The Butcher
You love ’em, he hates ’em! The Butcher carves up your favourite films, and this week, he applies his sharpened cleaver to Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2007 drama There Will Be Blood.
Oh, my god, the pain…the pain! A couple of things happening at the moment have had The Butcher enduring flashbacks again…and it hasn’t been pretty. The acclaim slathered all over notoriously self-indulgent tosser Paul Thomas Anderson’s ham-fisted One Battle After Another and the return to (over) acting of Daniel Day-Lewis got The Butcher thinking not just about how much he hates triple-barrelled names, but also about said duo’s much-loved but near unendurable 2007 collaboration, There Will Be Blood.
“Drainage! Drainage, Eli, you boy. Drained dry. I’m so sorry. Here, if you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake, and I have a straw…there it is, that’s a straw, you see? You watching? And my straw reaches acroooooooss the room, and starts to drink your milkshake…I…drink…your…milkshake! I drink it up!”
With these ridiculous, gratingly annoying words – combined with enough foot stomping and leg twisting to drive an entire line dancing event – British actor Daniel Day-Lewis banged and bashed his way into the hearts of movie critics, Oscar voters and film snobs everywhere. In a cinematic masturbatory display rarely if ever rivalled, pundits across the globe lauded this “brave”, “towering” performance as if it literally signified nothing short of The Second Coming.
What it really is, however, is the most thickly sliced chunk of ham wrapped in celluloid since Al Pacino hoo-hawed his way across the screen as a blind Vietnam veteran in the utterly execrable The Scent Of A Woman. In a fine indication that Oscar voters obviously like their meat cured and salty, Big Al also scored a Best Actor gong for this over-the-top piece of pantomime.
Daniel Day-Lewis is not, however, the only thing wrong with There Will Be Blood. Obviously choosing the film’s title as a means to make audiences stick around out of curiosity, writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson (the kind of wanker that critics like to call a “visionary”) is at his turgid, over-long worst here, delivering a film every bit as sluggishly paced and tedious as his previous “indie epics” Boogie Nights and Magnolia.
Sure, Anderson made a shorter film with Punch Drunk Love, but that starred Adam Sandler, so it was always going to be crap anyway. If you asked a randomly selected group of film critics to give you a list of their favourite movies from the first decade of the new millennium, most of them would have There Will Be Blood in there somewhere. Is there any greater indication of a film’s status as a pretentious, emotionally hollow experience? Pour us a milkshake…we’ll drink to that!
Want to read more from The Butcher? Check out his angry missives against Les Miserables, The King’s Speech, Picnic At Hanging Rock, The Magnificent Seven, Gone With The Wind, The Right Stuff, 81/2, Pulp Fiction, Easy Rider, The Shawshank Redemption, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Wizard Of Oz, Jaws, Black Swan, Gladiator, Chopper, I’m Not There, Interstellar, Marvel Studios and Citizen Kane.
