A desperate man (Daniel Day-Lewis) goes on a dark journey in Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic THERE WILL BE BLOOD
THERE WILL BE BLOOD (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Saturday, December 27, 5:45
Festival runs December 19 – January 11
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In the fall of 2007, Paul Thomas Anderson talked to Directors Guild of America Quarterly about his latest film, There Will Be Blood, explaining how it was influenced by John Huston’s classic Western The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. “I was trying to find something that was one-hundred percent straightforward, old-fashioned storytelling. I definitely tried to mimic that approach. My natural instincts as a writer may be more scattered, so in an effort to be more traditional I used a book, just like they did. Sierra Madre is as direct as you can get — nothing clever, nothing structurally new or different — and I mean that as a high compliment. It’s harder than anything else to be completely straightforward.” There Will Be Blood has been called a lot of things since its release, but “traditional” and “completely straightforward” are probably not among them. But it does explain why Anderson’s film is one of only a handful of works not directed by Huston in the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Let There Be Light: The Films of John Huston.” In There Will Be Blood, Daniel Day-Lewis, in remarkable voice (“I drink your milkshake!”), gives a spectacular, Oscar-winning performance as an independent oil man, absolutely embodying Daniel Plainview, a determined, desperate man digging for black gold in turn-of-the-century California. His first strike comes at a heavy price as he loses one of his men in a tragic accident, so he adopts the worker’s infant son, raising H.W. (Dillon Freasier) as his own. The growth of his company leads him to Little Boston, a small town that has oil just seeping out of its pores. But after not allowing Paul Sunday (Paul Dano), the charismatic preacher who runs the local Church of the Third Revelation, to say a prayer over the community’s first derrick, Plainview begins his descent into hell.
Paul Sunday (Paul Dano) and Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) face off in THERE WILL BE BLOOD
Using Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel Oil! as a starting point (and employing echoes of Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons in addition to the obvious reference, George Stevens’s classic 1956 oil flick, Giant), writer-director Anderson (Boogie Nights, The Master) has created a thrilling epic about greed, power, and corruption as well as jealousy, murder, and, above all, family, where oil gushes out of the ground with fire and brimstone. Robert Elswit’s beautiful, Oscar-winning cinematography is so gritty and realistic, audiences will be reaching for their faces to wipe the oil and blood off. The piercing, classically based score, composed by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, builds to a mind-blowing crescendo by the end of the film — a finale that is likely to be much talked about and widely criticized. Filmed in the same location — Marfa, Texas — where Giant was set, There Will Be Blood is an unforgettable journey into the dark heart of one man’s soul. The film is screening December 27 at 5:45 at the Walter Reade Theater; “Let There Be Light: The Films of John Huston,” which continues through January 11, consists of forty films directed by the master, from The African Queen and Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison to The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean and The List of Adrian Messenger, from The Red Badge of Courage and Victory to A Walk with Love and Death and The Kremlin Letter, in addition to a few movies Huston either appeared in (Chinatown, Tentacles!) or that demonstrate his lasting influence, as is the case with There Will Be Blood. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre will be shown December 23, 25, and 27.
Barcelona’s La Sagrada Familia is perhaps the most spectacular long-running architectural work-in-progress in the world, and arguably the most beautiful and inspiring. Construction began on the cathedral, which sits in the center of the cosmopolitan city, in March 1882, under diocesan architect Francisco del Paula del Villar, but a young man named Antoni Gaudí took over at the end of 1883 and spent the next forty-three years designing and building the expiatory church, incorporating a unique mix of styles as well as a whole new architectural philosophy. Swiss filmmaker Stefan Haupt (Elisabeth Kübler-Ross: Facing Death, The Circle) takes viewers behind the scenes of this ongoing project in the dry but elegant documentary Sagrada: The Mystery of Creation. Haupt delves into the history of the grand building and looks into its future as he speaks with chief architect Jordi Bonet, sculptors Etsuro Sotoo and Josep Subirachs, stained-glass artist Joan Vila-Grau, priest Lluís Bonet, religious studies professor Raimon Panikkar, and others about the house of worship, most of them singing the praises of the proud Catalan Gaudí, who also built such dazzling structures in his home region as Casa Batlló, Park Güell, and La Pedrera. “We owe it to him to finish this temple and show the world his genius,” foreman Jaume Torreguitart says. The film features extended sections in which cinematographer Patrick Lindenmaier lovingly shoots the inside and outside of the basilica, lingering over the intricate beauty of the myriad details, from the Nativity and Passion Facades to the spires, nave, apse, transept vaults, and Gaudí’s own crypt. La Sagrada occasionally feels like a clever way to raise money to continue work on the project, as it was made with the full support of the Sagrada Família Foundation, which needs funds to finally finish the ornate structure, and the narration (spoken by Hanspeter Müller-Drossaart) lacks the poetry of the visuals. But even as beautiful as the visuals are, it’s still difficult to capture, in words and pictures, the captivating essence of La Sagrada Familia, which overwhelmed me when I visited it a few years ago. The Film Society of Lincoln Center is screening Sagrada: The Mystery of Creation from December 19 to January 1; as a bonus, they are also showing Hiroshi Teshigahara’s 1984 documentary, Antoni Gaudí, December 19-25.
Over the last several years, New Yorkers have gotten the chance to see Elizabeth Streb’s Extreme Action Company perform such dazzling works as 
Peter Jackson’s sixteen-year adventure through J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth comes to its inevitable conclusion with The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, the third film in the prequel trilogy that began with An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation of Smaug. The story picks up as the enormous fire-breathing flying dragon Smaug (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch) is laying waste to the island of Lake-town as the thirteen Dwarves of Erebor watch from the Lonely Mountain. But soon after the brave Bard (Luke Evans) dispatches the evil beast in spectacular fashion, the Men of the Lake, the Orcs, the Elves, and the Goblins all descend on Erebor seeking either refuge, revenge, or the massive amount of gold that fills the abandoned castle. However, Dwarves king Thorin Oakenshield II (Richard Armitage) has been overcome with dragon-sickness, an unbounded greed that has him protecting every single piece of the vast treasure, refusing to share it with anyone but his thirteen cohorts as he searches for the powerful Arkenstone that Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) is hiding. Meanwhile, Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen), Galadriel (Cate Blanchett), Elrond (Hugo Weaving), and Saruman (Christopher Lee) take on Sauron the Necromancer (voiced by Cumberbatch); the Elf Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) and the Dwarf Kíli (Aidan Turner) explore their forbidden love; and a stream of frightening creatures join the fray. Also along for this final ride is Legolas (Orlando Bloom), his father, Thranduil (Lee Pace), Thorin’s cousin Dáin (Billy Connolly), the brutal, scimitar-armed Azog the Defiler (Manu Bennett) and his brutal son, Bolg (John Tui), and the pompous, greedy Master of Lake-town (Stephen Fry).
