There Will Be Blood (2007)

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.
Starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano.

In a Nutshell: A ruthless prospector’s quest for wealth during America’s oil boom.

Leaning shamelessly on the hyperbolic, I will boldly pronounce There Will Be Blood to be American filmmaking at its very finest. It completely immerses into its universe; every scene meticulously crafted into its own masterpiece. But enough indiscriminate fawning, to what degree is this film so masterful? To begin, the rise and fall of oil baron Daniel Plainview (a soon-to-be iconic performance by Daniel Day-Lewis) is a microcosm on the sweeping themes that define our American history. Community versus the individual, capitalism versus religion, ruthless self-assertion mixed with ambition, and the self-made American’s empire built on lies, opportunism and misanthropy. Both Lewis and director Paul Thomas Anderson say these with a glorious embellishment, but TWBB never resembles self-parody.

Despite the film’s grandiose themes playing front and center, TWBB never loses sight of its main focus, the corruption of Plainview. Formally a shrewd businessman raising the orphaned son of one of his workers, his volcanic rise into oil poisons his soul beyond salvation. The quiet displays of humanity quickly burn up in Plainview’s uncontrollable greed and anger, culminating in a horrifying, nearly inhuman monster. Day-Lewis is simply transcendent, a ferocious intensity barely restrained by his assured, taciturn delivery. Paul Dano as an equally opportunistic preacher displays a childish petulance that is wholly indicative of the character, and was unfortunately mistaken by some to be overripe acting.

There Will Be Blood is no less a culmination of laudable scope and beautiful execution. Robert Elswit’s haunting cinematography turns the American West into a harsh, alien landscape. Not just for our experience, but for Plainview’s; eyeing the burgeoning civilization and its inhabitants as simple exploitation. Jonny Greenwood’s unique score supplies a foreboding resonance to Plainview’s story and is strong enough as a standalone masterpiece. As the story unfolds, tragedy comes by hand of God and man and Plainview’s growing success further robs him of his ties to humanity. The finale scene shocks not by its animalistic nature of its actions, but of the way ambition coupled with materialistic hunger has damaged Plainview beyond repair. Anderson has masterfully constructed his own tale of brutal success and comeuppance, a truly American tale sparing no spilled drop of blood. True cinema excellence.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

Directed by John Huston.
Starring Humphrey Bogart and Walter Huston.

In a Nutshell: Three men find themselves at odds after a successful excavation of gold.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is an unflinching, black humored parable on the greed of men. For a studio film carrying some serious matinee appeal, it unabashedly strikes at the moral complexes that would leave us to sell our humanity for some buried treasure. The film stars Humphrey Bogart and Tim Holt as Dobbs and Curtin, drifters caught up in a quest for gold by the seasoned Howard (Walter Huston, John’s father). They make their way to Mexico and, sure enough, find plenty of gold to abolish any future job worries. It is keeping the gold that ends in downfall.

While there is some zesty adventure to be had, it is the characterizations of the three protagonists and the fates that ascribe for themselves that drive TTotSM. Bogart plunges fearlessly into his role as the pitiful, desperate Dobbs. Devoid of any movie star charm, Bogart teeters on self-destruction, never letting go of his prize. Huston is the old-time prospector and has a few amusing moments with that character. But Huston gives Howard a quiet sensibility to his surroundings, knowing all too well the cost of their success. Holt is also effective as a good heart tested by his situation. The plot unfolds into false pretenses, murderous bandits, and the cruelty of Mexico’s heat (photographed in scorching detail by Ted McCord) as the men hold onto their remaining sanity.

By the end, each man gets what he deserves, to varying severity and Huston has given an uncompromising look at the crumbled ruins of men’s souls. The screenplay (also written by Huston) does not wallow in analytical probing, but shows us through every action, gesture and line the pathos of each man’s struggle. Shot on location, there is a haunting, rugged beauty to the sparse plantation and arid sun that complements the film’s realistic focus. A perfectly competent adventure film, but an even more powerful depiction of the material hunger that can comprise even the purest of consciences.

Straw Dogs (1971)

Directed by Sam Peckinpah.
Starring Dustin Hoffman and Susan George.

In a Nutshell: A newlywed couple face the harassment of a rural England town.

Sam Peckinpah, despite his well-earned reputation as “Bloody Sam,” is an incredibly underrated director in his depiction of humanity versus life’s cruelty. Though with Straw Dogs, it’s questionable whether his nihilism got the better of him. Straw Dogs involves two young newlyweds, meek mathematician David (Dustin Hoffman) and childish flirt Amy (Susan George). They move to Amy’s hometown where David’s American ways immediately irks the townspeople. David also hires one of Amy’s old beaus as a handyman, and Amy does not miss an opportunity to flaunt herself before the workers. Amy defines herself as a woman who can control others with her sexuality, though her teasing finds herself raped by her ex. That she ends up succumbing to the rape, evokes an adolescent confusion between both men and whatever uncontrolled feelings that follow. But when David takes in a man wanted for murder, he summons up enough muscle to defend his home from the mobbing townspeople in a lengthy, unrestrained bloodbath. And this was where the film lost me.

