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[BOLD {DANIEL DAY-LEWIS AS DANIEL PLAINVIEW}] Director Paul Thomas Anderson says he has always seen [ITALIC {There Will Be Blood}] ''as a horror film...You go to see a horror film to see bad things happen''
Melinda Sue Gordon

Both of these intense movies inspire a different kind of laughter among many viewers: a mingling of surprise, shock, disbelief (if you don't buy into the films) and/or elation (if you do). Ditto their makers. Ethan Coen meant it as a compliment when he told us he finds Blood ''really funny.'' In the case of No Country, there reaches a point when the still, blank face of Javier Bardem — and the way the Coens frequently place him in the center of the frame as he strides through a scene with havoc all around him — reminded me of Buster Keaton, the silent-movie genius whose visual wit depended on his maintaining a calm, serious mien when everything around him was going kerflooey. I even heard chortles of surprised pleasure during No Country's trailer, when a car explodes on a street as Bardem's Chigurh walks serenely into a drugstore, oblivious to the effect his mischief has elicited, hell-bent on his mission while all those around him yelp and scamper.

The laughter provoked by There Will Be Blood comes in sharper barks; it's more pop-culturally complex. For all the rave reviews the movie has attracted, there's been some skepticism, especially about the movie's final moments, when Day-Lewis' Plainview has seemingly achieved everything he could want, yet remains a man near-crazy with years of accumulated grudges against the world. Without swerving into Spoiler-ville, let me quote Plainview's howled phrase in the final scene — ''I drink your milk shake!'' — and note his final act of violence against his nemesis, the young preacher played by Paul Dano.

These are the key moments when we, as viewers, are challenged either to stay the course on Mr. Anderson's wild ride or to hop off, shaking our heads in hooting disbelief. One way to defuse the discomfort Anderson and Day-Lewis clearly intended here is to snicker at it — to mock it in a hip/ironic way that the movie itself, to its great credit, assiduously avoids. As a matter of fact, countless jokes and videos have already sprouted up around Plainview's bellowed line ''Drainnnnaaggge!'' and that bizarre, out-of-nowhere milk-shake metaphor.

NEXT PAGE: A slamming-door finality: There will be no Chigurh Rising. No There Will Be Blood II: Oil Be Back!


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