The Prayer of Examen and Daniel Plainview: Thoughts on There Will Be Blood

A simple warning: this, like most of my commentaries will discuss specifics about the work of art, meaning the commentary will contain spoilers.

Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson creates an incredible dance between his characters and the audience. Without using voiceovers or soliloquies, we feel characters’ emotions whether they are emotions we would want to understand or not. Take, for example, in Magnolia, when the uber-misogynist Frank T. J. Mackey (Tom Cruise) stonewalls the reporter (April Grace) for confronting him with his true history, we understand and feel his frustration all the while remaining disgusted with the vileness of his work and his lies. Like all great filmmakers, Anderson also has the ability to change our perspectives so that when we leave the theater, we look at the world a bit differently.

I have seen his latest work of wonder, There Will Be Blood, twice now and I cannot get this movie out of my head. There Will Be Blood takes a hard look at the amorality of frontier capitalism embodied in the terrifying character Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis in one of the great performances on film). Daniel protects his fabricated image enough to ingratiate himself to the people who own the land on which he wants to drill for oil. Because he inhabits nearly every scene of the film, we can view the bleak landscape through Daniel’s eyes that sees the “ocean of oil” underneath his feet. Daniel is percipient but horribly selfish. He sees through people to procure the best deal he can, often and perhaps intentionally at the other person’s expense. In an uncharacteristically candid moment, Daniel has the following exchange with Henry (Kevin J. O’Connor), the man posing as his brother:

Daniel: Are you an angry man, Henry?
Henry: About what?
Daniel: Are you envious? Do you get envious?
Henry: I don’t think so. No.
Daniel: I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people.
Henry: That part of me is gone — working and not succeeding — all my failures has left me. I just don’t care.
Daniel: Well, if it’s in me, it’s in you. There are times when I look at people and I see nothing worth liking. I want to earn enough money that I can get away from everyone.
Henry: What will you do about your boy?
Daniel: I don’t know. Maybe it will change. Does your sound come back to you? I don’t know. Maybe no one knows that. A doctor might not know that.
Henry: Where is his mother?
Daniel: I don’t want to talk about those things. I see the worst in people. I don’t need to look past seeing them to get all I need. I’ve built my hatreds up over the years, little by little, Henry. To have you here gives me a second breath. I can’t keep doing this on my own with these people.

“Hey, I found a toaster.” Badlands Review

The films of writer-director Terrence Malick evoke extreme reactions amongst viewers — people either find his work boring and pointless or mesmerizing and utterly fascinating. I am in the latter camp. In the past ten years, Malick has made two of the most haunting and contemplative films I’ve ever seen: the World War II epic, The Thin Red Line (1998) and the Pocahontas tale, The New World (2005).

Because Malick has only directed four films in a career that is in its fourth decade (he took the 80’s and most of the 90’s off from directing), I thought it might be time to finish his body of work, beginning with his first film, Badlands (1973). Badlands takes its inspiration from the Starkweather-Fugate killing spree that ravaged Nebraska and Wyoming in the late 1950’s. Malick resets the story in South Dakota and has cast a young Martin Sheen as Kit Carruthers, a twenty-something loner who likes to philosophize to anyone who will listen. An even younger-looking Sissy Spacek plays Holly Sargis, Kit’s fifteen year-old love interest and the narrator of the film. Kit finds Holly to be mature beyond her age and Holly enjoys the attention this James Dean lookalike lavishes on her. Holly’s father (Warren Oates) forbids her to see Kit any longer — wary of the age difference and Kit’s lack of ambition — which brings about the first murder of the film and sets in motion the long chase that frames the rest of the picture, though no one would call this a chase film. Only rarely do we catch glimpses the effects of Kit and Holly’s spree on the larger community who does start a manhunt. Malick tells the story of Badlands with a distance and almost completely from the main characters’ perspectives. Kit has a strange code of honor in the midst of what he perceives as self-defense. He never enjoys his crimes, but he is never shocked by them either. After killing Holly’s father and putting the body in the basement, Kit seems more interested with the toaster he found than with planning an escape. Holly’s narration is philosophical and she doesn’t seem so terrified by Kit’s growing psychosis and violence, but instead she grows weary of him and has a moment of clarity in realizing that if she is going to ever grow up, she’ll need to find a path apart from Kit.

Statute of Limitations

A voice on the radio — I forget who — talked about the Oscar-winning film, No Country for Old Men, but stopped short of discussing the end so as to not ruin the film for those who have not seen it. He then asked a fair question: what is the statute of limitations on a movie before we can discuss it in its entirety including the ending? For example, is it my responsibility to not spoil the ending of Citizen Kane for people even though it’s been out for over sixty years, or if I were to discuss its mystery-revealing ending, am I exempt from being a spoiler because people have had ample time to see it by now? If it is the latter, when do we cross that line? I suppose we can discuss the endings to the works of Homer, Shakespeare, or Austen without fear of upsetting too many people. What about Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved, which she published in 1987?

