The Ballad of Jack and Rose

The Ballad of Jack and Rose (2005) is written and directed by Rebecca Miller and stars Daniel Day-Lewis as Jack and Camilla Belle as Rose.

The basic premise is that father and daughter live in an old hippie commune as the last remnants of a former era. Rose is kind of a naive flower and Jack is her loving father, watching his girl grow up albeit with some trepidation. Amongst other things the couple have to contend with a developer Marty Rance (Beau Bridges) who wants to exploit the land, Jack’s girlfriend Kathleen (Catherine Keener) and her sons Rodney (Ryan McDonald) and Thaddius (Paul Dano) who come to live with the two outcasts once it’s been made clear that Jack isn’t doing well.

Actually the little idyll that the viewer first gets introduced to is besieged from all directions by outside and inside forces. The relationship between father and daughter is on a dangerous path, becoming almost too close, and the illness that has taken hold of Jack threatens their balance even further. Jack’s girlfriend Kathleen and her two sons seem loud and brash and disruptive in their intrusion and Rose rebels by cutting off her hair and making attempts at freeing herself, or making her father jealous, it’s a very fine line.

This is, to my mind, one of the finest performances I’ve seen from Daniel Day-Lewis. Much of the bluster of There Will Be Blood (2007) is missing and this is a much closer set piece, and his portrait of a man who knows his time is coming to an end is worthy of close study. Camilla Belle as young Rose manages to tread that fine line of cruelty and naiveté that a sixteen year old girl is capable of without making it cringe worthy. Paul Dano as Thaddius was a surprise to me personally, because the last role I saw him perform was Dwayne in Little Miss Sunshine (2006) and there he is somewhat oafish, whereas he is definitely the snake in the paradise in this particular movie.

The movies subject matter, the subtext and some of the more overt themes are bound to bother some viewers, but I think its beautifully played, a thorough piece of craftsmanship on all parts. The writing is excellent, the performances are authentic and the setting is well used and cleverly developed.

Just the opening scene where the soundtrack intones “I Put a Spell on You” with Creedence Clearwater Revival shows where this is going and where it has been. The music is just there, pointing to the hippie era and then there are these two last lost survivors, father and daughter in a beautiful, but isolated landscape, in their own little world which is about to be rent asunder.

I really enjoyed this and think it should have gotten much more attention than it did.

MULE

There Will Be Blood

Director PaulThomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood (2007) has the unbridled audacity of begining his movie with a fifteen minute take contaning no dialogue. That is pretty much asking for trouble. But it’s beautifully done and fascinating to watch.

Daniel Day-Lewis stars as Daniel Plainview, the selfproclaimed “oil man” who exploits and develops oil resources in California. He travels with his would-be son H.W. played by Dillon Freasier. Most of the action takes place in Little Boston, near the Sunday family ranch.

Plainvew gets a tip from Paul Sunday, twin brother to Eli, who will later play a pivotal role in the rest of the action. Both Paul and Eli are played by Paul Dano. On hearing that there is oil on the Sunday ranch, Plainview takes his adopted son H.W. with him and goes to investigate. Most of the rest of the movie takes place in and around this small community, which experiences the shock and boom of becoming an oil town.

Great attention has been played to detail in the look and feel of the movie. Even the structures have that beaten up, sepia tinted well-worn look. Dress and style are impeccable and the scenery is beatuifully bleak and harsh. When Plainview promises to build a school for the town saying that the children are the future you get teh feeling he is a slick politician as well as a ruthless business man.

And then there is the church. The most intense conflict of the movie has its nexus in the headbutting between Plainview and Sunday which translates into a conflict between the church and the developer. Money and religion, to put it plainly. But it seems to be more than that. Whatever is going on between Sunday and Plainview seems personal. At one point Plainvew cynically allows himself to be baptised in order to seal a deal for access to some land. He later forces the preacher Sunday to renounce his God in order to make money off the only piece of land in the area Plainview does not own. There’s a lot of threats and tit-for-tat between Plainview and Sunday.

Loosely based on Upton Sinclair’s novel “Oil” the movie is very ambitious and makes good use of its epic running time of two and a half hours. It shows the paranoia and lack of empathy of Plainvew in all its glory, the greed and oportunism of the oil developers as well as well as those who get swept up in its wake. Day-Lewis delivers a mesmerising performance as usual, complete with odd speech patterns and a distinct walk and all the rest. Perhaps I am a little spoiled when it comes to Day-Lewis in general.

But, I find I have reservations. Day-Lewis and Dano both seem to have a little too much fun at times. They have been given pretty free reins as far as I can tell, and it’s not that I don’t enjoy their encounters, but at times they seem a little over the top. It’s not that they are in any way bad, per se, but something about them seems a little off. I don’t know if it is just the sudden explosions of emotion that stick like a bone after all the calmly observed action.

I don’t really feel there’s much character development either. Plainview starts out a bastard and remains a bastard to the end. He one-ups himself in being a bastard, but that’s about it. Sunday is a creep. He keeps on being a creep. H.W. grows up, and as could be expected from his step father’s complete rejection of him after he turns deaf in an accident, rejects Plainview and goes off with his wife to set up business for himself. No anagnorisis. No great peripeteia. Just business as usual.

I don’t mean to convey the message that I didn’t manage to enjoy myself. I don’t know what I was expecting, but somehow I felt there was something missing. And as for the music it was frankly overbearing at times and that always annoys me.

Good stuff, but not quite as good as it thinks it is, or as good as it could be.

MULE