There Will Be Blood

[teflon]

The latest Day-Lewis vehicle won him a Best Actor Oscar and also Best Cinematography.
A brutal biblical epic, There Will Be Blood tells the story of a quiet but determined goldminer who digs up some oil by mistake. He soon realises there is loads of money in oil and tries to build a business buying up farmland where he knows there is oil and drilling it up. A terrible accident kills his friend and goldmining cohort leaving a young baby boy orphaned, who Day-Lewis adopts and makes his partner once he gets old enough.

It's an extraordinary film touching on big concepts like faith and greed and divine retribution (without giving too much away). There are no main female characters and girls I know who have seen it seemed to have found little to like. But I have to respect this film, even if it hadn't won Oscars, it is very impressive how it has no dialogue for the first part without the viewer even hardly noticing. Day-Lewis is undoubtably very very good although at times with all the the drinking and hating everyone else, it is almost as if he is playing himself (or me).

The little kid is quite good too, and when he has his accident it is quite well done because it is not immediately obvious what has happened to him, but even thick people get it eventually when it is directly referenced. Even though he does turn out to be an ungrateful little shit.

The film is quite violent, a lot of the trauma/death is accidental due to mining accidents and suchlike, although some is deliberate like the very last scene, which is stomach-twisting because I felt like I would have done it much earlier, but it is still pretty gory.

A very ambiguous film, based on one of the oldest stories known, and brutal.
Quite good.

[Mankind]

Just watched this, it is quite good indeed.