A few days ago, when I found out the greatest actor currently alive, Daniel Day-Lewis, is collaborating with Paul Thomas Anderson on another movie, I screamed. Literally screamed, out loud, at 11:30 pm in McBride. (It was a weekend so it wasn’t too annoying.)
The first movie I ever saw with Daniel Day-Lewis is it was P.T. Anderson’s There Will Be Blood. I watched it a few years ago, right when I was getting into watching Oscar films. I liked the movie but didn’t love it at first, but as I’ve gotten older and learned more about film I’ve grown to really appreciate the mastery of it. In addition, the infamous “milkshake” scene between him and Paul Dano at the end of the movie is the best-acted scene in modern film.
Needless to say, I’m very excited for the new movie—which is supposedly about a fashion designer in London—and wanted to celebrate Daniel Day-Lewis coming out of a 5-year hiatus post-Lincoln. So, for some reason, I decided it would be appropriate to try to watch all of the movies he has even been in. This scheme was insane for a couple reasons: 1) He’s been in a lot more movies than I thought he had been in. 2) I’m a stressed out college freshman with some days where I have three hours of class in the morning, take a nap for like 20 minutes, then I have dance and theater for 8 hours. So watching his *entire* filmography in a week wasn’t really possible. (Granted, I took a break to watch Deadpool and The Lego Batman Movie, but let’s just pretend like I was totally dedicated to this task from start to finish.) However, I managed to get through every film from when he won his first Oscar in 1990 (My Left Foot) to his most recent film/Oscar win in 2012 (Lincoln).
Without further ado, here is a “definitive ranking” (aka one film lover’s opinion) of eleven of Daniel Day-Lewis’ most recent films.
Warning: MILD SPOILERS AHEAD (very mild, but still spoiler-y)
11. The Boxer
Character: Danny Flynn
Director: Jim Sheridan
Year: 1997
Movie rating: 2.5 stars (I wrote reviews of most of these films on my Letterbox’d account.)
Okay, so even though this movie is ranked last out of the eleven movies I watched, it doesn’t mean he still wasn’t absolutely great in this movie. I just don’t feel like the script itself gave him much to do. Danny Flynn was supposed to be this reformed IRA soldier who decided to abandon the IRA and try to create a secular boxing gym for both the Protestant and Catholic boys in Ireland to box at. Even with a scene involving a bombing, I never really felt for the conflict in the story. However, his obligatory “Daniel Day Lewis dramatic protagonist monologue” was incredible as always. He spoke to the woman he loved in the film, so honestly, so desperately and so concisely; it is really quite beautiful. But besides that, his character doesn’t say much in the movie and really doesn’t do much besides box. I ended up feeling more connected to the secondary character of his love interest’s father played by Brian Cox than to DLL’s.
10. The Ballad of Jack and Rose
Character: Jack Slavin
Director: Rebecca Miller
Year: 2005
Movie rating: 2 stars
As a movie, this one is definitely worse than The Boxer, but I liked DDL’s acting in this film better. He just had a meatier character and a bigger role in this film in comparison to The Boxer. DDL plays Jack Slavin, an Irish environmental engineer living on an abandoned hippie commune in America with his beautiful teenage daughter. The movie is very cringe-y and is his relationship with his daughter, but the acting is good. There is a beautiful scene when DDL breaks down at the house of a housing developer who he has been feuding with during the whole film. In fact, his interacting with the housing developer and with his girlfriend’s son, Thaddeus, are the best scenes in the movie. It’s not a good movie, but he’s still an amazing actor, so he’s able to fight through a terrible script. (I have a sneaking suspicion he only did the film because his wife, Rebecca Miller, is the writer and director.)
