Men Love ‘There Will Be Blood’ A Little Too Much
The internet lost its mind over one bad film take. But was it really so awful?
If you want to go viral, publish an essay about how unimpressed you were by Paul Thomas Anderson’s critically-lauded 2007 drama There Will Be Blood. If that isn’t quite enough to make Twitter lose its collective mind throw in a little gentle gender warfare and you should be good to go.
That’s what happened recently when Elle Hunt, a Guardian writer, published an essay titled: “I’ve never seen: There Will Be Blood.” It’s a cheeky title because it flirts with clickbait. She knows any humorless movie snob scold can’t resist such a lure. “What? You haven’t seen this pioneering work of art,” they’ll scream directly at their phone, whilst clutching a lace hanky.
“No other film has so captured the heterosexual male imagination in more than a decade,” writes Hunt. She clearly states her observation is anecdotal but I’ll back her up: the only other contemporary movie as beloved by thoughtful bro cinephiles would be Christopher Nolan’s twisty, chilly sci-fi thriller about dream thieves Inception.
In the essay, she writes about being pressured by romantic partners into watching the two hours and thirty-eight-minute long movie. One ex-boyfriend is a There Will Be Blood…
