Paul Thomas Anderson - There Will Be Blood (2007)

When we first meet Daniel Plainview he seems almost fetal, cosseted by the earth, submerged in darkness, chipping away at the rock around him in a way that prefigures escape. It’s not long before he does emerge, and when he does he seems nearly fully formed. Scooping up the details of an invented persona – an orphaned child, assistants, an oil-fortune – he soon seems comfortably set in this new identity. This is Daniel Plainview, the formative tycoon, and we will believe him if he says he is an oilman.

The tragedy of There Will Be Blood lies in watching this figure peak, teeter on the brink, and collapse. Along the way he becomes entwined in a duplicitous spiral with Eli Sunday, his preacher foil, who matches him in ambition but not necessarily in will. This is a standard tragedy, but not an especially tragic one. There is hardly a moment where we’re not sure Daniel deserves everything he gets. He is a brutal man of large means and low methods, but we have been with him from the beginning, and so become a part of his fall.

The essential conflict between Plainview and Sunday is established early on, in mirroring scenes set in different ramshackle sheds. Each confrontation is built around a fundamental deception, which both sets a clear pattern for their shared patchwork of lies and acts as the first of successive attempts at one-upmanship.
In the first, the teenage healer Eli appears as Paul, a presumably invented twin brother, reticently offering information about a prospective windfall, for a price. In the second, Daniel is the imposter, working his way on to the Sunday’s land under the guise of a quail hunter on a trip with his son. With this, the game has been established: Eli sees his rival’s lie, but cannot acknowledge it because it is bound together with his own.

In this way, the two become spitefully united in a sort of protracted death struggle, the maneuvers of each disabling both while also tying them closer together. We see in their second scene together that both seem to exist in double. There is Eli, the holy man, and Paul, the ambitious striver. There is also Plainview the oil man and Plainview the hunter, although it’s clear that both are assumed guises worn by the man himself, a vacuous cavity filled only with a driving sense of competition.

While never explicitly stated, the idea that the film seems at first to put across is that Paul, if not anything as unlikely as Eli’s never-again-seen twin brother, is his invention. That he exists as an expression of the preacher’s inexpressible earthly desires. It seems more balanced to posit, however, that Paul is the real person, while Eli is the created double. This is hinted at, both externally (the character is named Paul, following Anderson’s convention of keeping characters’ first names consistent with those of his actors) and internally. Notice Eli’s behavior in his confrontation with his father, the way he spits the name of "your son Paul" at him, like something the father had created and the son rejected.

Even more concretely, the tone here assures that we should patently assume Eli to be as artificial as possible. This is a film that, if not assuming the worst of its characters, certainly spends most of its time wallowing in their amorality. Immorality, meanwhile, becomes increasingly relevant, as more and more collateral is swept up in their growing struggle.

Aside from this, the greatest hurt these two characters, engaged in what Anderson himself calls a “boxing match,” cause is to each other. This could have been a film about the twin snakes of ruthless commerce and self-serving religion twisting their way around society, but it isn’t. They may encroach upon it, but they only really twist around each other.

And while Eli’s lie is obvious, Plainview’s is much more confusing. Neither are what they appear to be, but Daniel is also not what he appears to be beneath that, which would make him the clear winner in this struggle if he was entirely aware of this himself. Simply stated, Plainview is not a monster. He is a man who is trying very hard to be a monster.

He really exists then, in triplicate, seen through three different lenses. First there is the public figure – smooth, family oriented and effective. Second is the imagined version of himself – misanthropic, friendless and alone. Third is his true self, a hollow vacuum clinging to the dream of the second, filled only with the crumbs of human emotion and a virulent desire to succeed.

Seen in this way, the oil that Plainview draws from the earth becomes a visual symbol for the hate he forces out of himself, the black liquid pooling out on a dead landscape, violent explosions resulting from extreme pressure. The inability of Plainview to fully inhabit this second character is evidenced by these outbursts, each of which occurs as a direct response to the validity of its strength. When he bluntly threatens to cut the Standard Oil man’s throat, this is not a cruel means of doing business or even the behavior of a wild eccentric. It is the act of a man who has been hurt and has loathed the reminder that he can hurt, who is striking back and vastly overcompensating.

