Damn you to hell, Dio. That was a good interpretation; now I’m going to have to watch it again to see if I agree with you.
BTW, the opening 13 minutes or so of TWBB is right up there with Touch of Evil as far as quality is concerned. Remarkable filmmaking.
This is an important observation to note. I also agree that it was very dark comedy, but a comedy nonetheless. I describe it to friends as the best comedy of that year.
Aren’t comedies (even black ones) supposed to make you smile, or laugh? The only time I smiled in TWBB was when Eli got his butt kicked. I smiled a little when he went crawling to Daniel after his failure, but that was more of a smirk, actually. Smarmy little shit, he was.
What were the comedic aspects?
The movie had me right at the very beginning. There is something like 20 minutes to start the movie with no talking and it is still riveting stuff.
And it sounded great, too. I loved this movie enough to watch it again, which puts it in a league with Kill Bill and Jesus Christ Superstar, and the latest Star Trek. I don’t think there are any others that I would actually want to watch again.
I love Daniel Plainview. He’s just about my favorite character ever, well, this side of Atticus Finch.
I too think it’s a very very black comedy. It was not only my favorite movie of that year, it’ll probably be my favorite movie of the decade. It certainly went into my All Time Favorites after the very first viewing. I saw it in the theater, god, I don’t remember how many times. 8 or 10 at least. This is another movie that gets better and better and better the more times you see it. The best viewings were the later ones, when the only people in the theater were others like me who had already seen it several times, and we could all laugh at the funny parts without getting sidelong glances from people around us. (as to which parts are funniest, I can’t go there too deeply, but the whole baptism scene was hilarious, as was the ending, up until Daniel just gets tired of Eli and smashes his head in). Yeah, there are lots of very dramatic parts, but the humor is one of the main things that makes it re-watchable.
And as far as I’m concerned, it has the best soundtrack of just about any movie ever released.
2+ years later, and my desktop is STILL a picture of Daniel Plainview.