There Will Be Blood

Reviewed by Lisa Yi
(December 2007)

Writer/Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Dillon Freasier, Kevin J. O'Connor, Ciarán Hinds
Studio: Paramount Vantage

In-a-nutshell:
There Will Be Blood is the story of California's oil boom of the 1900s, and it drips with a sense of historicity. Based on the novel Oil! by Upton Sinclair, the film takes the audience back to the times when our nation's rabid thirst for oil was still a domestic affair.

As Daniel Plainview, Daniel Day-Lewis is an "oil man" who compellingly convinces communities to turn over their oil production rights to his "family business," namely himself and his cherub-faced adopted son, H.W. After years of grueling work, the father and son team finally hits pay dirt thanks to a mysterious messenger who tips them off to an untapped ocean of oil in the quiet California ranch town of Little Boston. As in his other period pieces, Day-Lewis so completely embodies his early 1900s character in voice and posture that any other actor onscreen pales in his wake.

Paul Dano, playing one of the town's leaders, does an about-face from his subtle, notable turn in Little Miss Sunshine. Dano's character, Eli Sunday, is Little Boston's charismatic preacher and self-proclaimed prophet, and Plainview's biggest pain in the ass. Eli knows how valuable his town's land is, but he's in for a surprise if he thinks Plainview's going to give him a fair deal.

The film's ultimate quest is to explore the soul of Daniel Plainview as he bulldozes his way to success - and it's a dark journey. Whatever saving grace life affords him, Plainview mangles with his gnarled pride and greed.

Throughout the film, director Paul Thomas Anderson leads the audience on a fascinating exploration of the extremes of worship. Eli Sunday's convulsive spiritual experiences are shown several times through Plainview's skeptical lens, but even that energy is dwarfed by Plainview's own veneration for the source of his salvation. When oil eventually explodes from Plainview's first well in Little Boston, the haunting piano and string music that accompanies most of the film is replaced by the tribal beat of drums. Despite the fact that his son has been seriously injured by the blast, Plainview can only kneel down in front of the gush of oil, baptized head to toe in black gold and hypnotized until the morning light. Transport Plainview into a South Asian swamp, and you've got Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now.

For the latter half of the film, the audience witnesses Plainview's self-propelled and unsurprising demise. Allow yourself a moment to hope, and Jonny Greenwood's foreboding musical score will tell you to do otherwise. This is difficult territory, where the attention span of any audience member not 100 percent invested in Day-Lewis's character may begin to lose stamina. So what sets apart this rise-and-fall tale of an ambitious, cold-hearted man? Is it the ease with which Plainview callously kicks aside opportunities to do good? Is it his painful awkwardness around religion? This is a question to be answered personally by each individual filmgoer. For this filmgoer, Plainview's peculiarity lies in how he is accepted by his contemporaries (and ultimately the audience) - just as he is. There will be no apologies, sighs of regret or mysterious whispers of "Rosebud" on this tycoon's deathbed.

Masterful performances by Day-Lewis, Dano and a great cast of minor characters bring this film to life onscreen, but while it is a slam-dunk for its acting, visuals and historical relevance, the absence of a crafty storyline may dampen the overall pull of There Will Be Blood for a general box-office audience.

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