Say hello to the bad guy? Not that simple.

Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007

Henry Fonda, My Darling Clementine, John Ford, 1946

Yes—I am suggesting, with the assistance of images from the films in question themselves, that with Blood, Anderson is creating an American myth in negative. But I think that's just one thing he's doing.

Which is one of the reasons why I have zero patience, even at this early stage, for complaints about the movie that focus on how reprehensible or non-likable its lead character Daniel Plainview, portrayed by Day-Lewis, is. Is it just me, or is film the last art form wherein a critic or viewer or whoever could really have such a bullshit argument taken seriously? I mean, who's going to seriously mount a campaign against Beckett's Malone based on the notion that its narrator is somewhat less than warm and fuzzy? Vladimir Nabokov himself declared "I loathe Van Veen"—the male lead and as it turns out co-narrator of Ada—and nobody gave him any problems about it. At least nobody with any brains did, because they knew that in a battle of wits with Nabokov, they'd LOSE.

I'm not claiming that Anderson is VN or any such thing, but, jeez, the idea that a film needs a "sympathetic" lead character in order to work properly or at all is such a remarkable crock...and if it's adhered to the way that most of its proponents would appear to want it to be, well, we lose a boatload of films, from The Magnificent Ambersons to El to...oh, you know what? I don't even want to do the work of giving this aesthetically hobbled claim the dignity of an answer.

The "I didn't like" and/or "I couldn't relate to" argument about movie characters is far more common than anyone ought to wish it to be in today's film discourse, and it still holds currency, I see, in online discussions, of, say, Scorsese's 1980 Raging Bull. People who are flummoxed by the attention lavished on Jake LaMotta's admittedly unpleasant character like to protest, "Why should I care about this worthless guy?" As if the movie is only about how much you "care" about him. Devotees of this approach like to cite Pauline Kael's line from her New Yorker review of the film: "And I think, What am I doing here watching these two dumb f--ks?" But that's a reduction of Kael's more complex but ultimately...well, I think ultimately profoundly ambivalent view of the film. Which is to say that, if all she based her view of the film on was her feelings about its characters, nobody, myself included, would be quoting her today.

Which is also to say...because I don't want to get too specific before you guys have been able to see the movie...that, just as Scorsese's Bull is about a character as he is captured within a series of contexts, so too is Anderson's Blood about a megalomaniacal figure as he reacts to a series of discrete situations/challenges. It's a "character study," yes, but as intimate as it frequently is, it does not occur in a vacuum. That's making is sound like an allegory...which I don't necessarily think it is. But the critics who are going to harp on how unlikeable Day-Lewis' character is will make it sound like an endurance test, which by my lights it is most certainly not. That's all for now, except, yes, I do recall that DeNiro got an Oscar for playing the exceptionally not-likeable LaMotta.

Comments

[Noel Murray]

I think it goes beyond people reacting negatively to unlikable characters, Glenn. Increasingly I've noticed critics rejecting whole movies if they decide they present a worldview counter to their own -- be it political, spiritual, or even economic. It just seems like such an immature approach to art. Presumably these critics have friends they disagree with, but that they prize for their other qualities. What makes movies so different?

[Koppelman]

a-fucking-men, GK. Fuck likeable.

[Evan]

Glenn,

While I know that this post is specifically about There Will Be Blood, is it (and Noel's reply) also partially a meditation on the tête-à-tête between Jonathan Rosenbaum and Jim Emerson regarding No Country for Old Men? I haven't seen either film yet myself (yeah, I know. I'm seeing NCfOM tomorrow--I swear!) so I can't really speak to the films themselves, but it seems as if your response might be partially directed toward the problems that Rosenbaum had with the Coens' film.

Again, just curious.

[Glenn Kenny]

You're a little ahead of me, Evan; I hadn't caught up with J. Rosenbaum's notice or Emerson's response when I put together this post. I'm a little bleary eyed at the moment but I will say I think J.R.'s review is, well, shockingly off-base. But I see that Jonah Goldberg at the National Review Online believes "No Country" to be a "conservative" film as well. This is a very dispiriting turn of events overall.

