Thoughts on There Will Be Blood - get 'em while they're fresh & raw!

[bookshop]

WHAT WAS THAT FILM, omg omg. I loved it, I loved it so much. if it weren't 3 am right now I'd be re-watching it all right this second. I feel really wired, just, like, WHAT WAS THAT ZOMG.

There is no good TWBB fanfic, I know because I just went looking for it, lol. But oh my god, wouldn't it be amazing if there were?

vague film spoilers

Comments

[quaedam]

ELI'S PATHETIC SHRIEKS OF TERROR AND HOW THEY ALWAYS MANAGE TO SOUND LIKE CRIES OF PURE DELIGHT

Don't mind me, I'll just be sighing reminiscently and staring off into the distance with a big creepy grin on my face...(heh, but yeah--I loved that movie. In the worst way.)

[bookshop]

I KNOW RIGHT????????

omg i was just completely enthralled. Also at the end, the shot of--well, this:

Eli says, "I must have this -- I must, I must, I must--"

and then Daniel gets up and walks towards him and it's one long shot filmed like this:

[quaedam]

AHA, wow. :D Didn't catch that part when first I saw that film. I should see TWBB again some time; it's been a while since I did

[bookshop]

So you fool yourself into believing that capitalism is the safeguard of religion, home, and family, when in the end the driving urge behind it consumes them all.ahhhhh, yes, absolutely. SO TRUE. I actually thought the film's score (which i thought was amazing, there was nothing about this movie that didn't blow my mind) did a fabulous job of emphasizing this. Like, towards the beginning, when DDL is speechifying to the town about how the oil boom will bring in all this wealth and irrigation and bread and money for everyone, the soundtrack is this, like, parody of every cheesy watered-down patriotic "America will triumph!" moment in every Hollywood film ever. It's the only time (apart from the use of the Brahms) when the score ever remotely sounds that polyphonic. The rest of the time it just feels like it's perpetually deconstructing itself and everything about the film, eating itself up LIKE OIL DRAINAGE, haha

[wickedcherub]

I really disliked this movie. I can't remember why now, but I really really really hated it.

[bookshop]

haha, literally every person i know who's seen it hated it. when it came out i remember so many reports of the audience making fun of it and laughing out loud in the theatre that i always fully expected to hate it too.

but i just kept seeing it on so many 'greatest films of all time' lists, and it made me super curious so i finally watched it. and i was just blown awayyyyyy.

i think maybe if you look at it as a realist film you're doomed to hate it because it just has too much, like, pageantry and theatre for that. i honestly think it's more like a morality play melodrama as performed by marionettes.

[sometimesalways]

I saw it in the theater opening night and was blown away. BLOWN AWAY. I just.. didn't even know what to do with myself afterward. it immediately made my top 10 greatest films of all-time list.

[bookshop]

that is exactly how i feel right now! i couldn't even sleep last night because i was just like, freaking out about how amazing it was, haha.

[copinggoggles]

dfdlfk this, this. I never even managed to start trying to analyse it because I just, I don't even know. When it finished it was like waking up from the most intense dream of my life, and I didn't know what had just happened, I was just... dazed.

so good. SO GOOD.

[bookshop]

i think the only times i've felt anything remotely comparable are both from when I was in high school:

a) when i saw the 1996 revival of The King and I with Lou Diamond Philips and Donna Murphy, and felt like my legs had been knocked out from under me by the time I was done;

and b) the first time I saw Vertigo, which I *also* watched by myself alone late at night; when I got done I was so restless and unsettled and sleepless, and I couldn't even pinpoint why I was so shaken and overwhelmed, but I knew it was the most incredible film I'd ever seen.

oh wait, and c) I had a similar response after watching John Ford's The Searchers the first time. Just, that feeling like you've been sideswiped, or like you've run a year-long marathon and come out the other side exhausted and fundamentally changed.

[terribilita]

I saw the midnight screening of this back when it opened and was immediately awed by it; I can't say I enjoyed it exactly, because it's hard for me to enjoy something so completely devoid of joy, but its genius was so obvious to me (I honestly will never forget the milkshake speech). Which, hmm, is why it frustrated me that none of my friends (or anyone else I know) liked it!

Damn, I need to rewatch it soon.

[bookshop]

Yes, definitely rewatch it! It just feels like it operates on a totally different kind of cinematic language than the rest of us are used to, so to speak. We need time to acclimate!