The opening twenty minutes of There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson’s operatic portrait of a ruthless oil tycoon (Daniel Day-Lewis) who ascends to power and prestige in early-20th-century America, are pretty much silent. We see Day-Lewis’ Daniel Plainview as a younger man, a prospector, who finds silver in a pit in New Mexico; during the dig, his harness snaps, and he plunges into the darkness, breaking his leg. Proving himself a determined survivor, he drags himself back to town on his hands and knees. As Quentin Tarantino has said, “as much of a bastard as this man proves himself to be, that courage… actually gives him the heroic right, for almost everything that he does.” It is one of cinema’s most essential prologues, establishing that this is a man who will do—and endure—anything for power and legacy.
2. Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Weinstein Company/Everett Collection
It’s the scene that won Christoph Waltz on Oscar, and one that announced the talents of French actor Denis Ménochet on the international stage; a gripping two-hander in which a man is forced to choose between the lives of his family and those of the Jews he harbors under his floorboards. (With bits of dark humor in there, too: Waltz’ Nazi detective Hans Landa pulling out his massive smoking pipe, for example, or chugging that pint of milk.) The war of words between Landa—to whom genocide is little more than sport—and Ménochet’s simple dairy farmer bristles with terror and, eventually, deep tragedy.
1. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
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DreamWorks/Everett Collection
There have been plenty of war movies over the years that adequately convey the horrors of conflict. But have any reached the technical heights of Saving Private Ryan, not least its recreation of the D-Day landings on Omaha Beach? It is hyper-immersive, hyperreal, and hyper-brutal; it’s Spielberg in a similar mode to Schindler’s List, choosing not to flinch away from the bloodshed and barbarism, but to focus in on the details. A dazed-and-confused soldier collects his severed arm from the sand like he’s picking up a can of beer at a barbecue, and chaos otherwise reigns, as Captain John H. Miller (Tom Hanks) scrambles with his squad to dodge machine-gun fire and assault the German line. War is hell, but seldom has a film so convincingly placed you within its fiery pits.
