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Favorite Movie Quote: "I am a false prophet and god is a superstition." Let me start off by explaining that I love frontier stories. I grew up reading about them and watching old westerns with my grandfather. I like when stories of this nature don't try to modernize and I especially like it if they take their time developing the characters into something other than one dimensional illusions of what a real person might have done. (Casting young actors and then giving them roles that SEEM fitting but ultimately go nowhere, like with what was done in THE CLAIM, is my biggest beef.) I want to point out that in one of the forum posts, I asked people which actors/actresses that they feel might have been overlooked at the Oscars. And I agree with Bobby that Paul Dano was a horrible oversight. Playing twins (albeit briefly as the first of the two and sporadically as the second, disillusioned and treacherous as a *ahem* false prophet), Dano infuses the preacher Eli with a simple and pretty face, fills him full of anger and vengeance at something that he doesn't understand the depth of or where it's coming from, and makes you both hate him and question if your hatred is really pity or sheer despise for what he represents. What I've heard in feedback about this film is that people believed it was slow. In a sense, yes, it was slow. It took 2 1/2 hours to fully develop the evil, the shadows and the depth of the story being told. This wasn't a pizza that was promised delivery in under 30 minutes. This was an epic about the goodness and maliciousness in mankind, not just the oilman played so adeptly by Daniel Day Lewis. What ARE people willing to do for money? What are people willing to do for power? And most importantly, how far does one work at ensuring that they're always "right"? Think about it. Are you one of those people who can't sit still, can't function or operate clearly until you get your definitive message across? It makes me think of a cartoon I once saw where there is a stick figure at the computer typing away, brushing off their loved one's question of when they're coming to bed. They respond by saying that they can't just yet because someone on the internet is "wrong." Are you that person? This is the meticulously laid out story of a man who was that figure at the computer, told during the last years of the 1800's and the first 27 into the 1900's. A man who knew no bonds to family, no desire than what it took to get him what he wanted. And even more interestingly, a man who ultimately had NO CLUE what exactly it was that he specifically desired. Other than his unspoken need to always be "right." Part of me loved this for the performances of Lewis and Dano. Part of me loved this because it was a frontier story. Part of me loved this because while it took its time, it never came off boring to me. Perhaps because I'm from California and have heard the stories of what life was like, passed down through the generations. Knowing about how California was raped for its oil, its land, its accessibility to the Pacific Ocean, its weather and prosperous nature. From the devious landowners who sent out fliers to the Okies to get them to come and pick fruit so that they could force the cost of labor to stay down in the state to the far reaching atrocities of the priests coming through and nearly decimating the Chumash tribe in an attempt to force Christianity on them, passing along viruses that they'd never been exposed to and subsequently died in record numbers from. California's history will never be boring to me. I'm pleased to say that I wasn't expecting to like this as much as I did and instead turned out to love it. email this review to a friend
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May 19, 2008 9:51 AM