The Circuit

The 20 minutes of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood,” shown during Daniel Day-Lewis’ tribute tonight (pictured with Annette Insdorf), established the mysterious film finally as a frontier epic. Notably it seems nowhere close to the director’s usual pigeonhole as, as Annette Insdorf put it, a filmmaker who specializes in “ensemble protagonists.” In fact, in the 20 minutes shown, it was hard to identify the white hat in the picture. In a series of well-cut scenes, the Telluride audiences watched rabid oil prospector Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis), manipulative and shrewd, work to buy the oil-rich land off of ignorant homesteaders. He clashes with the boyish, budding proselytizer Eli (Paul Dano), equally manipulative and shrewd. As Daniel uses his young son and his rich smile to win hearts, Eli uses the church to win them back, much to Daniel's chagrin.

Though the film's story-line has been under hard lock and key, it appears Anderson’s highly anticipated return is a giant leap forward.  Shot in such a vicious landscape as West Texas, Day-Lewis’ performance both repulses and attracts.  He’s a wonderfully successful snake charmer.  His words are like Norman Rockwell painting –- promising the American Dream to the scared locals he buys out.  But what is working and churning under his eyes is the opposite. In many ways it’s “My Beautiful Launderette” in reverse, where he played the tough, the tenderness peeking just under the surface. 

During tonight's interview, Day-Lewis gave nothing away on his process, despite how much moderator Insdorf prodded.  As she went through his work with flowery, scholarly insight, he had no desire to imitate. What he did give was short and sweet. He feels learning to act is learning not to act. He has no standards for choosing roles -- he simply knows it, or he doesn’t. As an actor in the UK, raised on a steady diet of staid English theater and TV jobs, imports like DeNiro and Scorsese were revelations to him. He saw “Mean Streets” and “Taxi Driver” over and over -– “Men struggling to say something inspires me more than anything else.”