The trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson‘s “There Will Be Blood” is online and it reveals an unexpected collaborator for PTA’s film score: none other than Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood.
Wow, we would have never pegged that one, but what an excellent choice. Rumors abounded that Jon Brion wasn’t going to be apart of this one (despite being listed on the often unreliable IMDB), and the trailer confirms the Radiohead multi-instrumentalist’s participation as “original music” by. The trailer starts out with a simple, but somber classical like score, but then devolves into ominous pounding percussion and creepy, spidery-strings not unlike, say the eerieness evident in Gorecki or Strauss [ed. maybe even a bit of Mahler]
The poster for the film has also been unveiled and it’s solemn and gothic aesthetic boasts the tagline, “When Ambition Meets Faith.” Due December 26 (the last possible date for Oscar contention) “There Will Be Blood” features Daniel Day-Lewis as a ruthless oil baron and was originally inspired by Upton Sinclair’s novel “Oil.” The film is PTA’s first since 2002’s “Punch Drunk Love.”
An early review of this clip at the PTA fan site Cigarettes and Red Vine described the trailer:
Cut to dinner at the Sunday Family shack. The shack is dark and dingy, and you can see a housefly buzzing around the dinner table. Plainview offers $3700 for the land. Old man Sunday stutters that God has sent Plainview here, but his son Eli (played by Paul Dano), is suspicous. “There’s oil here,” Eli says. “I know there is.” Eli says he wants $10,000. “For what,” Plainview (Day-Lewis) asks. “For my church,” Eli responds. Shot-reverse shot, extreme close-ups. They have a deal.
Meanwhile, Radiohead’s album is apparently done. Maybe Greenwood’s extra-curricular scoring is the reason it took so damn long. According to the Radiohead fansite Atease, Anderson had been a fan of Greenwood’s instrumental Bodysong album released in 2004. “I remember seeing Bodysong and feeling like I was in a trance; a wonderful collection of the two simple things a film has to work with: pictures and music,” PTA apparently said. Radiohead were at a private screening of “Punch Drunk Love” in 2002.
Download: Jonny Greenwood – “Moon Mall”
Download: Jonny Greenwood – “Mily Drops From Heaven”
Download: Jonny Greenwood – “Iron Swallow”