There Will Be Blood
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson. Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson, based on Upton Sinclair’s novel “Oil!” Cinematography: Robert Elswit. Film editing: Dylan Tichenor. Production design: Jack Fisk. Music: Jonny Greenwood. Producers: Paul Thomas Anderson, Paul Dano, Daniel Lupi, JoAnne Sellar. With: Daniel Day-Lewis, Kevin J. O’Connor, Ciarán Hinds, Dillon Freasier, Barry Del Sherman, Russell Harvard, Paul F. Tompkins, Randall Carver, Coco Leigh, Sydney McCallister, David Willis, Christine Olejniczak, Kellie Hill, James Downey, Dan Swallow, Robert Arber, David Williams, Irene G. Hunter, Hope Elizabeth Reeves, David Warshofsky, Tom Doyle, Colton Woodward, John Burton, Hans Howes, Colleen Foy. USA. 156 min. 2007.
The first long scene of Paul Thomas Anderson’s extraordinary film takes place without a word of dialogue -– just one compelling image after another, etching an introductory portrait of the protagonist, an oil prospector sweating his brains and muscles out in hopes of a big strike that will turn his life around. He gets what he’s after, and while it radically transforms his outward circumstances, it only exacerbates the festering harshness of his blindly ambitious soul. In addition to being a multifaceted character study, a richly detailed historical drama, and the saga of a deeply conflicted American family, this is one of the most scathingly insightful movies about capitalism that I’ve ever seen.
Anderson credits the Upton Sinclair novel Oil! as the basis for his screenplay, but while the 1927 book is as energetic and opinionated as anyone could wish -– the exclamation point in the title is the first of zillions in the text -– the filmmaker has radically reimagined it, retaining only some key characters and basic elements of the narrative design. The result is virtually an original work, superbly crafted apart from occasional weak points, one of which is (unfortunately) the final scene. Daniel Day-Lewis gives an indelible performance, notwithstanding his apparent decision to make his voice sound exactly like John Huston’s gravelly baritone. (Dubious though this is, it’s less distracting than the feature-length Robert De Niro imitation Day-Lewis gave in “Gangs of New York” a few years back.) The supporting cast is mostly admirable, and the cinematography by Robert Elswit and production design by Jack Fisk are consistently vivid and true.
I haven’t been wholly convinced by Anderson’s more extravagantly produced films, Boogie Nights and Magnolia, and the superiority of his relatively small-scale Hard Eight and Punch-Drunk Love has made me suspect that he’d be a better artist if he refrained from working on such large canvases. There Will Be Blood persuades me that the size of his productions is less important than the depth of his involvement with the subject and characters at hand, as opposed to the visual gimmicks and stylistic stunts he’s all too good at dreaming up. A masterpiece of modern muckraking -– and yes, that old-fashioned word is way overdue for a comeback in the money-crazed circus of corruption that America has become -– this is among the most important sociopolitical films to arrive in a very, very long time.
Persepolis
Directors: Vincent Paronnaud, Marjane Satrapi. Screenplay: Marjane Satrapi, Vincent Paronnaud, based on Marjane Satrapi’s graphic memoir. Animation coordinator: Christian Desmares. Film editing: Stéphane Roche. Production design: Marisa Musy. Music: Olivier Bernet. Producers: Marc-Antoine Robert, Xavier Rigault. With voices of: Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve, Danielle Darrieux, Simon Abkarian, Gabrielle Lopes Benites, Gabrielle Lopes, François Jerosme, Tilly Mandelbrot. France/USA. Languages: French, Persian, English, German. 95 min. 2007.
Based on Marjane Satrapi’s memoir, which takes the form of a graphic novel, this intelligent animation tells the engrossing, sometimes harrowing story of her childhood in Iran, her student years in Paris, and various other episodes in what’s unquestionably been a rollercoaster of a life.