9. The Age of Innocence
Character: Newland Archer
Director: Martin Scorsese
Year: 1993
Movie rating: 3 stars
I really enjoyed this movie, but DDL’s character was a pretty bland male ingenue character. As the film progressed, Newland Archer became more interesting, but then sort of fell of in the last 20 minutes of the film. But in the parts where the character is interesting, DDL kills it. He plays Newland Archer, a New York society man engaged to be married to the beautiful, but seemingly dull New York society woman, May. When Archer meets May’s cousin, Ellen, he falls in love with her and starts to resist the strict societal rules Ellen seems to not care for. It was quite interesting to see DDL in a romantic role, especially one where he isn’t gruff or wild, like in The Last of the Mohicans and The Boxer. I really enjoyed his interactions with the lawyer who he works for. Some of Archer’s most poignant emotional moments come in scenes with neither of the two women in his life, but with essentially his boss. Also, weird thing: DDL is normally the master of accents, but there are quite a few times where he lapses on his American accent and reverts to Irish.
8. Nine
Character: Guido Contini (but really, he’s Federico Fellini)
Director: Rob Marshall
Year: 2009
Movie rating: 2 stars
I thought I would like this movie more considering how much I like musicals, but the movie just made me mad. However, Daniel Day-Lewis plays the douchebag-y Guido Contini (who literally just the famous Italian film director, Federico Fellini, with a different name) surprisingly well. Contini is a famous director who is about to start production on his next big film except he has writer’s block and therefore, no script. So he starts essentially cataloging through all the women who have been in his life––his wife, his mistress, the prostitute he met as a boy––to find inspiration for his film. DDL plays the role well, even if Contini is just a sexist trash can on fire. He’s also a surprisingly good singer which gave me so much joy.
7. The Last of the Mohicans
Character: Hawkeye, or Nathaniel Poe
Director: Michael Mann
Year: 1992
Movie rating: TBD (I have 30 minutes of the movie left)
Okay, now before the outrage begins, Daniel Day-Lewis does not play a Native American in this movie. He plays a white man raised by Mohicans from birth. All of the truly Native American characters in the film are played by Native Americans. I don’t have a ton to say about this performance because it isn’t an acting-driven movie, but DDL provides a lot of heart to the film. His performance is subtle and interesting and his interactions with the other characters, particularly his love interest, come across as very genuine. So it’s an amazing DDL performance, but it just isn’t as good as the top six ones.
6. The Crucible
Character: John Proctor
Director: Nicholas Hytner
Year: 1996
Movie rating: 3 stars
I feel like I might get some flack for not putting this one in the top five because it is such a well-known DDL performance and don’t get me wrong: I love his John Proctor. I can’t imagine any other actor playing him. (I’m also obsessed with him and Winona Ryder as a pair.) That being said, like with The Last of the Mohicans, it just lacked the something special I found in my top five performances. However, I think his monologue about his name towards the end of the film (“You have all witnessed it” and so on) is one of the best of his big monologues in his films.
5. In the Name of the Father
Character: Gerry Conlon
Director: Jim Sheridan
Year: 1993
Movie rating: 4.5 stars
Oscar nominee for Best Actor
Oh. My. God. This movie wrecked me. It’s so good and DDL’s role in it is so different from his other stuff and I just really love it. It doesn’t compare to the like earth-shattering feats of my top four films, but holy golly goodness, this performance is heart-wrenching. DDL plays Gerry Conlon, a real man who was accused of committing an IRA bombing of an English pub during the 1970s. The police falsify evidence, threaten and terrorize him in order to get the conviction. This performance is interesting on so many different levels. The transformation Conlon goes through during this film is incredible. It was so funny to see DDL, who is normally so brooding and serious, play the young, hippie petty thief that Gerry Conlon is at the start of the film. There is a scene where after he robs a nice apartment, he goes and buys this hilariously gaudy outfit with a big furry coat and crazy glasses and an intensely colorful shirt. However, when it moves into him being interrogated and being in prison, I fell in love with this performance. The pain and the anguish was just so raw and real while he was being coerced into a confession that I believed for a second it what was real.
