Fanboy

Today I saw "There Will be Blood" with some friends, and I have to say that I enjoyed the film a great deal, but on further examination of my reasons for liking the film, I have to question my response to it. It is effectively a tour de force from Daniel Day-Lewis. He comes on the screen, dominates each scene, casts a tall and dark shadow over the rest of the cast (which the manic efforts of Paul Dano just barely manage to keep up with), and generally wows the hell out of the audience. At my viewing the audience gasped in unison at DDL's performance.

I also respect the movie for its rejection of the traditional narrative structure. There is not really rising action to climax followed by a falling action to epilogue. The plot actually manages to resemble a human being's life, with a series of significant events, horror, victory, ignominy, and a lesson that can be accepted or rejected as one pleases. I would call it a very good movie.

However, I have to admit that a certain amount of my enjoyment of this film derived directly from my love for Daniel Day-Lewis. I have seen him in multiple movies and he is among the ranks of the performers who I always enjoy. Daniel Day-Lewis, Edward Norton, Christopher Walken, and Johnny Depp are all actors who I can watch no matter what role they are playing. I am a fanboy for these Hollywood personalities. I would probably watch any movie they made. Edward Norton recently made a film, "The Painted Vail," which was given poor reviews and called a vanity project. I will see this movie eventually, purely on the basis of his involvement in it. I saw "The Score", starring Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, and Edward Norton--purely on the basis of Norton's appearance. I couldn't have cared less about the two giants of cinema being present on the screen. He was all I came for.

Day-Lewis is the single actor whom I most respect for the force of performance and his craft. He is a powerhouse. The Tom Hanks vehicle "Castaway" struck me as an unforgivably stupid concept--much as I like Tom Hanks, my interest in two hours of nothing but him and a volleyball is slight. But I would watch three hours of nothing but Daniel Day-Lewis. Thinking on "The Gangs of New York" I realized that Scorsese had made something that was not actually a good film. The plot is a little contrived; I feel that it leads inexorably, rather than logically to the climax. Some of the key performances are stale (Cameron Diaz and DiCaprio are both miscast). But all of this is made up for, and more, by DDL as Bill the Butcher. He grabs both of your eyes every time he appears. His every movement dominates your attention. You can scarcely see anything but him.

So what does this say about me, with regard to films? I would like even a terrible movie on the basis of one my favorites appearing in it. This is provable by example--I greatly enjoy "The Rundown", a rather odious Dwayne Johnson vehicle which happens to feature Christopher Walken. So is "There Will be Blood" actually a good movie? Probably. I think it is. So does the Academy, but hell, what do they know about anything? These people gave Halle Berry an Oscar the year before she was the Bond Girl in one of the worst films in the series. They stole Denzel's Oscar for "Malcolm X" and gave it over to Al Pacino's scenery-chewing blind-man romp, and didn't make up the error for nine whole years. So you can't trust them.

As a side note, I am hotly anticipating the coming "Incredible Hulk" movie, featuring Edward Norton in the starring role with a screenplay credit to boot. I would eat any poison pill if it had the right kind of sugar on it!