A couple of initial thoughts: Although the adapting screenplay was excellent, so far as dialogue is concerned (something that separates PT Anderson from most directors/screenwriters), it still left gaps in the story, as most adaptations do. His other films do not leave gaps, so this must have been somewhat unavoidable - but it certainly allowed the Coen Brothers to take home the oscar for best director and for best film.
The essence of the film, or maybe the purpose, was strikingly similar to Anderson's film about Dirk Diggler and the porn industry of the seventies. I certainly think that there is a strong parallel between the power hungry hyper-individual oil man who has a lust for endless property, control, and income - and the power hungry hyper-individual porn star who has a lust for endless property (women), control, and income. These are the foundational values of our nation, or at least, California, according to PT Anderson. I couldn't agree more.
Paul Thomas Anderson is certainly in the lineage of Shakespeare and Bergman.
4 comments:
watched it friday night with some friends. it is quite different from the book that inspired pta's screen play, at times directly opposite of the book.
i liked that plainview wasn't portrayed as an intrinsically evil man but greed ate at him and slowly destoyed him. Daniel Day-Lewis is amazing.
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what did you think of the music score? intense.
What did you make of the relationship/parallel between Plainview and Eli? It seems to me PTA linked religion and industry, or at least their rise, in an intimate but competative way and ultimately had idustry conqure religion. It seemed the name of the game for both religion and industry was will to power. Thoughts?
-Jonathan
Yeah - I was just thinking of Jonny Greenwood's score. I thought that the score, in conjunction with the cinematography (which won an oscar), was a bit of an ode to Stanley Kubrick, and more specifically, "The Shining". big, ominous, scenic shots, with intense, intimate, up-close shots of faces and emotions (mostly Day-Lewis, like with Jack Nicholson). and maybe Anderson wanted to reframe "the shining", stripping away the meta-physical psycho-spiritual insanity - because reality is it's own horror, when you are consumed with "seeing the worst in people", thus providing the opportunity to psychologically/physically destroy your competition, even when it is your own son (another parallel with the shining).
interesting.
Yeah, Jonathon.
The Church of the Third Revelation and it's relationship with oil or industry was certainly symbolic of western religion's acceptance of "progress" and technology, as well as it's inevitable dependence on industry (replacing God or nature), which is why the religious right must support people like Bush and Cheney (who have also abandoned their orphaned citizens - by sending them to war in Iraq - in order to reduce "shipping costs") and thus watering down or rejecting the Gospel - which, if you noticed, the name of Jesus was never mentioned by Eli Sunday - because there is no way to reconcile Christ to the interplay between religion and industry.
i think you were on point dude. you sound like you have been reading Wendell Berry or something.
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