[The sound is a bit off in these clips, but, still, while they're up, enjoy these highlights.]
It's a movie about surfaces, clearly. And depths. And the reserves erupting forth. This dynamic informs the whole of the film, including its finale, which really isn't as out of synch with the rest of the picture as detractors think it is; it's just another confrontation, but bloodier, bigger. There's a perpetual swelling. The finale is the final catharsis, after the midway-through expulsion*. Given that the film is about this oil, and equates Daniel Plainview with the oil, with modern technology pushing forward (dig that shot of the camera-as-train upon Daniel and HW's arrival in Little Boston), and with the art of movies (it's what he's working on, like a conductor, like a director), you could say, as I hinted in my year-end piece, that this is a film about film as catharsis. (Or, more broadly, art as catharsis; however I'll stick to the film being an argument about/for film since it is, of course, a film.) The working over of fears hidden by the everyday, by the will to dissimulate one's life. (Isn't that all Plainview does? Does he ever, truly see plainly? When?) Film as
*This talk could easily slip into a discourse on sex and cumming and all that, but I'm not going there, although Keith may.
**One thing that may set PDL above TWBB, at first glance, is its explicit argument about sound in cinema, what with the harmonium and all those phones. But what's great about the new picture is its insistence on score as its argument about sound as a space in cinema (what I've called the operatics of the film; which can be seen to point towards the finale's alleged grandiloquence).
***PTA's humor always runs dark and nervy, which is why the almost slapstick spectacle of the baptism got me to guffaw, even here at home in this shitty youtube clip. But it's not all willy-nilly silly. There's consequences in PTA's worlds. And, like our world, moods shift rather quickly, and subtly, which is why I buy into the hug there at the end, when Daniel is back in his seat on the pew.
a lot in the past month. Probably has something to do with February and all its baggage (social and personal) but I'm not in the mood to investigate that. Rather, I offer the second song on that album (maybe the best song on that long player?) as evidence of another melody (emotion) that's been on repeat in my brain. Plus, of course, it's just a great song: full of life, pathetic explosions, reasons, surprises and, yes, love. --RWK
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