Okanagan College’s “(Contemporary) Classics at the Classics” not-for-profit film series continues next Monday night (the 23rd) at the historic Salmar Classic at 5:00pm with Paul Thomas Anderson’s brilliant There Will Be Blood. This strange, sprawling, visually-stunning film is set against the backdrop of the infancy of 20th Century capitalism and of American religion on the oilfields of California.

Infused with great tension and an unsettling intensity, Anderson’s biblical epic follows the uneasy relationship between misanthropic oilman Daniel Plainview (an Oscar winning turn by Daniel Day Lewis) and Eli Sunday (Paul Dano) a preacher and faith healer. At once character study and allegory, Anderson’s masterpiece is both a visceral film-going experience and a forensic dissection of the dark origins of the American dream, a dream from which we have not yet awoken. Based on the 1927 novel Oil by Upton Sinclair, and showcasing an uneasy making score by Radiohead’s Johnny Greenwood and Academy Award winning, monochromatic cinematography by Robert Elswit, this is a movie that absolutely needs to be experienced on the big screen.

Check out the trailer here:

As ever, the film will be introduced by Okanagan College film professor Dr. Tim Walters. General admission tickets are $5, and free for students. The series concludes on Monday March 30th with a closing night double bill of Wes Anderson’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox and Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life. Admission to both of these films is free with a donation of non-perishable food items for the Second Harvest Food Bank.