This hurt, of course, relates directly to H.W., the orphan child who is his son but isn’t but also is, if that’s not too hard to follow. As much as Plainview would like to believe that the child is just a prop for his oilman persona, visual evidence piles up that he cannot completely squelch a sense of feeling for him. He is not a good father, and when his greed faces his parental instincts the latter doesn’t stand a chance, but he still has some feeling for this boy that he cannot excuse in himself. When the man suggests he retire to take care of his son, we can see the barb penetrate all three of his layers. He claims to be insulted at the suggestion of how to raise his son; in fact he is more likely mortified that he cares at all.

The kernel of family conflict, especially between fathers and children, has been present in all of Anderson’s work, and here the hazy relationship between Plainview and his assumed son turns into a second conflict which provides fuel for the first. Although it may be oversimplifying, it’s possible to establish the conflict between Eli and Daniel as a proxy for the real one, which exists with H.W., and even more deeply, between Daniel and the scraps of tenderness that cling to his insides. Each conflict between the father and son results in some violent outburst. These, of course, generally end up directed at Eli. Even when H.W. clumsily tries to murder his father, Daniel cannot bear to strike him. Instead he scoops him up in his arms, showing that the feeling that exists inside him may be fragile, but he cannot bear to fully destroy it.

He also holds off on destroying Eli, because without him he has no conflict and without some competition he is nothing. His quest from the beginning has been to make himself into something; once he’s done that he doesn’t know what to do with what he's created. All he has is H.W., a point drive home by their final confrontation. Robbed of his son and unwilling to destroy himself he instead destroys his competitor, reinforing the idea of Eli as a son by proxy and blowing the entire illusion of the two of them apart.

All of this stems from the scene where Daniel reaches the Pacific, which in som ways functions as the climax of the film. To reach this point has been his goal all along. Once achieved, the film lapses into a brief, lone sequence of brightness and clarity. The ocean is presented in dulcet tones, soft and laced with light. But something quickly appears in Daniel’s eyes – the knowledge that he has achieved his dream and nothing lies behind it.

Here, his goal achieved and feeling at his lowest, he aims for an external misanthropy in the conversation he has with the man who claims to be his brother. He claims a total disconnect with the world around him, but those of us who have followed him from the beginning can see how unconvincing a feint this is. Daniel may “see the worst in people,” but his only chance for maintaining his invented persona is to produce the same in himself.

Magnetic Fields - Distortion (2008)

What is wrong with this album? I'd like to label it another scantily portioned conceptual failure, on the same level as 2004's equally shoddy i, but I can't just leave it at that. The problems go deeper. The good parts, however, are better, and this leaves Distortion as more inherently flawed but also more interesting.

i failed at a basic level because its theme was so arbitrary (14 songs all beginning with the same letter!) and pointless. Maybe, following the sucess of 69 Love Songs, Merritt was making a backhanded comment of the impotence of concept albums themselves, but the songs were so anemic that it didn't matter either way. The only passable material seemed cropped straight from 69, the rest was fey baroque trash lacking most of the humor Merritt needs so badly to temper his usual melancholy.

Distortion's concept doesn't fail so totally, but it's not very good either. Basically it's a thick varnish of shoegaze fuzz, with guitar and twinkling piano floating in space behind the static line of Merrit's bassy voice. It seems a shame at first, like the opaque sheen of the production is blocking some kind of brilliance inside, but this really isn't the case. This is a gelatin mold in which a mediocre album is trapped.

Case in point: "California Girls." The album's first vocal track takes ridiculous shots at the title girls ("looking down their perfect noses / at me and my kind") on its way to an intensely stupid revenge fantasy. Is this supposed to be clever? Me and my kind? This speaks of some bitter, sophomoric victimization fetish and Merritt sounds like a teenager commisserating with the rest of the drama clique. It's a shame, because his songs really click when their bitterness is reflexively aware of itself, turning the joke around on itself. This is just empty whining at the most obvious of targets.

