Letters to the Editor
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Larger than life
When actors play characters who are "larger than life" the acting is noticeable. I'm not sure that's a flaw; it may be an inevitable result. The character itself is very noticeable.
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Great acting is.....duh, great acting!
I couldn't disagree with this review more! Great acting is about completely becoming the character. It IS about the preparation it takes for the actor to be able to disappear into the role.
When I watch George Clooney, Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise etc. I NEVER stop thinking that I am watching George Clooney, Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise. Pleasant--but not thrilling. With an actor like Daniel Day-Lewis, I can't even find him in there.
He becomes virtually unrecognizable as he turns himself into this character. It's a wonderful thing to behold and I find it amazing that this is the same soft-spoken man we see accepting awards left and right for this performance- truly remarkable!
Finally I believe Ms. Zacharek's confused about who's ego we're seeing on the screen. It's Daniel Plainview's, pure and simple. Yes, it's huge, it's menacing and it's murderous, but it's the character's--not DDL's.
I was blown away by so many aspects of this fine movie and I believe it will most certainly stand the test of time as a masterpiece of filmmaking. Hopefully, one day the condescending Ms. Zacharek will "get it", too.
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what a load of crap
Daniel Day Lewis' acting has been demeaned by another critic as "opaque." In my mind, however, it was exactly perfect for the character and role. I for one was captivated and felt transported to another era. I didn't feel I was watching Daniel Day Lewis "act." Many people of that time, era and place were exactly that: opaque, repressed and formal -- difficult to penetrate.
The near impenetrable facade of Daniel Plainview seemed real and authentic to me unlike most movies that simply place contemporary "emoting" in period costumes -- easy to connect with but authentic? (I had stoic Texan grandparents descended from hard-scrabble settlers who very much reminded me of Daniel Plainview in their manner.)
The brilliance of the writing and performance was how the viewer begins to piece together aspects of the character over the arc of the story in ways that would have been near impossible for his contemporaries precisely because he was opaque. The roiling rage just beneath Plainview's veneer of civility and self-control betrays a deep festering wound between Plainview and his own father that ultimately infects the relationship between Plainview and his adopted son.
It is a rich metaphor for our conflicted American psyche and a period of American history whose oil legacy and predatory capitalism still reverberates today. To have portrayed Daniel Plainview in any other fashion would have undermined the story. You may dislike the character or the movie itself but to fault the performance, I believe, misses the intent of the movie as a whole.
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Too Anderson to be Natural
My sense is Zacharek misunderstands the film; and in this case, misunderstanding the film leads to misunderstanding the acting. The fault lies in her assuming the film aspires to some sort of naturalism, and so she expects the actors to have that all too familiar "naturalness" she attributes to Hanks and Clooney. (I also sense she likes "explanatory" performances--ones which reveal some "natural" evolution, or devolution that we can hang our explanations on--something Anderson resists in his films.) The problem, of course, is that the film is not a naturalistic film, nor does it aspire to be. She forgets who is directing. Anderson is not a naturalist. He's a poet/painter (working in film).
In his struggle to characterize it, Anderson himself has thought of Blood as a kind of horror film. It obviously doesn't fit neatly into that category either. The film carves out a unique space for itself, one that defines itself as it goes (some call this art). What it shares, it shares with other Anderson films: a lyricism, a grotesqueness and sense of the absurd which you find in Punch-Drunk Love (it's in Magnolia too--consider the frogs, for instance). Zacharek then is misguided when she applies the standards of naturalism to the acting here. Instead of taking a close look at the film, and working through its structure, its nature--meeting it on its terms--and asking how the acting serves that structure, how it helps to define that nature and give expression to those terms, she imposes from the outside a standard of acting (she herself is confused about) onto it. When that standard doesn't fit she faults the acting, not the shoe she tries to squeeze it in.
Credit Day-Lewis for singing Anderson's tune, not Stanislavsky's.
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Total Nonsense
With all the abysmal, cretinous nonsense that Stephanie Zacharek has spouted about this remarkable film and now about Daniel Day-Lewis' earth-shaking performance, it becomes clear that she has about as much credibility for being a film critic as G.W. Bush has for being an astrophysicist.
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Bullocks!
Day-Lewis' performance in Gangs of New York was spellbinding, mesmerizing, superb. I've run out of superlatives. Zacharek's sensibilities are not usually so pedestrian. Day-Lewis is a genius.
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Stephine, stop performing!
This piece may remind us why acting is the world's worst subject. It only provocates highly dubious generalizations and obvious overthink. And it's dull, no matter how much you love watching a standout performance.
And for the record, yes, I did think Daniel Day Lewis was terrific in the movie, one of the best I've seen in many years (even with a few reservations). I also thought the guy in the small part of the long lost half brother was great.
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You should just make movies yourself steph.
this article, I fear, tells more about the author than the movie. Great movie. Like always with My Lewis, superb acting. Ignore this gop hit piece.
You should ask yourselves why the gop hates this movie so much. If the gop is anti-truth what must they hate? Truth? If they are lying propogandists what would be their biggest fear? Getting called on it.
see the movie. It's deep on three or four differant levals. Ignore the gop spin machine paenut gallery. Zero credibility. What is a journalist with zero credibility? A propogandist?
It doesn't get much better or original than this movie. Ignoe the peanut gallery. Those who cannot do teach (or discredit those that do DO)