4. My Left Foot
Character: Christy Brown
Director: Jim Sheridan
Year: 1989
Movie rating: TBD (I still have around 30 minutes left)
Oscar winner for Best Actor
It is totally understandable why DDL won his first Oscar for this picture. A good performance to compare it to is Eddie Redmayne’s triumphant and Oscar-winning portrayal of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. In My Left Foot, Daniel Day-Lewis plays author and painter Christy Brown, an Irishman who was born with a severe case of cerebral palsy but learned to write and paint using only his left foot. The whole time I watched this picture, it never ceased to amaze me how beautifully and affectionately Daniel Day-Lewis portrayed such a devastating disorder. This film is also one of the early examples of Daniel Day-Lewis’ infamous fully-immersed method acting. He stayed in character the entire time while filming My Left Foot, meaning the crew literally had to wheel him around set in his wheelchair. So yeah, this performance feels very real because DDL made every attempt to make it so.
Side note: Does anyone remember the pigeon lady in the park from Home Alone 2? Well, she plays DDL’s mom in this movie and she won an Oscar for it. That’s right; PIGEON LADY HAS AN OSCAR, PEOPLE.
3. Gangs of New York
Character: William “The Butcher” Cutting
Director: Martin Scorsese
Year: 2002
Movie rating: 3 stars
Oscar nominee for Best Actor
Ooh boy, Daniel Day-Lewis can be a scary, scary man. In this film, he playing “The Butcher,” the charismatic leader of a “real American” gang from New York City during the Civil War. He beats up black people, screams slurs at Irish people as they get off boats to enter the US, and is a generally nasty, racist, sexist piece of trash. And oh my freaking God is it incredible. He’s just so…frightening. But like, you get it. You get why Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Amsterdam, becomes obsessed with impressing him even though The Butcher literally murdered Amsterdam’s father in cold blood. Because he’s just smooth. It’s just so so good and so so scary.
2. Lincoln
Character: Abraham Lincoln
Director: Steven Spielberg
Year: 2012
Movie rating: 4.5 stars
Oscar winner for Best Actor
Sacre bleu! I’m not ranking Lincoln first. I’m not solely because I can’t pinpoint one scene in the film––like I can in our winner––that literally altered the way I see cinema. However, that being said, I’m not entirely convinced that Daniel Day-Lewis isn’t literally just Abraham Lincoln. Like I have a sneaking suspicion Lincoln is immortal and now he’s just Daniel Day-Lewis. In this movie, DDL IS Lincoln. Now, of course, DDL did the DDL thing and spent many months before the filming started and then the entire time it was being filmed being Abraham Lincoln. His wife literally complained about it because it was like being married to Lincoln. But he’s perfect in this film. Absolutely freaking flawless.
1. There Will Be Blood
Character: Daniel Plainview
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Year: 2007
Movie rating: 4.5 stars
Oscar winner for Best Actor
Now, let’s get back to the whole reason I’m excited for the upcoming collaboration between these two men. I don’t think There Will Be Blood is a perfect film. It’s not even one of my favorite movies necessarily. However, it changed the way I viewed acting in film. Daniel Day-Lewis’ performance as Daniel Plainview is so powerful, I didn’t think it was possible for me to be so floored by someone just pretending to be someone else. Daniel Plainview is an oil tycoon in the early 1900s in America, who balances dealing with his deaf son, his oil interests, and the piece of garbage pastor (played perfectly by Paul Dano) who consistently runs up against Plainview throughout the film. And Plainview is a total sociopath. But in the end, you’re rooting for him, man. You want him to kick the little pastor in the head so freaking badly. The milkshake scene at the end of the film is the final word in the conflict between the two. If you have any illusions of wanting to be an actor, stage or screen, it should be required watching for you because, man, oh, man… it’s brilliant.
Daniel Day-Lewis isn’t my favorite actor working right now (that crown is shared by Christian Bale and Jake Gyllenhaal), but he is the BEST actor working right now. So I’ll be peeing my pants with excitement for the next year while I await the release of the “Untitled Paul Thomas Anderson Project” (WHICH HAS ALREADY STARTED FILMING). In the meantime, I will be sustained by the memories of There Will Be Blood, Lincoln, and Gangs of New York.
And now that this is over, I can start actually doing school work and not just sitting around thinking about how much I love Daniel Day-Lewis.