Again, I'll concede that maybe the lyrics are working on some ironic plane that I cannot comprehend, but it's nearly impossible to tell, mired as they are in this bowl of pea soup and sung by frequent contributor Claudia Gonson, whose voice is as flat as Merritt's without any of the wry knowingness.

John Cassavetes - Shadows (1958)

There’s an ugliness to Shadows that can’t be explained by inexperience or aging film or low production values. It’s a challenging design, one of grit and in-your-face truth, and it’s shocking at first, especially compared with the meticulous staging of most films of this era. Ultimately, it’s rewarding. This is Cassavetes’ first film, and also the first genuine ‘independent’ film, at least by today’s definition of the term. This kind of incipiency only amplifies the film’s slapdash appeal, turning it into the stuff of legend. Many of the offbeat conventions that indie (for better or worse) has come to hold so dear can be traced back to here in some sense – location shooting (on streets and in cramped apartments), semi-improvised dialogue, naturally stilted acting. The ugliness is self-evident, even proud. The opening scene, at a raucous basement club show, is willfully shambolic, clearly more concerned with depicting the atmosphere of the room than framing it in any conventional sense. The camera jumps, the crowd surges in an out of the frame, the soundtrack doesn’t match the music being performed. It’s amateur stuff, but it’s also a willful challenge to cinematic convention, right down to the quavering appearance of the title card over the shot.

The first character we focus on is Ben, a sullen hipster with bug-eye sunglasses who stumbles into the scene. He comes off like James Dean without most of the good looks, and this stylization appears intentional on his part, especially in the dramatic entrance. He climbs up above the crowd, crouching alone on a table-top and indulging himself in a miniature existential freak-out

The reference point seems clearly to be Rebel without a Cause, but it also becomes clear that it’s not Cassavetes who’s referencing this as much as Ben himself. A good third of Shadows (Ben’s segments, this is a family drama, the rest of the action is devoted to his sister and brother) works on the same themes of alienation and angst the Nicholas Ray presented in that film. But while Ray drew out these feelings into melodramatic bursts of suburban hellfire dripping with Technicolor, Cassavetes presents another direct challenge to the establishment. Again, the ugliness. It’s everywhere, the filthy downtown streets, the greasy spoon diners, the concert halls. Cassavetes indulges in it, just like Ben indulges himself in the Dean character, which works to instantly identify his measured faux-badass persona. Note that one of these is the definition of realism, the other the definition of fallacy.

Cause or not, Ben and his friends are not rebels as much as creepy hepcats and small time hustlers. They mostly act like jerks, preying on women, mocking sculptures at the MOMA, getting into fights, swatting at pigeons (see above). It’s refreshing that Cassavetes, working with a cast on the fringes, does not take this as a cue to unleash the holy torment of society’s woeful misfits. Ben’s rebellions are stupid. They are explained and sourced, so we can feel for the character behind them, but they’re rash and immature, and, like the actions of the overzealous young people Godard (who was working off his own Ray obsession) was creating at the time, are embarrassingly shaped by the expectations of modern cinematic clichés.

I’ve already mentioned Cassavetes’ taste for confrontation with the establishment. He makes direct reference to it throughout the movie, posing his characters directly in front of marquees and posters that slyly comment on the action. As Leila, Ben’s sister, faces off with a grasping stalker, she is surrounded by pouty shots of Bardot in And God Created Woman and other sex romps. Hugh, Ben’s brother, contemplates a potentially devastating career decision like so:

What is Cassavetes saying here? Is he trying out the idea that cinematic conventions have intruded so far into everyday life that they influence these characters without their even realizing? I think that’s close, but not exactly it, especially because Ben is the only character who seems directly influenced in this way. I think that this is a double point, about the outsiders this film portrays (who in some ways stand for the film itself) who despite their fringe status still find themselves effected and peered over by society’s rules and mores. They are outside society, but not separate from it, an idea reinforced by Cassavetes’ tenuous love-hate relationship with his cinematic forebears.