Drawn in rich black-and-white tones that play down the risk of showiness or sensationalism that might otherwise have attended certain portions of the story, the movie displays the same blend of dignity, integrity, and adventurousness that runs through the real-life experiences that inspired it, at least the way Satrapi recounts them. My only quarrel with the film is that it’s more schematic -– and, paradoxically, more sentimental -– than the book it’s based on. In an apparent bid for heightened audience appeal, the minor character of Satrapi’s feisty grandmother has become a major character on the screen, and her crusty wisecracks grow pretty wearing after a while. But that’s a small complaint about the smartest and timeliest animation in recent memory.
Youth Without Youth
Director: Francis Ford Coppola. Screenplay: Francis Ford Coppola, based on the novella by Mircea Eliade. Cinematography: Mihai Malaimare Jr. Film editing: Walter Murch. Production design: Calin Popura. Music: Osvaldo Golijov. Producer: Francis Ford Coppola. With: Tim Roth, Alexandra Maria Lara, Bruno Ganz, André Hennicke, Marcel Iures, Adrian Pintea, Florin Piersic Jr., Zoltan Butuc, Adriana Titieni, Alexandra Pirici, Mircea Albulescu, Cristian Balint, Theodor Danetti, Roxana Guttman, Hodorog Anton Mihail, Mihai Niculescu, Mirela Oprisor, Alexandru Repan, Dan Sandelescu, Matt Damon. USA/Germany/Italy/France/Romania. Languages: English, Sanskrit, German, French, Italian. 124 min. 2007.
In the tense period before World War II, a European intellectual is struck by lightning, but instead of dying he astounds his physicians by growing paradoxically younger and healthier, even sprouting a new set of pearly white teeth. The good news is that he’ll have more time than he ever dreamed of to pursue the encyclopedic work of linguistic-philosophical scholarship that he expected to leave unfinished at his death; the bad news is that lots of unwelcome strangers are taking an interest in him, from pesky reporters to a sinister Nazi scientist, and their intrusions will fatally compromise his research unless he finds an effective place to hide from their attention. Also in the picture is a woman whose history is strangely similar to his own.
Francis Ford Coppola has stressed the deeply personal nature of this film, which taps into his hopes and fears regarding creativity, intuition, and aging, among other topics. To those of us who have followed his career for decades, it’s a danger sign when he starts talking about how personal a project is -– he’s said that incessantly about his 1982 romance One from the Heart, for instance, and it’s one of the worst movies he’s ever made, although he’s never stopped believing in it. Youth Without Youth is vastly more interesting, but suffers from a similar kind of heaviness; when it should be loping along like the admirably economical Mircea Eliade novella it’s based on, it staggers and stumbles under the weight of too many ideas too carelessly piled on top of one another. Still, the technical values are strong, even if cinematographer Mihai Malaimare Jr. does turn the camera topsy-turvy a few times too often, and Tim Roth does his best with a role that never quite coheres.
In the end, the film is a fascinating disappointment. I truly wish it amounted to much more than that, since Coppola made it as a self-bestowed consolation prize after failing to get his dream picture, a drama about utopian visions called Megalopolis, off the drawing board and into production. But it’s good to see him tackling such artistically ambitious material after going so commercial with Jack and The Rainmaker in the '90s. Uneven and inconsistent as he is, he remains a force for good in American film.
Cassandra’s Dream
Director: Woody Allen. Screenplay: Woody Allen. Cinematography: Vilmos Zsigmond. Film editing: Alisa Lepselter. Production design: Maria Djurkovic. Music: Philip Glass. Producers: Letty Aronson, Stephen Tenenbaum, Gareth Wiley. With: Ewan McGregor, Colin Farrell, Tom Wilkinson, Haylay Atwell, Clare Higgins, John Benfield, Tom Fisher, Ashley Madekwe, Andrew Howard, Sally Hawkins, Stephen Noonan, Dan Carter, Jennifer Higham, Lee Whitlock, Milo Bodrozic, Emily Gilchrist, Phil Davis, George Richmond, Mark Umbers. USA/UK. 107 min. 2007.
Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell play working-class English brothers who succumb to temptation when a wealthy uncle offers to bail them out of financial troubles if they’ll commit a felony for him.
Given the poor-to-middling quality of Woody Allen’s comedies since the late 1990s, it’s heartening to see him venture into dramatic territory from time to time. The problem is that he appears to have exactly one dramatic theme up his sleeve: the moral and psychological consequences of serious crime for the perpetrator(s) thereof. This had a lot of surprise and bite in the 1989 dramedy Crimes and Misdemeanors, and the very similar Match Point of 2005 scored extra points by treating the identical idea with additional polish and concentration. Cassandra’s Dream has a different outcome, but overall it’s the same set of issues recycled yet again. It doesn’t help that the cinematography by the legendary Vilmos Zsigmond is strangely static and discombobulated, or that Alisa Lepselter’s editing loses in choppiness what it gains in energy, or that Philip Glass’s score is one of his less-imposing achievements. Woody gets over his phobia of the working class enough to portray a plebian English family, but wouldn’t you know, he hasn’t bothered to bestow names on the cockney mom and pop. The picture is engrossing at times, but it seems so irretrievably minor that I fear this fundamentally gifted filmmaker is wearing out his touch for drama as he’s already done for comedy. I truly hope I’m wrong.
Charlie Wilson’s War
Director: Mike Nichols. Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin, based on a book by George Crile. Cinematography: Stephen Goldblatt. Film editing: John Bloom, Antonia Van Drimmelen. Production design: Victor Kempster. Music: James Newton Howard. Producers: Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman. With: Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ned Beatty, Om Puri, Amy Adams, Brian Markinson, Jud Tylor, Hilary Angelo, Cyia Batten, Daniel Eric Gold, Emily Blunt, Peter Gerety, Mary Bonner Baker, Rachel Nichols, Shiri Appleby, P.J. Byrne, John Slattery, Joe Roland, Faran Tahir, Rizwan Manji, Denis O’Hare, Michael Spellman, Russell Edge, Christopher Denham, Ken Stott, Ron Fassler, Nancy Linehan Charles, Dan Rather. USA. Languages: English, Dari, Arabic, Russian. 101 min. 2007.
The year is 1979 and the title character is a Texas congressman, based on the actual congressman whose experiences inspired the movie. Between bouts of boozing and womanizing, he decides it’s his moral duty to supply Afghan warriors with money and equipment so they can rout the Soviet forces that are occupying their country. His helpers include a weirded-out CIA agent, a wealthy woman who likes dabbling in good causes, and a Pakistani autocrat.
The story is often fascinating, and Tom Hanks brings just the right blend of amiability and chicanery to the leading role. Julia Roberts is also smartly cast as the socialite, and Philip Seymour Hoffman plays the CIA man with an over-the-top comic energy that provides an ingenious contrast with the lumpenbourgeois persona he usually projects.
The film falls way short in the political department, though, and that’s a serious problem in a picture that’s all about politics. The real-life Wilson may have been motivated by humanitarian interests, but today it’s common knowledge that America’s troubles in the Middle East grow in substantial part from its cold-war meddling in the region; if the filmmakers wanted to be timely, this hugely important issue should have been the movie’s main focus, but it’s covered only in a printed statement just before the end credits. Behind-the-scenes scuttlebutt says the film underwent major changes between preproduction and final cut, and while I understand the pressure Nichols and company must have faced when dealing with such a highly charged subject, the finished product reminds me less of his spirited 2003 epic Angels in America than of his 1983 nuclear-plant drama Silkwood, which strained so hard for ideological “balance” that it wound up seeming tame and timid. You’ll have a good time in Charlie Wilson’s company, but you won’t learn much about the lasting effects of the private war he found it all too easy to wage.