That is not to say the scene of David defending his home is what undermines the movie (though its excessiveness is borderline pornography). But it compromises what the movie could have been about. Throughout the movie, David is a wimp; a portrait of man pushed and kicked around by the crude townspeople. His marital conflicts with Amy never come to closure and the tension she creates just ends up being more fuel for David’s fire. If everything about this film is presented exactly as Peckinpah intended, I can only infer that he intended to show the animalistic capacity of civilized men within placed in the most barbaric of settings (That sounds offensive to small-town British folk, but given Peckinpah’s portrayal, I have no apologies). There is the meditation on violence. David is left unsure of his own murderous tendencies, but the film’s events can only apply to David. As a commentary on our own capacity for violence, its presentation is too extreme to resonate. It seems like Peckinpah had the seeds of a good idea, but too much broad characterization and plot elements leave it a blood-soaked mess.

For the basic gist of Straw Dogs at only a fraction of the running time, I advise watching this. Believe me, it is no less ridiculous.

Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)

Directed by Werner Herzog.
Starring Klaus Kinski and Helena Rojo.

In a Nutshell: Conquistadors travel down river in an ill-fated search for gold.

Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God is as haunting a decent into madness as cinema will produce. Anything to the contrary needs only to look into the glazed, bright and curled lips of Klaus Kinski as the aforementioned Aguirre. He is the member of an expedition chosen by Gonzalo Pizarro to find El Dorado; a team woefully unprepared for the horrors that await them in the jungle. Following the death of the team leader, Aguirre is put in command and leads the group further into the unknown. With a production as rife with misfortune and madness as the finished piece, Herzog brings an amused detachment to the conquistador’s self-destruction.

Aguirre presents the story of the quest for greatness and the elements of nature that crush it in the end. Here, the jungles of the Amazon are an insidious force against the men ready to swallow them whole. A whole raft of men is shown mysteriously slaughtered in the morning. Men are fallen by silent arrows shot from the forest. Herzog himself never really delves into the minds of any one character. Even Aguirre himself, despite the electricity of Kinski’s performance, is only the unstable, greedy dreamer that others see. But it is all that is needed to suck the audience into Aguirre’s blind obsession for gold and to feel dread at the danger he ignores.

The film’s opening shot of the conquistadors descending down the mountains carries a poetic resonance. But on the same coin, Herzog views them at a distance, enough to have them lost in the thicket of trees and vegetation while the inhuman strains of the organ plays them on. Their river trip is not full of plot contrivances, nor is it just a parade of hallucinatory imagery (though there is plenty of the latter). It is a harrowing view at immoral ambition in the face of the impossible and the ensuing tragedy. The final scene is one of great sadness with Aguirre stranded forever in his own delusions against an unforgiving reality.

Apocalypse Now (1979)

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
Starring Marlon Brando and Martin Sheen.

In a Nutshell: An army captain is sent into the jungle to assassinate an insane colonel.

Equal parts spectacle and meditation, Apocalypse Now is one of the grandest examples of modern cinema. The story of introverted army captain Willard (Martin Sheen) sent to confront rogue colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) in the jungles of Cambodia, Francis Ford Coppola’s retelling of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness provides a searing cinematic look into the delicate balances that keep most men on the edge of madness. Though I hold Apocalypse Now to very high esteem, there is not much new ground to tread in terms of film discussion. However, Coppola did release a Redux cut in 2001, adding in previously deleted scenes to give the film a slightly new narrative. While met with largely positive reaction, I felt that it turned a near perfect film into one that was merely pretty good. Most of the changes are minor, but all of the big additions take a little bit away from the horrifying 1979 masterpiece. Without much ado, Coppola’s biggest Redux changes.

Psychotic air colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall), a man whose love of carnage is only outmatched by his penchant for surf and opera, is by far the film’s most memorable character. His senseless and bloodthirsty reputation shows the sort of madness held in respect by the U.S. military. He creates a memorable impression despite only 20 minutes of screentime. After his famous napalm speech in the Redux version, we are witness to Kilgore throwing a tantrum at his surfing buddies and then yelling at Willard via copter for his surfboard back (which Willard stole in a decidedly uncharacteristically light moment). Besides ruining his perfect send-off, the additional scenes edge Kilgore into cartoon territory and just prove unnecessary. Later in the film, Willard and his crew encounter a downed Playboy bunny helicopter in the middle of a monsoon. Willard negotiates some fuel for some bunny time for his crew, in another lighthearted moment. This interlude does show the madness of Vietnam taking effect on the bunnies, but is still unneeded. Keeping the scene in sacrifices the poignancy of the helicopter leaving the USO show with soldiers desperately clinging on.

