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His character, Daniel Plainview, a turn of the century oil prospector, and Paul Dano's, a local farmboy become evangelist preacher, serve as a remarkable pair of foils in a uniquely American tale of capitalist greed and uneasy religious fervor.
I'm consistently surprised at Day Lewis's ability to transform himself for each role he plays. The effort and nuance he puts into his craft isn't fully obviously until you see him in real life: a soft-spoken man with long, tousled hair, an aristocratic British accent, and a uniquely stylish sartorial bent. Compare this with characters like Christy Brown, Bill the Butcher and now Daniel Plainview and you see the breadth of ability he has. Is this ability alone, the ability to so transform oneself into a fictional character, physically, tonally, and morally, the mark of a great actor? No, but it is perhaps the most obvious indicator that you are seeing one at work.
Day Lewis's personal story is an interesting one. Prior to 2002's Gangs of New York, he had taken a three-year sabbatical from acting, during which he reportedly returned to an earlier passion for woodworking and eventually apprenticed to an Italian shoemaker. According to rumor, he traded the cobbler acting lessons in return for room and board. As the story goes, the cobbler later became a traveling performer with the Commedia dell'Arte.
A search for "Daniel Day Lewis" on YouTube produces a few clips worth watching.
To me the other star of the film was the musical score, written by Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead. The music is engaging from the very beginning, adding drama where you might not expect it and lending a somewhat bone-chilling air to the work as a whole.
The movie was, as I said before, well-acted in general, but it's hard not to focus on Day Lewis alone, because he steals the show again and again. The final scene of the film is one that stays with you.
In the nerdery category, Hayden Christenson, star of the Star Wars prequels, is rumored to be under consideration for the role of Case in the upcoming film adaptation of William Gibson's novel Neuromancer. I'm not so sure about this. In fact, I plain don't like it. Not only does Hayden Christenson, a six-foot blond with an athletic build, completely shatter Gibson's original physical description of the character, he has yet to show that he can actually act. I'm not as derisive of him as others, however. I give him a pass for the fact that very few actors can get anything worthwhile out of George Lucas's wooden dialogue and lackluster storytelling. But is he Case? I don't think so.
Neither Gibson himself nor the people over at his lively online discussion board are holding their breath over this movie actually being made. Neuromancer has almost happened too many times now for anybody to get really excited and/or dismayed until they actually see it start production. But the Gibson Board posters aren't pleased. In the words of poster Tessier Ashpool: "This would be like Michael Bay directing Blade Runner with McCauley Culkin playing Deckard."
Update: More information, including an alleged director and a laughably thin plot description that makes the story sound like it's about some drugged out pop star (it's not), at "Mike's Buzz Bin." Take all of this news with a generous helping of salt, of course. Link via WGBoard.
I'm not a Western fan. Like any other kid, there was a point when I wanted to be a cowboy, when the ultimate freedom meant a horse and a pair of sixguns. But generally speaking I tended more towards Indiana Jones and Zorro than to Clint Eastwood and Henry Fonda. I've never even seen Unforgiven. My favorite Western up until yesterday was Tombstone, because it was more accessible than the old black-and-whites and because Val Kilmer's performance as Doc Holliday actually managed to make it seem badass to have tuberculosis.
But 3:10 to Yuma got me. A.O. Scott calls it a lesser film than the original 1957 movie of the same name, both based on an Elmore Leonard short story. In his New York Times review, he praises the acting but predictably favors older films, lauding (perhaps too generously) their complexities: "The best of the old westerns were dense with psychosexual implication and political subtext." He also calls the character of Ben Wade, played by Russell Crowe, a sociopath, which is at best a somewhat useless label. Certainly, by modern standards, the outlaw Ben Wade would fit neatly into the current definition of sociopathy, but is it appropriate to apply this concept to such a different era? In the absence of true law and order, in a situation where even a law-abiding citizen might be gunned down over the price of a pocketwatch, can we really call violence sociopathy? Yes, Crowe's character is a criminal, a man who does whatever he pleases and kills with a smile, who chose exile over poverty and a good living over an honest one. Yes, he's violent and often ruthless. But the point of the film seemed to me to be that he wasn't evil. He does end up empathizing, putting someone else before himself, even if only for a few moments.
Scott also calls the film "revisionist," in the sense that, like many other modern films, it replaces the myth of the American West with realism. But the realism of this film is what makes it special. The realism is the best part.
The myth of the lone, heroic, utterly self-reliant cowboy isn't terribly interesting to me, nor is black-and-white morality. The truer vision of the West is one that involves an uncivilized territory ripe for plunder, filled with what were not truly evil men but rather downtrodden, friendless veterans of the Civil War who were ignored by the government they fought for and forced to do what they had to do to survive. Sometimes this led to nobility and a frontiering spirit and sometimes it led to psychological derangement and senseless violence.
The look and feel of the film were classic and the acting, as you might expect, was exquisite across the board. I was particularly taken in by Ben Foster's performance as Charlie Prince, Ben Wade's second-in-command, who absolutely nailed that creepy, post-Confederate gunslinger swagger. The shot at the end, when his back's to Wade, and he's absolutely covered in dirt and dust and blood and the look on his face is pure murder? Awesome. I think what Mr. Scott's review for the Times got right was that the filmmakers did nail the look and feel of the classic Western, and the acting brought it to another level. What we disagree on, and what remains for the viewer to decide, is if there's anything new underneath. Is this just something we've seen before, or does 3:10 to Yuma have substance? Either way, I was entertained as hell, and I can't wait to see it again.
