Ugh, so sleepy. Sorry, I, I must've succumbed to a certain intermittent sleepishness throughout the entire film.
This movie...ehg-hack! ehem! -- oh, geez. So long. Let me reflect upon my viewing experience:
The film did not cease with its flashing and dragging and discord between two emaciated gentlemen. A soporific melodrama, indeed! The film was not gentle with me, recumbent in my power-siesta, drifting away.
The film...yes, yes, I remember now: so much quarreling, so much yelling in California.
Dust and bitterness. Also, everyone's covered in oil. Who's H.W.? What is the big deal with H.W., and why is he being mentioned, constantly? There are too many syllables in his initials to call him by his initials. It's distracting. Why -- I -- ughhh -- so much squabbling, scrambling, and gloom. Leather straps, possibly buckles, possibly boots.
Legs bending, wills breaking.
The soundtrack: unflagging, hostile, tense. So many violins invading my restless slumber. Just an ominous cloud of stringed instruments casting a pall over my dreamscape -- h-help, I can't, I can't handle the plucking. Please stop plucking. Too much cello tension bouncing to and fro within my brainpan.
Yaghh. My neurons. My dendrites. Quit it. Stop strumming my dendrites. My dendrites are trying to rest. Please conclude thy torture.
Scaffolding and picnic tables. That oil derrick is made of untreated lumber. Lots of 2x4's.
A man, a worker, gets crushed by something huge and unstoppable and dies in thick mud -- I sleep the sleep of ages.
H-wah? Oh...ehem. Who's that actor? The guy who plays the pastor? Why is he everywhere? He is an unrelenting screech-owl and I want him gone. Begone, preachy screech-owl. Too much power. Too much power over Little Boston.
Too much oil covering everybody, for what feels like eons. Endless eons of scenes of Daniel Day-Lewis caked with oil and clutching a boy on the floor.
Clamor, and riches -- Oh, good god, I have sweat filthily into the couch. I...I sleep now.
Pblrsrbrst. What? Daniel Day-Lewis is drunk in a bowling alley that belongs exclusively to him, it would appear. Slick wood and depressed isolation. The mewling strings, the color correction, the movie's sheer length: ruffle me. When shall I sleep? Tell me, Couch-God. Hm? Sleepy now? Sleepy no?
Wait, I think something just happened, like, a tea set fell down, and, maybe someone got murdered in the bowling alley, while I was snoozing for a second. I think someone has been seriously hurt or killed.
Okay, now I just woke up at the end of the credits. I am not sure when the movie came to a close. Did something happen after the bowling alley thing happened? I am unsettled. I am a man perturbed, disturbed, and unstrung.
2 out of 5 stars
