Letters to the Editor
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The Future, Mr. Gittes. The Future.
The way I see it, everything about this movie is larger than life, like a fabel, like the stark symbolic greatness of the novel McTeague (later Stroheim's Greed) which was considered, ironically, representative of the American literary movement known as "naturalism". Plainview is in competition with God, after all, and in a sense he wins. How can this character be played naturally? The best naturalistic acting in the movie is done by O'Connor, and without outsized bluster and wiles, he quickly meets his end. Plainview has little depth or emotion, and in choosing Huston he makes a deliberately mythic choice to entwine this narrative with those of Chinatown and the Treasure of the Sierra Madre. What's curious to me is that Anderson is left out of the conversation - didn't Boogie Nights prove he can direct naturalistic acting? Wouldn't Anderson have reigned Lewis in if the part demanded it? Then you have Punch Drunk Love - a "mannered" performance, but how else do you play such a deeply frustrated and repressed rageaholic in the very depths of despair? When Zacherek complains of being taken out of the movie, I don't know what I'm supposed to think. Brecht would weep, and so would Godard, and so would Frank Norris, and so would Upton Sinclair.
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@Carrie
Thanks for the recommendation. I've heard good things about "The Lookout," and now I'll put it on my Netflix queue.
I'm guessing that you're not into bloody violence, which is why you skipped "Eastern Promises." It's true that there are several scenes of horrific violence, but David Cronenburg explained that his intent is to show just how awful violence really is, and not glamorize it. E.g., cutting someone's throat is not quick and dirty, but grotesque in the extreme. I get that you don't want to see that stuff, but maybe you could do the old watch-the-move-through-your-fingers trick. (I'm guessing you've heard about the infamous steamroom scene. My wife doesn't like seeing gore either, but she also had a hard time not watching ol' Viggo in the buff). Torn between hope and fear, I guess you could say. :)
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anti-realism
While there were contradictions in the Plainview character, they weren't particularly believable, and I think this led to the impression of overacting by DDL and the farce of a final scene (in my theater, at least half the audience was laughing at the performances, myself included).
Particularly painful is the decision to set Plainview's ambition and ruthlessness within the world of a "businessman". Plainview was a TERRIBLE businessman, though an excellent salesman.
The smart business move would be to accept the Union oil offer of a million dollars. He would then be able to invest the profits in wildcatting, where he obviously holds considerable acumen. Judging by his nearly killing himself in the opening scene and the subsequent "disasters" on the drilling fields, he's not especially successful at managing operations.
He's already shown himself to be brash and unwise at the expense of pride--the worst possible character for a businessman to hold. The Union Oil executives, the REAL businessmen, are obviously confused by him, as they should be. For them, business is about money, and all this personal baggage is unprofessional and embarrasing (see the restaurant scene).
The good business moves would have been to give Dano's character the few thousand dollars for the church and absolutely to not let the entire success of his massive drilling project fall into the hands of a man with knowledge of the fact that you just murdered a man on his property. Heck, that smooth move reminded me of something the killers in Fargo would do, not a man who's entire motivation for living is supposed to be besting others in business.
The one clue that we're given that Plainview is after wealth, ultimately, is his conversation with his brother about the big house in Fon Du Lac--that he wants to "live in, eat in, etc." If his character is after wealth and finery, he should take the Union money, and go do that. There is zero explanation for his desire to "best" men, or his chosen means of doing so. He apparently sees making money as a way of "winning", but he's fabulously unsuccessful, as the "real" businessmen view him as a joke and embarrassment. Simultaneously, why does he lower himself to fighting with a boy who he obviously feels is a superstitious idiot? If a middle-aged coworker of yours attacked a 16 year old boy who was inquiring about the money that had been promised him, and resulted to childish insults and put-downs, would you think he'd be a good leader to follow, or in line for future successes?
Despite DDL's hard work on making Plainview "deep", he's simply not a believably scripted character, made even less believable by the line's he's forced to read.
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I agree about Day-Lewis...to a point
Ms. Zacharek makes a valid point about the trajectory of Daniel Day-Lewis's career, though I tend to think his performance as Daniel Plainview hit the right notes for the type of film he was in.
High style performances are essential to the kind of sensualist films that PT Anderson specializes in. Think of Tom Cruise in "Magnolia" or ALfred Molina in "Boogie Nights". That these often sit alongside naturalized "method" performances from the likes of John C. Reilly or William H. Macy is somewhat akin to frogs falling out of the sky. Perhaps it's a perversion, but it's what makes PT one of this generation's most interesting filmmakers.
For all the talk of Day-Lewis aping the Hustons (Walter/John), I see a lot more of the Kubrickian anti-hero in this performance-- think Malcolm McDowell in "A Clockwork Orange" or Jack Nicolson in "The Shining". John Huston was a terrifying monster in "Chinatown". His few onscreen moments cast a shadow over everytyhing leading up to the final haunting moments of the film. If he went over-the-top, it felt entirely consistent with the volcalnic nature of his character. The performances of McDowell and Nicolson, on the other hand, were absurdist. Their characters were circus barkers at Kubrick's mad carnival. It's clear that PT Anderson aimed for this style with "There Will Be Blood", and Day-Lewis hits exactly the right notes (even if they were high-pitched atonal notes; a sort of companion piece to Johnny Greenwood's score).
If Day-Lewis excels in this role, it's not necessarily a sign that he's on the right trajectory as an actor. I agree that his performances in films like "The Age of Innocence" and "In the Name of the Father" have a lived-in vitality that somehow seemed to go missing with "Gangs of New York". It is in that film where his portrayal overstepped the requirements of his character. Bill the Butcher should have been a simmering, earthy madman. Day-Lewis's performance was all vaudeville. It's little wonder that his most effective moment was during the knife-throwing scene.