Of course, the discussion of Ben’s family brings up the one huge issue I haven’t touched on – race. This is a film about outsiders and it uses race as a driving point for this topic, confronting it in frank and realistic terms, more so than any film I’ve seen up to its point in history. The three siblings are a multiracial family; they have no visible parents and live together in one apartment.

The idea here is that we have three siblings and three colors. Hugh appears to be black. Leila appears to be white. Ben looks like he’s somewhere in between. These differences in shade greatly alter their characters and their destinies, effectively settling each of them into a specific role in their lives and in the film.

Here we see that the overbearing confluence of fantasy and reality doesn’t only intersect in Ben’s rebellions. It also persists in his siblings lives, resulting in an air of failed attempts and unrealistic expectations. Hugh wants to be famous, or at least respected, but he won’t be, his career is going nowhere and only his manager takes him seriously.

There is an especially heartbreaking scene where the initial embarrassment of having to introduce a dance act gives way to a much larger one. Hugh, still thinking of himself as an artist, refuses to do the introduction at first, but eventually agrees, taking the whole thing in stride, even coming up with a few jokes to tell the audience. His performance, however, is cut short to appease a visibly bored audience. He segues into the introduction but is shouted down by the manager, left standing dumbfounded on the stage

Leila’s tragedy is a little more subtle. She wants to be white, but as much as she appears to be, she never will. The idea that she cannot escape the tendrils of society becomes clear when Tony, her new boyfriend, meets Hugh. He is visibly horrified, shocked to discover this fact about her, and although he is quickly apologetic Hugh does not give him the chance to correct his mistake.

It’s clear that this is partially Leila’s fault. By not telling him she is either being willfully deceitful or living under the assumed fantasy that race doesn’t matter in their little Greenwich village enclave of musicians and intellectuals. It does. As much as Greenwich is a world in itself around this time, it cannot exist separately from the conventions of society. It’s her deceit then, paired with society’s rules, that splits the two apart, even as Tony struggles to apologize. Leila even agrees, after much trepidation, to a date with a black acquaintance.

Despite his status as the blackest (and therefore most marginalized) character, Hugh is the anchor of the family and the only solid force we meet. His race is an obstacle, but it has made him stronger. He’s comfortable with himself. His brother and sister, on the other hand, are intensely uncomfortable with the drop of blackness that haunts their white features. Ben throws a ridiculous fit when a black girl makes advances at him, swinging at her and anyone who tries to restrain him. It’s as if even the suggestion of his hidden blackness is enough to drive him crazy.

The date that Leila goes on sees her struggling repeatedly with the fact that she is not entirely white. It’s as if the encounter itself is forcing her to lose all her illusions about her perceived racial status, which in some ways it is. She puts on a thorny façade with her suitor, blasting him with taciturn rudeness, but he is so balanced and persistent that she eventually collapses from the strain of the act. She ends up in his arms, which feels like less of an acknowledgment than a defeat.

These characters find no resolution, which allows Cassavetes to end the film as he began it, a direct challenge to what was seen as the rules. There’s also an emphasis on movement. Hugh, who may be slipping quickly into failure, decides to press on; at least he’s having a good time. Ben and his friends end up in a tin shack with the shit kicked out of them. This doesn’t stop him from getting up, dusting himself off and posing one more time like a matinee idol.
Before disappearing back into the milieu, another face in a crowd from which he can never fully extricate himself.
Miscellaneous:
It may not be intentional, but Rupert, Hugh’s manager (in the middle), has the whitest voice I have ever heard. Whiter than anyone I have ever met. The kind of ridiculous nasal voice that Dave Chappelle imitates. It’s pure ‘50s, like the faux-British, Connecticut prep school articulation (think Katherine Hepburn) of the immaculately refined, which also seems to have dropped off the face of the earth.

If the Nicholas Ray influence wasn’t apparent enough, his son is in the movie, as Tony.

Who knows how exact the casting was on this, but Ben’s posse plays like a small collection of gangster movie castoffs. On the left, the tough-talking little wise guy with a Napoleon complex, on the right, the steely-jawed, free fisted mug.