In opposition to 'Cloverfield', here is a film built entirely on old fashioned values: actors, a script and rugged location shooting. It's long, it's slow at times, but it has more than one of those shiover-down-the-spine moments that you are watching cinema history (even if only with a small 'h'). Daniel Day-Lewis is given over to the film, and vice-versa, apparently, so the symbiotic actor-director relationship which was established is responsible for the striking unity of the film. There are moments of Guignol, and a few plot mishaps (trying hard to give no spoilers here) bt the film hangs together so well they do not seem gratuitous. Even Day-Lewis' choice of acting style (big, brash and concentrated) doesn't offend, because it's all of a piece with the whole film. This, unlike the recent (also pretty durn good) 'No Country For Old Men' - which had many of the same qualities, but lacked the unity - what you might call a soul - so you feel its excesses are purely to affect the spectator (which knowledge - that the film exists to address an audience) make sit post modern. There Will Be Blood is not.
And while it is about oil, and oilmen, and although it is set 'safely' at the start of the last century, it does not invite an allegorical viewing. You can do that, of course, but it's not primarily only an allegory. It is itself, something increasingly rare.
Go and see the film and we'll talk about it after, Be warned - there are a lot of good lines in the script, and you will find yourself applying some of them to real life. I think i have absorbed the Daniel character, so watch out!
Might come in handy these next weeks, mind...
