There have been a flurry of new films coming out on DVD– and this includes Oscar winning and Oscar nominated films. What’s really interesting is the timing of several films being released at one time– 3 Oscar nominated films (* 2 are winners in different categories) that are very dark in tone, theme and the acting – both in the key performers and the cast — is totally superb. This is part 2 of a three part series on the dark film noir type releases that were out recently.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood is now out on DVD.
The film stars Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Kevin J. O’Connor,Dillon Freasier. Of course DDL dominates the film as he has morphed into the character that is willing to sacrifice everything and anything to achieve the financial success and create the business empire that he so craves.
This is a tale of early California and the oil boom. It’s is a harsh, unkind, pitiless portrayal that is fortunately or unfortunately quite accurate of the time period. Seeing this kind of ambition and corruption of the human soul, of each person — save for the son– and watching the interior life of each person be eaten away like termites eating away a wooden structure from the inside out. Only the boy seems to be untouched — yet he is rejected and unloved due to his disability that is not his fault. He grows up to follow in his father’s footsteps…… yet he doesn’t succeed quite enough to earn the respect of his father. Dano as the preacher is an contradictory and false prophet in preacher’s robes– as his own ambition is not that much different from that of DDL –only in a different realm.
Note fhat if you have difficulty with dark films, films that seem to have no redeeming qualities, films with a lot of hate, anger and are heartless in nature, you might not like this one. It’s rather brutal in it’s characterizations and it’s in keeping with the film’s time period when life was very hard and men carved out their existence, their fortune often at the expense of any who might have loved them. This is a very very long film. Some might see it without many redeeming qualities or reflective of other characters that DDL has played. It’s a movie that gives you pause and perhaps a yardstick against which to measure your own life and ambition.
Aavailable at Amazon.com in a regular set and a collector’s edition set
Stevie Wilson
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