Top-10 Films

I’ve created a page in which you can view my top-10 films of the year going back to 1995, when my love for movies really began to take shape. Check it out (a link is also on my sidebar), and tell me how much I’m wrong. I’m sure I left out your favorite films.

The Universal and the Specific: Once Review

Film musicals don’t usually work for me, but stage musicals do. I think it’s because seeing a play requires more imagination from the audience whereas movies supply the majority of the imagination for the viewers and the audience only needs to suspend disbelief for a couple of hours. I don’t like movie musicals where life looks pretty normal and then all of a sudden singing and dancing appear. A movie musical is kind of like a sci-fi film. Sci-fi (or SF for those who care) has to provide me a universe where I believe people can fly ships in outer space co-piloted by seven foot tall bi-ped dogs. Movie musicals have to provide me a world where I believe people would break out into song. Baz Luhrman’s Moulin Rouge! (2001) is a prime example of a musical that worked for me. John Carney’s film Once (2007) is another example, though in a much different way.

Once is set in a very realistic time and place. It is not a musical like Moulin Rouge!, Singin’ in the Rain, or Chicago. Rather, it is a de facto musical because it follows musicians whose songs make up the majority of the film. Carney’s script walks this amazing balance of the universal and the specific. The main characters are simply credited as Guy (Glen Hansard) and Girl (Markéta Irglová) and we follow a love story so basic in its skeleton that one could write the whole plot on a Post-It: Guy is a struggling musician in Ireland whose girlfriend left him for another man and moved to London. Girl is a Czech expatriate living in Dublin with her mother and young daughter. Girl hears Guy playing his songs on the street and they begin a friendship surrounding Guy’s powerful songs — Girl is actually a classically-trained pianist. The parameters of this love story couldn’t be anymore universal: guy meets girl. But Once is told with such sincerity and originality that when we watch it, we realize we are watching a reinvigoration of two genres: the musical and the love story.

The Light and Heat of Ideas: Fahrenheit 451 Review

Ray Bradbury’s dystopic novel Fahrenheit 451 is one of those classics it seems everyone read in high school, but it somehow missed my alma mater’s curriculum, so I had the joy of reading it for the first time recently. It is a shame that I didn’t read it in high school since this novel would have engrossed me. If I were to teach high school English or college literature, I would require this novel as the first book students read as it serves as a wondrous appreciation of the printed word, education, and the ideas that shape our world. Bradbury reminds his readers that ideas and thoughtful art challenge our assumptions, spark our imagination, and help us grow as people and as a world.

If you don’t know the story, the authorities of the United States in Bradbury’s future are afraid of an educated and thinking public. They have banned reading and inculcate the populace with television screens that take up entire walls and broadcast the most inane programming imaginable. Guy Montag works for the government as a fire fighter, but as we learn quickly, firemen in this future start fires, they don’t extinguish them. They are called out when it is discovered that someone owns books. Montag loves his work, but he has been secretly lifting a book from the fire scenes now and again. He meets a teenager Clarisse, whose precociousness, depth, and wisdom surprise him. She sets him on a path that leads to him repudiating his way of life. Along the way Montag meets Faber, a former professor who describes in sumptuous language the honor and wonder of reading. Faber may not be a Christian, but he loves the Bible because it is full of real ideas from real people wrestling with their world. He loves that books make us think rather than supply our thoughts for us as do the television screens. But this tutelage cannot last in innocence and a fantastic chase sequence emerges. Montag finds his way to a band of nomadic scholars who have taken it upon themselves to memorize books. Their identities have become those books; they are subsumed into the world of ideas created therein. When the final apocalyptic war breaks out, these scholars understand that they have within themselves the memory, the blueprint of civilization in their brains. The ending of Fahrenheit 451 almost feels like the setup to Walter M. Miller’s post-apocalyptic novel, A Canticle for Leibowitz.

A Cautionary Whale, or: How Much Does a Piece of Art Inherently Comment on Society? An Exploration of Larger Issues Using the Film Juno

Every story emerges from within a culture and therefore offers a perspective of that culture even if the point of the story isn’t to offer societal commentary. My question is to what extent do we read cultural commentary from stories and how can we tell whether that reading is warranted? In my recent review of the film Juno (d. Reitman, 2007) I wrote, “Any film about teenage pregnancy in our time obviously opens a number of cans of worms, but to its credit, Juno doesn’t fall into debates and become a message movie. Nor does it try to skirt around those issues. It lets the characters address the issues in ways consistent with their personalities.” Just a warning, this post will discuss particular plot points of Juno, so if you don’t want to know what happens, just bookmark this post and come back to it after seeing the film.