Even more intrusive is the crew’s stay at a French plantation. The scene takes place after Willard makes it to the last U.S. outpost before Kurtz, so the whole sequence is incredibly disruptive to the narrative’s path to the finale. At the plantation, Willard receives commentary by the plantation’s head about the French’s relationship with the Vietnamese compared to the U.S.’s. Again, not needed since Apocalypse Now is not about Vietnam or any of the politics, just a descent into madness that just happens to occur during the war. Willard also romances a widow, with far too much emphasis put on his duel nature (the half shrouded image of Willard juxtaposed against a stone statue says this far more effectively). One final unnecessary scene has Kurtz reading Willard some articles from Time magazine about America’s fabricated success in Vietnam. Again, more war commentary that just does not add anything. And it is curious to note that this is the only rime Kurtz is glimpsed in broad daylight. It breaks the powerful, mysterious air about the character and not for an interesting scene either. To conclude, between the original and the Redux version the choice is clear. The Redux version is just too loaded down by extraneous scenes that add too little or too much. For a truly cinematic experience, revisit the original in all its glory. All the bombast, the madness, and the horror, the horror.

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

Directed by Charlie Kaufman.
Starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Samantha Morton.

In a Nutshell: A director confronts his mortality while creating his own life on stage.

Here is a movie that almost begs not to be understood, and is as full of visual and narrative trippiness as one would expect from Charlie Kaufman (making his directorial debut). It is a film of great ambition, but also about ambition and how it brings us closer towards finding meaning (any meaning) in our short blip here on Earth. Phillip Seymour Hoffman stars as Caden Cotard, a theater director who uses the MacArthur genius grant to create his life’s masterpiece. He plans to transpose his entire life onto the stage, to celebrate and revel in the mundane of everyday life. Cotard expands production into a life-size model of New York with doppelgangers of Cotard and every meaningful person in his life.

During his production, Cotard tries to play God and crams his actors into the roles he believes their real-life partners play. Through his own double (a man who was studied him for 20 years), he becomes conscious of his own personality. As time wears on, his loved ones die and his city fades into a gray, abandoned void. To follow every plot thread and hallucination threatens to turn the viewing experience into an analytical one, rather than an emotional one. Hoffman’s Cotard remains the most accessible part of the movie. He fears growing old, he makes mistakes with his many love interests, laments losing touch with his daughter and uses this sprawling city-sized play as his path to creative fulfillment. This is a dense film, with no logical entry point to tackle its themes. But why discard this in favor of fast-food culture junk like Transformers? Synecdoche, New York embraces all the fears and neurosis that encompass our existence. If that doesn’t hold important to you, then I don’t know what will.

Close-up (1990)

Directed by Abbas Kiarostami.

In a Nutshell: A man goes on trial for impersonating Mohsen Makhmalbaf.

Abbas Kiarostami’s Close-up is a sort of mutant documentary that blurs the lines between reality and simulacra. The film is about the trial of Hossein Sabzian who impersonated filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf and to trick a family into appearing in a movie for him. His reasoning lies in a love for art and the clout to spread knowledge of Iran’s cinema to its people. It is reenacted with the same real-life players from the incident, though it is never clear how much has been fabricated for the cameras. Close-up is endlessly self-reflexive, but seeks to echo our obsession with media fame and respect. And rather than scorn, Kiarostami gives a simple, yet touching look at our fixation on film.

Such a story could have seen its absurdity spun into a film capitalizing on the desperation and failure of a man like Sabizan. But Kiarostami approaches with humanistic concern, showcasing the purity of a man who overcame his self-consciousness in the skin of another man. Sabizen was now somebody, someone with a voice and the influence to project it onto the screen. Though given that Sabizan is playing himself playing Makhmalbaf, Kiarostami hardly needs to force our sympathy and the lines between performer and reality blur together. Close-up is not about our perspective on Sabizan’s saga, but of Kiarostami’s. He moves past his hall of mirrors to question the self-meaning we cultivate from art and the identity we forge.

In the end, Makhmalbaf himself greets Sabizan in open arms. Makhmalbaf asks Sabizan if he prefers his stolen identity to his own. Sabizan tearfully explains, “I’m tired of being me.” Kiarostami has shown that the masks we wear and the realities we project are no less real, and no less driven by our deepest desires. The final scene shows both men driving off on Makhmalbaf’s motorcycle, redeemed through their unifying passion. A beautiful achievement on our most human of artistic longings.