[Damon H]

Agree wholeheartedly, though I will say there is nothing worse than a film that thinks it has a likeable lead who comes across as repugnant (I would cite most of the FRIENDS spin-off films as a good example).

[Marshall]

Is this the Jim Emerson who beat up Jim Rome on ESPN about ten years ago? God, I hope so. Some guy on the Elsewhere boards today said that NO COUNTRY was "representative of the Bush administration".

[bill]

Why is it so dispiriting that someone reads "No Country for Old Men" as conservative? Because you're not a conservative yourself? So what?

I think the film transcends such labels myself, but I can certainly see where Goldberg is coming from. And besides, I'm almost 100 per cent positive that in that long "Vanity Fair" piece about Cormac McCarthy revealed that politically he did lean to the right. Again, so what?

[tk]

On the issue of "dispirited"...I can't say this is what Mr. Kenny means, but what I find dispiriting (if "irritating" isn't a better word) is the extent to which conservatives in particular seem to measure the worth of a movie/novel/whatever by whether they perceive it matches up well with their ideology. It's not the reading itself that's dispiriting/irritating, or the political leanings of the author/director, but the insistence on perceived ideology as the bottom-line criteria of whether it's worth recommending to others. If all the other aspects of the movie that Goldberg praised in his post are true (technical proficiency, love of language) BUT he perceived that it was a liberal movie, would he have posted and praised in the first place?

[bill]

TK - Okay, that I can agree with. In all fairness to Goldberg, though, I myself am relatively conservative (compared to the people I tend to run across on movie blogs, anyway) and I know that if a film is going to put forth any sort of political ideology, it most likely ain't gonna be my own. That can be frustrating (or even dispiriting!), so there may be a tendency by some in that position to latch on to, and make too much of, that element in a film should they come across it (and, again, I think Goldberg is not completely off his rocker in claiming to see such an element in "No Country for Old Men").

Even so, I actually pretty much completely agree with you. As I said before, "No Country for Old Men", like all great art, transcends that sort of thing. Not to mention the fact that I can't think of any major filmmaker(s) who seem like they would be less interested in trying to put forth any sort of political argument in their work than the Coen brothers.

[Glenn Kenny]

Well, as I said to begin with, I was a little bleary-eyed...and I'm not feeling entirely too clear at the moment. My problem is not so much what people might find in the film as much as they wanna use what they find in order to claim it for "their" side. (I think some people hear the El Paso lawman complaining about kids with green hair and bones through their noses, and believe the movie itself agrees with him, and is somehow "about" that.) Finding a "conservative" message in stuff he likes is part of Goldberg's schtick (see, or rather, spare yourself, his musings on "Groundhog Day") so I'm not really bugged by them; that he's going to want to claim it as a "conservative" movie only follows. I'm in fact more bugged—"dispirited," that is—by Rosenbaum's speculation that the movie is somehow carrying water for the Bush administration and torture.

Cormac McCarthy may be right wing, the Coens may not; Bill's right when he says "So what?" If you don't like the way Ellis and Tom Bell put it, maybe you'll like the words of Rev. Gary Davis better: "Death don't have no mercy." THAT is the "ideology" here...

[bill]

Fair enough. And no matter what my own political beliefs may be, if that truly is what Rosenbaum saw in the movie then he is indeed out to lunch.

I might have succumbed to the whole "well the Left does the same thing" argument, but you sort of did that for me, in a through-the-back-door kind of way, with the point about Rosenbaum. But I suppose what got my back up was you trotting out Goldberg and the Right for your example, when I've seen far more examples coming from the Left. Still, either way you want to slice it, that kind of approach to this film is, well, dispriting.

I think I read that "Groundhog Day" piece. I didn't think it was so bad...

[Steve]

Two cents (too late):

1. Jim Emerson is sadly not the same guy who attacked Jim Rome on live TV - that was Jim Everett. And amazing!

2. It seems the Coens wanted to bleach the story of any potential contemporary topicality. 2 arguments why:
1. Portrayal of the US-Mexico border
2. Removing the information (from the book) about Bell's medal in Vietnam and his feelings on cowardice

The themes strike me as apolitical. Rosenbaum just spends too much time trying to exegete the Brakhage within from everything.