Much will likely be said about whether Juno supports a pro-life or a pro-choice view and both sides will find evidence for their beliefs. Juno does go to an abortion clinic, but does not go through with the procedure and instead decides to take the pregnancy to term and give the child up for adoption. Some could see this as a de facto pro-life stance. Those with a pro-choice stance may see the fact that Juno never repudiates abortion and her willingness to keep the pregnancy as a young woman exercising her full right to choice. But I don’t think Juno really intends to make those societal statements. In fact, neither side of the debate receives a positive portrayal. As Juno approaches the abortion clinic, a classmate of hers stands outside chanting in protest, “All babies want to get borned!” When they engage in conversation, the protester can only produce a litany of slogans including that the fetus has fingernails. It’s not a pretty picture of the pro-life camp. The inside of the clinic isn’t much better, however. The young woman working behind the desk dispassionately shoves a clipboard at Juno, telling her that they need information on, “Every score and every sore.” The protester nor the clinic staff expresses care for Juno as a human being. Neither asks her how she’s doing. Perhaps this is the filmmakers’ message: that the debate around abortion forgets that there are individuals with stories who need to be heard, but both sides instead focus on winning the argument. That is as far as I would say Juno wants to make a statement on abortion and I say that tentatively since the scenes surrounding abortion are brief.

A Film that Doesn’t Step on Toes or Eggshells, Miraculously: Juno Review

Juno (2007) is a warm blanket of a movie. The more I think about it, the more I like it. I remember whole scenes, lines of dialogue, songs from the soundtrack, and looks on the actors’ faces and they make me smile. The movie works on all cylinders, but the true power comes from the triumvirate of screenwriter Diablo Cody, director Jason Reitman, and star Ellen Page as the title character.

Juno tells the story of the 16-year old girl Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) who becomes pregnant after enlisting her friend Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera) to try sex. Juno then sets up an adoption with Vanessa (Jennifer Garner) and Mark Loring (Jason Bateman), a yuppie couple who haven’t been able to conceive. The rest of the story follows Juno’s pregnancy as she tries but is unable to maintain her distance from her situation. We witness some predictable scenes, such as Juno telling her father and step-mother (wonderfully played by J. K. Simmons and Allison Janney, respectively) that she’s pregnant, but these scenes don’t play in a predictable way. After Juno informs them, Mac, her father, says to Bren:

Mac: “Did you see that coming?”
Bren: “Yeah, but I was hoping she was expelled, or into hard drugs.”
Mac: “That was my first instinct too. Or a DWI. Anything but this.”

The plot is anything but straightforward and I’ll leave most of the surprises intact for you. Suffice it to say, we deal with real emotions of the characters, not with Hollywood cliches of characters in similar situations. Juno understands that she’s not ready to be a mother, so her connection with her child is not the guilt of giving it up, but the worry that a healthy, stable, and loving household could actually exist for her baby.

All You Need is Editing: Across the Universe Review

Across the Universe, director Julie Taymor’s 1960’s musical featuring only The Beatles’ songs is perhaps the most mixed bag of a movie to come out in 2007. I wanted to like the film more than I did, but its whole is not greater than the sum of its parts. The visuals are stunning and whole scenes work extremely well, reinterpreting many of the songs and drawing the audience into the characters’ world. On the other hand, there is no narrative drive connecting those scenes and the story is predictable. It feels like watching a string of extremely well-made music videos (I’ve put some links in this post, and if you follow them, you’ll see YouTube clips of the songs in the film). At moments, the film comes across as an interesting experiment trying to create a world from within The Beatles’ music and at other moments those same interesting bits feel a tad too clever, with heavy-handed homages. For example, any named character in the film gets that name from a person in a Beatles song. Jude (Jim Sturgess) and Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood) are the protagonists fighting to stay in love. Their friends include Prudence (T.V. Carpio), Sadie (Dana Fuchs), Max (Joe Anderson), and JoJo (Martin Luther). If those names pique your interest, or if you just rolled your eyes at the same idea, it may be a sign of how well this film works for you. For me, I kept expecting Eleanor Rigby to appear. (She doesn’t.)

A Stranger in Her Own Land: Persepolis 1 & 2 Review

In her graphic novel memoir Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi tells a poignant and wrenching tale of alienation. As she grows up in Iran under the Shah, during the Islamic revolution of the late 1970’s, and the subsequent war with Iraq, Satrapi witnesses the country she has always known morph into a state that as an intellectual young woman with Marxist tendencies, makes her a stranger, an exile within her homeland. Her parents send her to Austria as a teenager (an age in which alienation is something of a baseline experience) where she never quite fits with the Western kids. In Iran, her infatuation with American culture (punk music, blue jeans, etc.) makes her too Western for the newly radical Islamic state. In Austria, her Persian culture makes her too Middle Eastern to truly relate to her misfit gang of teenage pseudo-philosophers.

Satrapi’s simple black and white drawings add poignancy to the books, though I would argue that the first book is stronger. Persepolis 1 tells her story as a child and the drawings reflect a simple way of looking at an increasingly complex world. Persepolis 2 relies a bit too much on narration rather than on dialogue and feels incomplete, but that is a minor quibble given the place in life on which it ends.