There Will Be Blood
Paul Thomas Anderson, USA, 2007o
Los Angeles, Californie, 1902. Après avoir découvert par hasard un vaste gisement de pétrole, le prospecteur avisé Daniel Plainview délaisse les métaux précieux au profit du pétrole. L'impitoyable Daniel suit une piste prometteuse avec son fils adoptif, déterminé à créer un empire. Et tandis que Plainview, à la langue d'argent, se fait passer pour un père de famille digne de confiance afin de convaincre les propriétaires terriens locaux de vendre pour une bouchée de pain de vastes parcelles de terre apparemment stériles, une sombre histoire d'orgueil, d'obsession, de cupidité et de sang se met en place.
Anderson may be the most naturally gifted filmmaker of his generation; he seems incapable of composing a prosaic shot. There Will be Blood has a physicality so pungent, you feel you're living in the past. The sense that you're witnessing a radically different kind of historical epic is reinforced by Jonny Greenwood's score, which eschews period clichés for modern dissonances that are, like the movie itself, both beautiful and terrifying. There Will Be Blood is ferocious, and it will be championed and attacked with an equal ferocity. When the dust settles, we may look back on it as some kind of obsessed classic.
David AnsenThe film is above all a consummate work of art, one that transcends the historically fraught context of its making, and its pleasures are unapologetically aesthetic. It reveals, excites, disturbs, provokes, but the window it opens is to human consciousness itself.
Manohla DarghisThis is a dark, uncompromising film, thrillingly original and distinctive, with a visionary passion. It is a movie against which all directors, and all moviegoers, will want to measure themselves. Paul Thomas Anderson is doing something new with cinema, and you can hardly ask for more than that.
Peter BradshawGalerie photoso
