraft, but for the first one we’re going to keep it light. We’ll start with 1979’s The In-Laws, starring Peter Falk and Alan Arkin. From there we go to 1984 and Top Secret!, a spy spoof that stars Val Kilmer as an Elvis-like musician who is recruited to perform in Europe and finds himself mixed up in espionage. Join us, won’t you?