Respect Authority

I know what you must be thinking: “Damn those Saw movies is good.” Well, friends, you are right - which is why I actually spent real American dollars acquiring the DVDS for Saw II through V (believe it or not, the first one was the worst). And that’s why I’ll happily tap out a review of much-anticipated (for me at least) Saw IV, whose DVD release is pegged for Jan. 26, according to Netflix (I no longer buy DVDs, even highly-coveted sixth installations of favorite horror series, primarily because its not 2002 anymore). But until then, you’ll have to be satisfied with what this really is: a year-late review of There Will Be Blood.

I don’t know why it took me so long to get around to TWBB; perhaps because all anyone ever said about the film was “Daniel Day Lewis is so good in that,” or “I drink your milkshake!” The former is certainly encouraging - but a singular stellar performance does not always a great movie make (see: everything Jim Carrey has ever made). The latter is what some might consider the film’s signature line (naturally, Daniel Day Lewis doesn’t say it until the last 10 minutes), and all manner of ironic T-shirts have been fashioned in its honor. But even combined, these two impressions hadn’t been enough and so here I am, months behind the curve, finally getting the joke.

Everything people said was right: Daniel Day Lewis IS amazing in the movie, in the way anyone is amazing who can make you forget they’re acting. The fact that Lewis is a rather selective actor only helps: unlike Will Smith’s flip-floppery between “I’m a real actor” and “I’m a superhero malcontent,” Lewis appears so sparingly in pop culture cinema that I found it easy to become immersed in his character. Good thing, too - since he’s on screen more or less the entire movie, and communicates via facial expression or prolonged silence as much as actual dialogue. And the milkshake line - well, it lives up to the hype.

But outside of Lewis’ stellar performance, and a similarly (I thought) awesome job by Paul Dano (of “color-blind son with the weirdly shaped face from Little Miss Sunshine” fame) TWBB is mostly just…strange. Strange in the way slow, quiet and ultimately uneventful movies can be. Strange because I continued to feel like I was missing something - namely the rising and falling action. Strange because I found myself enjoying the film, even while I absentmindedly wondered if anything might, you know, happen anytime soon, or contemplated whether I had any eggs left in my refrigerator. Frankly, it’s the kind of film I’m glad I watched at home. In a theater, with the frontier setting projected 20 feet high, and Dano’s weird chin at approximately a billion times its normal size, I’m not sure if I would have enjoyed TWBB the same way. To be honest, I’m not confident I wouldn’t have fallen asleep. But at home, with a normal-sized screen and unmitigated ability to rewind or pause (for the making of said eggs), watching the movie was sort of like reading literature. I appreciated it, even if I couldn’t necessarily love it.

It’s ironic, in retrospect, that TWBB came out around the same time as fellow Oscar favorite No Country for Old Men (and that both are based on equally bleak books). At the time, these movies were more or less the same for me — gritty Western-style films with stoic leading men and limited plot development. Having now seen both, I have to say I continue to feel that way (and am therefore rather pleased at having spaced out the viewing). But if Clint Eastwood has taught us anything, it’s that these types of movies have a sort of staying power. They’re not riveting, they’re not fast-paced, but they are sophisticated. And they are timeless. And so I get the hype.

And I drink your milkshake.