Monday, January 21, 2008

Oscar Watch Update


I've seen more films now that will be vying for the Oscar and it still comes down to two I think. Those two are No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood. Granted, there are still many to see from 2007 that I have not seen yet but for now, these two seem like the top Oscar hopefuls.

In my first Oscar conjecture I figured Sweeney Todd would make a bigger splash and while I didn't particularly dislike it or particularly like it, none of it has stayed with me and I can't imagine it has any legs going into the nomination process.

I believe NCFOM and TWBB have the best shot at Best Picture. I've just seen TWBB and the objections of some over the music left me shrugging my shoulders. I see no problem with the music being used in an operatic way to propel the story towards its inevitable conclusion. Every note implies that doom is just over the horizon. The title implies it as well. And so there is. And over-acting? No. Bad actors over-act, great actors skillfully play it big. Daniel Day-Lewis plays it big and his Daniel Plainview character is big - and it is mesmerizing to watch.

Others have tried to look at it as an allegory but I don't see it. If so it is the most unfocused allegory I have ever seen and I'm not even sure what it would be (Capitalism destroys Religion? Competing dogmas destroy each other? You got me.) But to understand further I have to talk about the ending and so if you haven't seen it I will begin spoiling NOW.

Eli Sunday (played terrifically by Paul Dano) comes to see Daniel Plainview (the aforementioned scenery engulfing Daniel Day-Lewis). Eli needs help, financial help, and Daniel has the money and power to clear everything up. Daniel makes Eli reveal himself as a fraud and renounce his belief. Earlier in the film, Daniel has to go through a baptism in order to get what he needs from one of Eli's followers. When Daniel is admitting to abandoning his son there are moments of real emotion in his voice as he says before others what he doesn't want to say to himself. Despite his cruel behavior later with his son, I believe that he loved him at one time and losing him later in life drove the final nail in Daniel's coffin of sanity. If not, why bother having the scene of complete and final abandonment of his son in his home take place at all, much less right before the final scene with Eli.

Back to Eli and his humiliation at the hands of Daniel. This is where there is argument amongst viewers as to whether Eli ever believed to begin with. If not, the renouncing of his beliefs is just as empty as Daniel's renouncing of sin at the baptism (with the single exception of the statements relating to his son). So was Eli a fraud all along? I think that depends on the viewer. I think Eli believed and does believe at the moment Daniel begins humiliating him but is desperate enough to renounce anything to get what he needs. Just as Daniel did not want to say he had abandoned his son but said it anyway - he needed that pipeline and nothing was going to stand in his way, certainly not his heart or soul. Both characters are willing to sacrifice integrity and honesty with themselves to get what they need. Beliefs are tossed aside to make way for necessity. If he never believed, there is no point to this humiliation. And if he did believe then we can see just how far he is willing to go to get what he needs.

After the humiliation is successful Daniel tells Eli he won't give him any money for what Eli offers because he, Daniel, has already taken it. In fact, he drank it up. At this point Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano go into hyper-acting overdrive and I must admit (and I hope I don't offend any viewers who found the ending deadly serious) I was giggling like a schoolgirl. I couldn't stop laughing. Not guffawing, just uncontrolled giddy chuckling as I watched these two actors perform a final scene so insane that a viewer probably would have had as much luck guessing this ending as they would have had guessing a movie about lonely people in Los Angeles would end with a frog shower. But my laughter had a joyous quality to it. I was happy that there's someone making movies who doesn't take themselves so goddamned seriously that they can't occasionally say, "Hey, why not end it with Plainview, Sunday, bowling pins, blood and a butler?" Why not indeed? Plainview's crazy, bitter and broken. That's clear in the final scene with his son. So where to take his character from there? To the end of course. The logical end. And then? He's finished. Finished with his tasks, finished with "wrapping up personal business," finished with his son, finished with revenge and finished - as in 'ruined' - because there's a corpse with a bowling pin imprint on the back of his skull laying in the middle of his home bowling alley. He's finished. I wonder what his last line should be?

Spoilers Ended

So there's a quick reaction. I think No Country for Old Men carries more weight to it but There Will Be Blood has the "bigness" that Oscar notices. For now, I'll stick with No Country for my own personal pick and put my money on There Will Be Blood as the Oscar pick.