Congratulations to Daniel Day-Lewis, who won the BAFTA Award for Best Leading Actor for his performance as rapacious oilman Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood. The film opens in Europe this week after its premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival this past weekend.
The film's soundtrack, with music by Jonny Greenwood, recently won the Evening Standard Award for Best Film Score, giving the paper a chance to chat with the composer about "the striking beautiful music that he composed for the magnificent There Will Be Blood." The Evening Standard, in its profile of the composer, says of the score:
It's hard to imagine Paul Thomas Anderson's masterly tale of oil prospecting in 19th-century California without Greenwood's haunting soundtrack, a vital ingredient in the film's remarkable atmosphere of underlying unease ... The result is an intense 40 minutes of at times spooky and deeply uncomfortable, at others rather joyful, orchestral composition. It's a weird mix of horror-movie eeriness and full-blooded neo-romantic strings.
In the in-depth article, Greenwood discusses everything from his earliest compositional inspirations (Messiaen, Penderecki) to the initially intimidating but ultimately rewarding experience of working with Anderson and Day-Lewis on There Will Be Blood. It was Greenwood's work as BBC's composer-in-residence in 2004 that led the director to approach the musician to score his film, also, writes the Evening Standard, "adding weight to the claim that he's emerging as one of our finest modern classical composers."
To read the article, visit thisislondon.co.uk.
As for the film itself, the Evening Standard's Derek Malcolm gives There Will Be Blood five out of five stars and exclaims: "The only person who could trump Martin Scorsese or Terrence Malick as America's best film-maker is surely Paul Thomas Anderson." Malcolm also praises the nuance in Day-Lewis's performance, saying the actor "consistently adds to the power of the film by making Plainview not a villain but the kernel of a critical allegory about America." To read the review, click here.
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The Times (UK) also offers considerable coverage of There Will Be Blood. Critic James Christopher gives the film a perfect five stars, calling it "an old-fashioned beast of a film," "a towering yarn," and "a magnificent watch." Utlimately, writes Christopher,
It's a biblical parable about America's failure to square religion and greed. But most of all it is a marvelously entertaining soap: a sort of Dickens does Dallas, without the sex or swimming pools.
To read Christopher's review, click here.
Also in the Times, writer Kevin Maher gives his own perspective in a four-star review, calling the film "a unique, startling and, well, slightly strange experience." He writes that Day-Lewis and his co-star, Paul Dano, "crackle dangerously together on screen," but that it is in the lead actor's standout solo portrait that the audience can "marvel at the enormity of the performance." To read Maher's review, click here.
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To purchase Greenwood's score to There Will Be Blood, with three exclusive bonus downloads, visit the Nonesuch Store.
