Second Thoughts

Just watched the last twenty or so minutes of There Will Be Blood, and mighty glad I did. The last two scenes - well, more encounters I suppose - are uniformly excellent and go a long way to justifying the whole narrative arc of the film. Day-Lewis's extraordinary creation descends into a kind of madness (but I suppose he's been there all along really) disowning his 'son', H.W., in a powerfully, painfully emotional sequence, and doing even worse to Eli Sunday, his sort-of nemesis throughout the movie. It's all very horrible and entirely inevitable in this mythic world. I made the mistake of trying to watch something I thought was trying to be realistic when I should have been thinking Shakespeare.

So now I've come to the conclusion I was probably wrong-headed in all my criticisms of what I watched yesterday. The problem, and possibly the reward, is that I'll need to view the whole thing again. But this won't be soon. I need a bit of distance. And a whole movie in a couple of days is a big thing for me.